I have thought about this for the past year, but my ultimate view is no. If anything, we need to be living in denser communities, not spreading out.
Cities have been cesspools of disease and contagion ever since they first developed. Covid is not unique in its ability to spread better in cities than in rural areas; those are the risks of playing the game. The answer to this, however, is to build cities in ways that more efficiently segregate habitable areas from waste-- not to continue the endlessly wasteful downward spiral of suburbanization that has transformed Americans into sedentary, lard-filled heaps of impotent pale flesh.
If you are comparing suburban living standards with those of a run-down government housing project in the urban core, then yeah, there's no comparison-- nobody wants to live in those places. But density does not automatically mean destitution. In my area, there are dozens of new condominiums and apartment complexes that are safe, healthy, and relatively cheap to live in. I can walk to my school in ten minutes, to the store in five, and pretty much anywhere else I need to be in under 20. There is decent public transport, I'm getting exercise, and I don't need to own a car. Do I run a slightly higher risk of getting the virus? Maybe-- especially given the fact that I've got roommates I'm renting my apartment with. But that is a small price to pay for living in a place that is not fundamentally designed to be hostile to human life.
Still, the "densification" people only get half of the equation right. It's not so much about density as it is about zoning. My childhood home was miles away from the nearest grocery store, which made daily car errands an absolute necessity. Why are Americans so terrified of commercial zoning in residential areas? When one of those hideous cookie-cutter housing developments are built, why don't the developers even try to include commercial zoning? All you really need is a small grocery store, a drugstore, a hardware store, a clothing store, a UPS or FedEx, a couple restaurants, a cleaners, and some adequate pathways connecting them, and boom-- you've halved the necessary weekly car trips for that community. If America's suburbs looked like this, I would be far less negative about them. But whenever a new "development" is built these days, you can be damn sure that it'll be an inefficient blight on the landscape, a dystopian hellish nightmare of dead-end streets with no sidewalks and hideous identical lawns that waste unbelievable amounts of water. There is literally nothing redeeming about these types of neighborhoods.
Wonderfully put, I could not agree more.
