Starting to become a strong believer in this Pandemic is going to really wreck NYC longer term. Sadly https://twitter.com/Chris_arnade/status/1254406489818705920

It comes down to the question: Will young professional couples leave the city when they start having children?

The decision by many in 90s to stay, rather than go to the burbs, reshaped the entire city.

If far more leave, as I suspect they will, NYC will be reshaped again

NYC is quietly the largest college town in the US. So it will always be a magnate for younger people looking for education & excitement.

But will it be a place those same college grads end up raising a family in?

Or will it only be the working-class who raise families there

Someone asked me today if NYC is like an Emerging Market, with hot money flows driving it up & then crashing it when it leaves. The answer is, Yep!

The upwardly mobile class (mostly whites) left NYC in 60s crushing its tax base

Then their kids wanted it back, gentrifying it.

Now they might want out again, leaving behind a mostly working class (minorities & Immigrants) population to deal with a hollowing out tax base

In both cases, gentrification & depopulation, the long term working class residents have to deal with whims of the richer professionals