Trending out of cities

For many decades, we’ve seen a migration to cities and urban areas. The rising cost of living in cities such as San Francisco and New York started a trend of people moving out of the cities in search for cheaper alternatives. Alongside the advent of remote work tools such as Zoom, we’ve seen people more and more moving out of big cities.

The big question is whether COVID-19 is going to accelerate this trend. Millennials flocked to cities in search of talent, excitement, and opportunity. Now with the everyone seemingly realizing that working remotely may be seamless, will this be the end of the mass migration to cities?

My hunch is that we’ll see a decline in growth of cities and the trends of moving to the suburbs/lower cost cities will continue. It may not be as drastic as people make it seem. For every person touting on Twitter that they are moving their family out of SF/NY along with all their friends, there’s thousands who are staying put, myself included.

With that said, it’s hard to ignore the trends among the younger generation.

Going to the park with your friends has turned into logging on and playing video games with friends.

Meeting other singles at a bar has turned into dating via apps.

Social gatherings have gone digital in recent times. Nothing replaces in person get togethers, but Zoom parties are the next best thing.

Technology has created connectivity once not possible. Given all the availability of all these options that were once unavailable, I don’t see what’s stopping someone in their 20s perhaps deciding to live in a lower cost suburb. Someone can be making a San Francisco salary living on a gorgeous house by the beach/lake for much cheaper outside of major cities. What’s stopping them?

Of course, there’s the other side of the equation. Nothing replaces the excitement of a city like New York and to a lesser extent, San Francisco. Sophia and I are city people. I grew up in San Francisco and I’d like to raise my family in San Francisco. Whether that’s going to be possible is yet to be seen, but I’m not on the bandwagon to abandon ship just yet.