Lockdown shows us it is not work that attracts us to big cities – but the social life

The world is currently experiencing the largest pandemic since the Spanish flu one century ago. According to the Coronavirus Research Center at Johns Hopkins University, more than 50 million people have been infected by the virus globally as of mid-November 2020 and about 1.3 million died. To contain the spread of the virus, governments have implemented surveillance, quarantine and social-distancing measures. These threaten to erode the comparative advantages of big cities that arise from economic and social interaction. This has led to many distinguished thinkers expressing their diverse views on how the pandemic might shape the future of cities. In a recent blog, Max Nathan and Henry Overman, provide an excellent summary of the public debate on whether and why there might be a ”big city exodus”.