Cities got wrecked by COVID, right? Eh, maybe not so much, ya know?

Got this newsletter from Planet Money this morning, which is on the high-esoteric end of 18 months of discussions about how cities will be no more. It actually goes into some backstory on the whole debate and topic, including this, from a book initially penned in 1980:

The third wave, Toffler said, was unleashed by computer and telecommunications technology. Writing at a time when fax machines were sexy and personal computers were still seen as mostly reserved for geeks, Toffler foresaw computers creating a world where most of humanity would leave factories and offices and return “right back where they came from originally: the home.” The home, he wrote, would become an “electronic cottage.” Skyscrapers and office parks would be reduced to “ghostly warehouses or converted into living space.” The American economy would see “a decentralization and a de-urbanization of production.” Hellish commutes would cease being hellish commutes. Cities would empty out like never before.

But Mr. Toffler had a foe on these topics. (Cue dramatic music.) That would be Harvard economist Ed Glaeser. Here’s where the shade-throwing commences:

“Toffler was very much a product of the 1970s,” Glaeser says. “Back then, it was natural to ask: if container ships could kill off urban manufacturing, why can’t the fax machine and computers kill off urban information services?”

Then Glaeser, who teaches at perhaps the most elite university in America and thus probably lives in one of the five most elite cities in America, says this:

“What globalization and technological change has done is radically increase the returns to being smart,” Glaeser says. “And we are a social species that gets smart by being around other smart people. We create new ideas by being collaborative. And we communicate the most complex ideas by being face-to-face.” It’s why a globalized marketplace, with an instantaneous digital communication network, made dense and highly educated cities like New York and San Francisco more valuable than ever.

There’s a lot to unpack about this discussion in the context of where we’re at with COVID, remote work, commercial real estate, city finances, taxes, and much more. I can attempt to unpack it quickly for…