COVID’s Continued Reckoning On Community

The 2023 version is about more people rushing to gated subdivisions (if they can afford it, of course).

That screenshot about how downtowns have fared since COVID is from this New York Magazine article that got some attention over the holiday weekend. To wit, and admittedly most people have heard these arguments before:

Remote work’s toll on cities does not end with its implications for property tax revenue. Enable suburban commuters to work from their dens several days a week, and you transfer all manner of smalltime commerce — lunch orders, after-work drinks, etc. — from the urban core to its periphery. And lost transactions mean lost sales taxes. U.S. cities expect their sales tax revenues to decline by an average of 2.5 percent in 2022, according to a survey from the National League of Cities. Last year, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer estimated that remote work would cost the city $111…