In the course of the recent Coronavirus outbreak in the US Balaji Srinivasan made a remarkable comment. In a casual tweet he mentioned that the West might just have experienced peak urbanization:
I found the idea that Balaji expressed as intriguing and worth exploring further.
To provide context: Since the start of the Coronavirus outbreak Balaji has turned out as my most valuable source of information on Twitter. Most people in the tech space including myself had followed Balaji originally because of his tech coverage. Eventually he turned into a great source for sensibilizing people early about the gravity of the virus and for informing as the virus progressed.
Right now is not the first time that I am thinking that the trend to urbanization will reverse. An end of urbanization would have severe economic consequences:
The tendency towards urbanization started more than 6,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. The growing of surplus food allowed the society to develop civilization and specialization. Ever since then the trend towards urbanization has almost consistently increased.This is true for any continent as the graph below shows:
However, with the emergence of the internet and other decentralized technologies there are a number of factors in place that favor a reversal of the trend to urbanization. Among them are:
- dramatic decreases in the cost of communication over distance
- universal availability of any kind of content (movies, digital newspapers, etc)
- instant delivery services such as Amazon Prime
- the emergence of meaningful online communities (Reddit, Facebook & Telegram Groups, Discord Channels, etc)
- immersive experiences through virtual reality
- distributed companies (Automattic, Buffer, etc)
- remote jobs and work (upwork, twago, etc)
- distributed ledger technology and instant digital transfers of value
The Coronavirus outbreak has shown the world that things we consider as given are not guaranteed. In the event of a pandemic the advantages that city life offers suddenly disappear:
- social venues such as cinemas and theaters
- meet ups, courses and conferences
- universities and other educational venues
- restaurants and bars
whereas as the advantages of the life in the countryside remain:
- nature, ideally mountains or the sea
- affordable space and lower population density
- houses with gardens
- less traffic and risks associated with traffic
- better opportunities for practicing outdoor sports
- peaceful environments
It turns out that apparently I was not the only person thinking about it. Austen Allred the founder of Lambda school, an online coding bootcamp, moved to rural Utah in the course of the outbreak and noted the following:
Also Andreas Klinger, a remote work evangelist, joined the discussion:
Other people like Stefano Bernardi have already moved to the countryside long before the virus outbreak:
I for myself left the city the weekend before the lock down was enforced and joined my father in the countryside. What’s your thought on the matter? I’m curious to read you replies.
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