Almost one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, life is starting to feel like it might regain its sense of normalcy. With promising vaccines being slowly rolled around the globe, the focus is shifting away from the immediate, and into what the future looks like- including where people want to live. At the beginning of the pandemic, stories all across the media claimed that cities were dead, people were leaving as a permanent measure of safety and well-being, and that the real estate market would experience a long and slow recovery to the boom it had experienced in the pre-pandemic world. But there’s been a shift, and it’s happening fast- people are returning to cities almost as suddenly as they once left them.
Although it’s true to say that some city residents are now favoring a long-term future in suburbs where they can trade a small high-rise apartment for the sprawling space of a single-family home and a front yard, it’s yet to be determined how long this change will last. There are still too many unknowns about what our daily routines will look like, how cities might change for the better, and how the predicted future of hybrid work will impact our daily lives. There’s still a belief that the social distancing measures will remain prevalent in our society, and in cities where it’s hard to carve out your own small space at an affordable price, many people were convinced that this was the opportune time to leave.
