Brandon Donnelly

Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.

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Tag: spanish flu

  • What will be the new New York City?

    Peggy Noonan argues, in this recent WSJ article, that the world has changed forever. A human habit was broken during this pandemic and city life, including office life, will never be the same in New York City. She qualifies this by saying that some people will return to offices, potentially in significant numbers. (People like being around other people.) But that things will never be what they once were. We’ve learned that we can decentralize and still get work done.

    As many of you know, I am bullish on cities and I am bullish on offices. So I found myself disagreeing with many of her arguments. But Peggy does raise some valid concerns: How are cities going to pay for what just happened over the last 12 months? According to the Partnership for New York City, the city lost about 500,000 private-sector jobs since March 2020. About 300,000 residents from high-income neighborhoods also filed for a “change of the address” during this time period.

    Given that the top 5% in New York represent about 62% of the state’s income tax base, the movement of people to low-tax states (and warmer places) is something to watch. It’s also a trend that existed well before this pandemic.

    At the same time, I’m not necessarily convinced that (at least some of) these fleeing rich people aren’t coming back. I was speaking with a real estate agent over the weekend who is based in a popular US resort/recreation market and while he told me that, yes, he’s seeing a massive influx of people from expensive coastal markets, these people are largely choosing to rent. They want to take the lifestyle for a test drive and they are also waiting to see what happens with the world once city life returns.

    There will be real financial challenges coming out of this. But as I’ve said time and time before, cities are remarkably resilient. And as Jack Shafer argued in this recent article about “memorializing the pandemic,” humans tend to have short memories, especially when it comes to bad things. The Spanish Flu has been regarded by many as a forgotten pandemic. We moved on and the same will happen this time around.

  • The roaring twenties

    We’ve all heard stories or know people who have made the decision to leave the city during this pandemic, either temporarily or permanently. Some young people have moved home until things settle down and some people have sold their real estate and bought something outside of the city.

    I don’t know know what the exact numbers are, but you can see this trend being reflected today in downtown rental rates and other indicators. This is happening in many cities around the world.

    But here’s what I think about when I hear these stories:

    1) Are these people assuming that we will never go back to offices and that WFH is our new reality? In this case, the thinking is simple. The world has changed. I need a proper Zoom room and a home gym.

    2) Did these people never really like urban living or have they simply outgrown the city? Pre-pandemic, family formation was still a major pull away from downtowns for many. In this case, a move was going to happen regardless.

    3) Or are these people taking a short-term view of the world and forgetting/ignoring that our global cities are going to rebound and that 2 hour commutes really suck? (Sitting in front of Zoom all day is also no way to live in my opinion.)

    There are both positives and negatives to urban living. There are forces that make people want to centralize and there are forces that make people want to decentralize. And the reality is that many of the benefits and perks of living in a city are temporarily turned off right now.

    Things are not fun right now, but this isn’t going to last. I’m looking forward to the roaring twenties.

  • Learning from the Spanish Flu

    “We learn from history that we do not learn from history.” -Georg Hegel

    Back in March, I was reading everything I could find about COVID-19 and about pandemics. Eventually that tapered off. But this week I decided that it was time to go back and learn a lot more about the 1918 Spanish Flu.

    I’ve just ordered John M. Barry’s 2004 book called The Great Influenza. Bill Gates wrote about it over the summer — after he reread it — and said that it will teach you almost everything you need to know about the influenza. He also said that it’s never been more relevant.

    Despite happening over 100 years ago, there are no doubt lessons that we can learn from this great influenza. The most important being that leadership and honesty, of course, matter a great deal during a time of crisis.

    Barry also argues that the 1918 influenza was responsible for altering the flow of history. He makes the claim (convincingly according to Bill) that it was a contributing factor in the rise of Hitler and the start of World War II.

    So I’m looking forward to receiving my copy later this week. If you’d like to purchase your own, you can do that over here. And if you’ve already read it, please let me know what you thought in the comment section below.