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THE GLOBE AND MAIL | COVID-19 pandemic prompts urbanites to rethink 'grand bargain' of dense city living

Published: 11 May 2020

The current pandemic will change cities, experts predict, the way infectious disease outbreaks influenced the development of urban centres in decades past. ±«ÓăÖ±˛Ą urban planning professor David Wachsmuth said cities have historically gone through cycles of densification and what he called “spaceification” — for example, after the Second World War when the federal government encouraged people to move from city centres to the “healthier” suburbs.

But Wachsmuth doesn’t predict a flight from cities this time. “I think we are, broadly speaking, in a period where the density of cities has been understood as a positive thing, and I don’t think that’s going to change,” he said in a recent interview.

City life could get cheaper, however, Wachsmuth explained. If the pandemic triggers a longer-term economic decline, property prices will take a major hit, he said, making room for lower-income people and families to return to the space they were pushed out of as gentrification took hold.

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