{"id":54734,"date":"2020-08-18T06:09:48","date_gmt":"2020-08-18T11:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54734"},"modified":"2020-08-18T06:09:48","modified_gmt":"2020-08-18T11:09:48","slug":"is-the-pandemic-causing-an-exodus-from-big-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54734","title":{"rendered":"Is the pandemic causing an exodus from big cities?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is the pandemic causing an exodus from big cities?<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Thomas Homer-Dixon, the Canadian student of complex systems and author of The Upside of Down<\/em><\/a>, wrote in his 2006 book that “September 11 and Katrina won’t be the last time we walk out of our cities.”<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Today,\u00a0many big-city dwellers appear to be seeking refuge in less crowded towns and rural landscapes<\/a>. The wealthy, at least, are seeking “bugout” homes away from major cities as places to ride out the pandemic, the economic downturn and the civil unrest that are gripping the world. Beyond news reports, I’ve heard from friends that homes are being snapped up in eastern Washington state and New York’s Hudson Valley by coastal city dwellers looking for a refuge in turbulent times.<\/p>\n

It’s not just residents who are leaving.\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that retail restaurant and merchandise chains are exiting Manhattan because it is “unsustainable.” New York City no longer teams with tourists, and its office towers are largely empty. That makes for empty streets with few customers for the city’s many retail establishments. This story is being repeated in other major cities including\u00a0Atlanta<\/a>,\u00a0Chicago<\/a>,\u00a0Denver<\/a>,\u00a0Houston<\/a>,\u00a0Los Angeles<\/a>,\u00a0Seattle<\/a>, and\u00a0St. Louis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/a>In\u00a0an op-ed<\/a>\u00a0appearing in\u00a0The Globe and Mail<\/em>, Homer-Dixon explained the underlying structural problems that have opened our global society to increasing risk:<\/p>\n

The relatively new science of complex systems shows that such tipping events are made more likely by the unprecedented connectivity in the networks that humanity has laid down in a dense web across Earth\u2019s surface \u2013 air traffic, financial, energy, manufacturing, food distribution, shipping and communication networks, to name just a few.<\/p>\n

This science also shows that until we manage this connectivity better \u2013 which could mean, among other changes, reducing our international travel, simplifying global supply chains and bringing some production processes closer to home \u2013 we\u2019re likely to experience more frequent tipping events of ever-higher destructive force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the pandemic causing an exodus from big cities? Thomas Homer-Dixon, the Canadian student of complex systems and author of The Upside of Down, wrote in his 2006 book that “September 11 and Katrina won’t be the last time we walk out of our cities.” Today,\u00a0many big-city dwellers appear to be seeking refuge in less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[153,4752,4967,690,12826],"class_list":["post-54734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-complex-systems","tag-kurt-cobb","tag-resource-insights","tag-risk","tag-thomas-homer-dixon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54735,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54734\/revisions\/54735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}