I don't think we need the FUD; Manhattan (especially midtown) will be on a bit of a downswing as some companies get rid of their office space and people switch to semi-remote work, but it will survive and thrive just fine.

And people will leave.

Serious question, I haven't seen any articles about this so just guessing

Now that a lot of places are remote, the people who could afford a Manhattan apartment don't need it anymore and got tired of living in a shoebox.

You still get all the benefits of New York in the other boroughs, just in a 1 or 2 bedroom instead of a 5th floor studio walkup.

I don’t think it will happen in the USA, but I think a solution would be to tolerate squatting, if the squatters improve the neighborhood.

A significant number of our friends and family moved since the start of COVID but they went in different directions. We’re all mid-to-late 30s working in tech, mostly, so this is in no way representative of all the people making moves.

Some people moved out of the city entirely. All of these people have good jobs with high pay but decided that this was their opportunity to get the big house in a different area. In all but one case, these were renters who bought when they moved. That last case was a family that sold their place for more than asking price in 7 days and then bought a new place.

Others were renters who bought in the city. This includes me and my wife as well as two of her siblings. We have a handful of friends who either bought or are trying to buy. We and everyone I know doing this identify as “city people” who just don’t want to leave and are using this as an opportunity to upgrade space and take advantage of the benefits of home ownership. Many of our friends who rent took the opportunity to find a bigger place at a better rate or strong armed their landlords to get better deals.

So the tldr here: in our group of friends, the people who left were those who wanted to leave anyway and didn’t have the opportunity until now. The people who stayed are those who grew up here and/or just want to stay in the city long term.

That said, a handful of them have mentioned renting apartments in the city and already come down pretty frequently. I wouldn’t be surprised if their FOMO became overwhelming once things are fully reopened and wound up coming back permanently.

Insane pricing pushed us out initially.

Philadelphia is such a horrible place, pre-covid I was longing to go back.

COVID restrictions and now the fallout from that don't make it feel like a good idea.

Really thinking about Florida now.

If I was going to be a tax exile I’d be more inclined to look at parts of NH within the metro area of Boston and Texas (especially Austin). Maybe Nashville.

As stated elsewhere... Slowly boiling frogs.

It's a bleak future if you are poor and immobile.

With the rise of totalitarian/authoritarian capitalism, the upper-middle class won't be able to move freely. So many of us in America are used to free movement in the first world.

The future points to the first world being economically submissive to China in the future, and perhaps politically, and political movements within the first world show great appetite for authoritarians and distrust of the democratic norms, and it's not just Trump. How much of that is Russian and Chinese shadow propaganda remains to be seen.

Want to see first world countries turn super-not-first-world? Send a flood of refugees. The American Authoritarian Right is built fundamentally on paranoia of illegal immigration. Look at what the Syrian immigration did to Europe.

Those refugee events are peanuts compared to the displacements projected by Global Warming. Between rising sea levels, ecosystem changes/desertification, and raw temperature spikes, there will likely be billions with a big B displaced, and that will cause everyone to close their borders.

I would not count on free mobility when you need it.

After a year in Orlando, I moved to Miami, so have been here just under 2 years I think.

We are seeing so many people from California and other tech-heavy areas migrate here lately, it's insane.

It is a great city that is extremely walkable, has passable public transit, a tech giant (Comcast) and lots of hospitals and universities boosting the local economy. It saw a rebirth beginning with revamping its Center City district and Broad Street in the late 90s/early 00’s that has radiated outward to other areas.

The problem with Philadelphia is that it is a city that is unable to take the next step to maintain its pace of improvement. The mayor and city council are unwilling to perform city-wide street cleaning out of fear of blowback from South Philly lifers who would then have to move their 6 cars once every two weeks. They currently cannot even collect residential trash on time on a weekly basis due to an overworked and understaffed sanitation department. Their transit is underfunded, partially due to them being a blue city in a state where most of the legislature is from rural red counties that would rather build barely used highways than extending their subway or commuter rail. And last but certainly not least, the opioid crisis makes the area around Kensington and Allegheny look like something from a third world country. The city seems to have no solution other than evicting the addicts from their current encampment every year or so, which just results in them setting up shop a few blocks over.

The fact that quant spreadsheets extend to commercial is unsurprising.

The spreadsheets forget that you need people to make a city work.

It wasn't all bad. Some of my favourite artists and musicians lived in the city of that era. They were paying low rents or squatting while working on their craft.

Once the disinvestment had run its course developers swooped in and bought some of the most desirable property for cheap. New buildings went up. A generation of kids raised in the suburbs discovered cities were awesome. And those starving artists either became successful or were forced to move out.

The working poor and working class who built the city, maintained the city when everyone else walked away they were discarded. Sent to live in unfashionable suburbs hours away. Rising ever so briefly as "essential workers" while COVID wrecked the economy and ravaged the cities knowledge workers.

Drug use and HIV infection went hand in hand in those days and there was just so much death.

Most of midtown manhattan storefronts were just boarded up and covered in graffiti.

Thread about the decay in general.

What happens is as the tax base leaves the city has less money to take care of itself leading to more people leaving, etc. The opposite happens as people move back in.

I’d never count NYC out but it was clearly in need of a correction. After the riots and the regime in charge supporting it, the increase in muggings and robbery, and the blandness to much of what Manhattan has become, I know a few people that left. Especially with remote work being more viable.

And I don't say this as a twisted conservative wanting to see liberal cities burn. I'm pretty fucking liberal and NYC is going pretty much off a cliff at the moment.

In exchange no one would complain that city government, the state authorities, and trades would be fantastically overpaid and overstaffed.

This was also good for people that worked in industries that cater to the rich (waiters, doormen, weed delivery services, etc, etc).

Things were hardly perfect but aside from the very poor and people being squeezed out of neighborhoods due to gentrification most groups were doing well enough to be satisfied.

The problem is that the whole thing depends on a few thousand very wealthy people sticking around. If they no longer care enough about the restaurants, museums, clubs, private schools, house parties, whatever to want to be in NYC pay taxes and spend lavishly then the whole thing falls apart. The worst part is that there’s no way to gracefully dial back—-wages and benefits are sticky.