Huge cities may well be beyond their sell by date as a concept, rather like paper telephone books or public payphones. How much that seemed permanent was merely dependent upon inertia and a lack of technological development?
If Only He Had Lived to See the Internet
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
Actually, men gather in cities to produce goods and services and to partake of retail trade.
They also gather in cities for employment. If you weren’t in an agricultural trade or an owner one of the few businesses in the town you lived in, then you leave in search of work.
Mind you, the ambitious youth is drawn to cities in the hope of success. Sometime the lure of ambition is greater than staying put and living a life their parents did.
Large cities are becoming obsolete. Factories need not locate in large cities. The downtown office skyscraper is already obsolete. The Internet has laid waste to travel agencies, phone books, newspapers and newsmagazines, shopping malls and numerous other things one thought indispensible just two or three decades ago.
There is not much corporate office work that can’t be done anywhere. Corporate American greed brought this on themselves by outsourcing data processing and other tasks to India. The Covid episode proved most office workers can do their jobs just fine without being ordered to commute to an office building and required to spend their days confined to a cubicle.
The climate change scaremongers should be front and center pushing for remote work. Yet all we hear from them on the issue is nothing.
It goes counter to their pie in the sky hope to shove humanity into city apartments and be forced to walk, ride bikes or trains everywhere. Just like the dimwit who runs the World Economic Forum who wants people to work all their lives and own nothing.
Cities have brought this upon themselves as well. High taxes, poor schools, lousy city services, high crime rates, bad roads and it is no wonder people want to work from home and relocate to exurbs and rural areas.
Commercial real estate in cities is in big trouble and it will only get worse. Businesses who place a value on acquiring and keeping good workers will or already have realized what is coming. Downsizing office space and hiring workers from anywhere is the present and the future.
My own employer put million of dollars into renovating the lobbies and floors of its office tower. Across the street is another office building that is a converted department store.
A year ago, a “return to office” initiative was put in place. Anyone 50 miles or closer is reqired to come to the office at least three days a week on average.
As I am not far from retirement but still have a mortgage to pay, I show up.
Lots of other employees don’t. Management can deal with it. I’ll be gone from there one way or another soon enough.