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DeviantAnthro t1_iu9jdv8 wrote

Cities are cyclical. We're on an upward trajectory right now, so the opposite of the white flight is happening. The city is repopulating with wealth and the lower income populace is fleeing to more affordable options.

Soon all this new construction will age and begin to crumble, crime will begin to rise, property value will lower, wealth will leave and the city will be born again as a crust punk haven.

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Charlesinrichmond t1_iu9y1e7 wrote

cyclical yes, but longer cycles than that. The urbanism trend will last all of our lifetimes I'd bet.

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ttd_76 t1_iugot4s wrote

I bet it doesn’t even last for the next ten years. I think could even buy an argument that it’s already over.

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Charlesinrichmond t1_iuiekz1 wrote

oh I completely disagree with you. And the data backs me up except for the covid epidemic, and it's showing a bounceback.

It's too early to tell, but look at pricing and sales. In 5 years it will be very clear which trend drives things.

But I'm sticking with Richard Florida here.

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ttd_76 t1_iuiins5 wrote

People were already trickling out of urban areas before the pandemic.

I’m not saying cities will become ghost towns. Just that the peak of urbanism as a trend is probably here or already past and we won’t see the kind of growth we saw from 2010-2015.

Asa small city, I think Richmond will probably stay fairly stable. We’ll gain some population from people moving out of larger, more expensive cities. But we will leak people out to the surrounding suburbs and exurbs.

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Charlesinrichmond t1_iuiknh8 wrote

All the data I saw up to the pandemic went the other way. Then the pandemic put up numbers backing your thesis. But if you look at urban rents and sales this year it showed high demand.

I continue to strongly think the drivers remain the same as the last 20 years. But current data is obviously muddled.

Cities remain amenity dense. The big flip is commuting time with wfh. Commutes used to drive a lot of urban moves way back. With traffic not an issue it's going to be interesting.

But think ex commute of why you live where you do and not say brandermill

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Glen_YngkinDid_9-11 t1_iuaa35c wrote

People aren’t as racist as they used to be (white flight) and the economy hasn’t been gutted like it was from the 70’s to NAFTA.

If you really want affordable housing to come back via socioeconomic trends (lol @ the government doing anything like the new deal), root for the collapse of Tesla, Amazon, and (especially for Virginia) military firms like Raytheon. Hopefully you keep your job, but that’s the Coors Light©️ Cold Hard Facts

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plummbob t1_iud1ugu wrote

We could just legalize more housing. The primary constraint on construction is zoning.

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Ditovontease t1_iuabth4 wrote

meh the federal government is going to have to collapse since we have wfm now.

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Glen_YngkinDid_9-11 t1_iuazs7n wrote

Oh I think the real estate “class” is going to make people go back to the office lol, but the government will probably just stop functioning anyways, it’ll just be the military/intelligence apparatus/LEO lmao

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