Cities were never held together by the office alone

The argument

Those who expect cities to survive point out that the commuter office is a recent and narrow explanation of why cities exist. Dense settlements long predate it, and the reasons people gave for moving to them were markets, courts, universities, theatres, hospitals, places of worship and the simple fact that other people were there. Proponents argue that density is valuable in itself: it widens the range of work a person can look for, the range of people they might meet, the goods and services that can be supported, and the chance of the unplanned encounter that produces a job, a partnership or an idea. On this view losing the daily journey to a desk removes one use of central land rather than the logic of the city. A person who no longer commutes still wants restaurants, clinics, schools, sport and company within reach, and those things require other people nearby to be viable. Proponents note that the willingness to pay for proximity shows up in what people spend on housing in central districts even when their work does not require them to be there, which they take as evidence that the attraction was never only employment. The historical argument is pressed as well. Cities have absorbed the departure of the industries that originally built them, watched their ports and factories move out, and been written off each time, yet the largest of them grew afterwards by finding other uses for the same land and the same concentration of people. Proponents argue that this is what cities characteristically do, because the asset is the accumulation of people and institutions rather than any particular employer, and that a change in where work is done is a smaller shock than several they have already survived.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that this treats cities as interchangeable and ignores how particular ones are financed. The amenities said to hold residents are themselves paid for by the commercial activity now in question, so a centre that loses its daytime population may lose the restaurants and services before it has a chance to attract residents instead. They add that the earlier transitions cited took decades and left some cities permanently diminished, which is only reassuring if one is indifferent to which cities those are. The argument from central rents is also challenged: people pay for proximity in the most desirable districts of the most successful cities, which says little about the office quarters whose purpose has actually been removed.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The institutions and markets said to predate the office are now largely funded by the commercial activity in question, so they are not an independent foundation for the centre. [Rejecting P2] The amenities residents want may close before residents arrive, since the shops and services in an office quarter were supported by the daytime population rather than by the few who live there. [Rejecting P3] The earlier transitions took decades and left some cities permanently diminished, which is reassuring only if one is indifferent to which cities those turn out to be. [Rejecting C] Willingness to pay for proximity is observed in the most desirable districts of successful cities, which says little about the office quarters whose purpose has actually been removed.