They're happy living outside them with their current level of access to cheap energy. If we address the need to fight climate change, cities might become much more comfortable to live in, given the economies of scale their population density allow.

The air pollution problem that commuting causes may be negated in the future with increases of working from home. I don't see how energy is significantly cheaper in the city vs. in suburbs or rural areas, aside from transmission costs. To which economies of scale do you refer, and how would cities become more comfortable? I assume maybe you mean cheaper? Housing costs, for instance, aren't actually lower, people just live in disgustingly small spaces.

I think you're mistaken about the inclinations of the average person. People like having a decent amount of living space. I don't think most would want to give up a back yard.

How about people who don't want to live in a dense urban environment, no matter much an economist tells them that the "economies of scale" of a city are more favourable for the statistical model they happen to believe in the most?

Current access to cheap everything! As a whole, the suburban lifestyle has a greater reliance on the fruits of globalization.

I don't think we're guaranteed a future where we can rely on globally sourced cheap products materials and labor.

Not making any predictions about that, though. Just saying that if globalization wasn't a thing, cities would be more important.

Why should cities become more comfortable ? Just make up policies that forces/incentivizes people to move to the city and voilà.

> You're absolutely right about de-materialization, but just on this point, migration to cities is probably about over (excluding suburbs, which will probably grow).

There's absolutely no way of knowing this, and, quite frankly, the argument that most people are happy outside of them pales in the face of the post-pandemic economy and how that will materially affect suburbanites.

So far I think it's anyone's guess how things will shake out, though I'm still hoping for a "return to normalcy" with reduced trust in the government. Do you have a different theory on how things will look going forward? If so, I'd appreciate a different perspective.

I don't know to what degree normal is possible going forward: were seeing massive unemployment amongst an already highly economically precarious population. I think the only thing I can really see is a rebirth of mass politics, likely going in the rights favor in 2022 midterms and 2024 election. It's the only thing that makes sense to me for an empire in decay. Either that or pulling a British empire and becoming a lamprey on whoever the next hegemon is, but I think we've already seen what that looks like in regards to all the outrage over american companies, Hollywood, etc "cow-towing" to China and Americans don't like it.

The wheels of history are in motion, so not one of us really knows anything.

If this was true, then living in a city would cost about the same as living in a suburb. (Or even less, since city dwellers require fewer resources, as mentioned above.) As it stands, living in a city is significantly more expensive, and yet many people do it. Job growth has been focused on cities for a while now, and that trend does not seem like it is changing.

Conflation of "resources" with supply-and-demand. Living near the ocean doesn't use more resources but it's priced higher more because people want to live there bidding up prices. Similarly living in cities cost more because people want to live there (in aggregate).