View of NYC midtown and Queens, a densely populated area

Subways Seeded the NYC Epidemic: MIT Economist

by Wendell Cox — According to an MIT economist, continued high ridership on MTA subways and the rapid surge in infections during the first two weeks of March at best supports the hypothesis that the subways played a role.
Urban high rise housing in Singapore

A Look At Demographia’s Latest Housing Affordability Survey

by Prakash Loungani — In this interview, Wendell Cox talks about Demographia’s latest housing affordability survey. Wendell Cox is an American urban policy analyst and academic. He is the principal of Demographia (Wendell Cox Consultancy). The survey is co-authored with Hugh Pavletich of Performance Urban Planning.
New Jersey suburbs of NYC

“Exposure Density” and the Pandemic

by Wendell Cox — My article last week, Early Observations on the Pandemic and Population Density, suggested that the risk of infection is a function of being close to people who are infected. The most fundamental issue is thus, how close people are to one-another in their daily lives.
Urban Reform Institute is a center for opportunity urbanism

Urban Reform Institute is a Partnership of Center for Opportunity Urbanism and Urban Reform

The Center for Opportunity Urbanism has partnered with fellow nonprofit, Urban Reform, and, going forward, will operate under the name Urban Reform Institute (URI).
Closed shops

Working-Class People Hold Society Together: Class and COVID-19

by Sarah Attfield — Working-class people are more likely to suffer as a result of both the coronavirus and the measures put in place to contain its spread.
Illustration of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19

The Coronavirus is Changing the Future of Home, Work, and Life

The COVID-19 pandemic will be shaping how we live, work and learn about the world long after the last lockdown ends and toilet paper hoarding is done, accelerating shifts that were already underway including the dispersion of population out of the nation’s densest urban areas and the long-standing trend away from mass transit and office concentration towards flatter and often home-based employment.
Photo of Brooklyn Bridge

COVID-19: A Call to Connect

by Charlie Stephens — With COVID-19 we are going through something practically no living soul has ever experienced. It may be forging new realities, and could place us at the edge of a big change —politically, economically, culturally, and spiritually. What this will look like nobody really knows...
Corner of Canal and Baxter Streets in NYC

After Coronavirus We Need to Rethink Densely Populated Cities

by Joel Kotkin — For the better part of this millennium, the nation’s urban planning punditry has predicted that the future lay with its densest, largest, and most cosmopolitan cities.
CDC map of COVID-19 Cases

Coronavirus and Cities

by Schlomo Angel — We have drafted a working paper, titled "The Coronavirus and the Cities: Explaining Variations in U.S. Metropolitan Areas as of 27 March 2020". We plan to revise the paper regularly as new data comes in.

The Coming Age of Dispersion

by Joel Kotkin — As of this writing, the long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic remain uncertain. One possible consequence is the end of the megacity era. In its place, we may now witness a new, and necessary, dispersion of population...