A common concern surrounding the Covid pandemic is that it will result in a flight from our cities as people seek greener (and cheaper) pastures to work from. This supposed shift is facilitated by the rise in internet technologies that enable us to work from anywhere.
Despite this theory, however, a recent study from the University of Bristol suggests that, far from facilitating urban flight, these technologies have actually drawn people into urban centers.
The researchers highlight that clusters of like-minded businesses would often coalesce together to reduce communication and production costs. While logically improved technologies, such as the internet, should reduce communication costs and therefore allow cooperation to be conducted over a greater distance, they have actually worked to reinforce the agglomeration effect rather than dampen it.
The appeal of cities
The researchers examined the impact of internet usage and speed on the rankings of metropolitan areas across both the United States and United Kingdom.
“Geographers, planners and urban economists explored the spatial footprint of the internet at its early stages,” they explain. “Their theories were conjectural and even fanciful then, and included the emergence of telecottages, borderless countries and even the end of cities.”
After 25 years of the mass-market internet the researchers believe it has been shown that these theories are fanciful in the extreme and the internet hasn’t removed the importance of face-to-face interactions or diminished the cost of distance. Indeed, the increase in the urbanization rate has largely suggested the opposite is the case.
“The results instead favor a complementary relation between the internet and agglomeration externalities, meaning the internet and ICTs have not pushed people out of big cities, but rather attracted more people towards them,” they say.
The researchers hope that their findings will inform policymaking in the years ahead and underline the fact that the internet and other digital technologies are likely to enhance the agglomeration effect that underpins the growth in our cities rather than facilitate a flight to the suburbs as many are predicting.
“Although this paper was written before COVID, the results are highly relevant for the current period when internet and digital technologies have supplemented face-to-face interactions,” the researchers conclude. “The next steps involve assessing the changes that the rapid digitalization, caused by the pandemic, may create to cities and urban systems.”
