Battered by Covid, Cities Fight for Survival

Hi there, it's Amanda. As the coronavirus has infected millions of people around the world, it's also been playing havoc with a different kind of complex organism: the city. In a special issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, we examine the seismic changes to urban life as cities have sought to survive the virus. Reporting from 11 cities on four continents, we explore how they're grappling not only with the fallout of Covid-19 but also with deep-seated challenges such as wealth inequality and political dysfunction.

Early predictions of the city's demise from Covid haven't, in fact, come to pass. Rents and home prices continue to rise in many urban areas. Earth's population has been steadily urbanizing for decades, a trend that's especially pronounced in the world's most populous country—China. Bloomberg reporters visited huge urban districts in Ordos City, Tianjin, and Zhengzhou that have been described as "ghost cities" to see if that moniker is deserved. They found signs of life.

Nor has Covid defeated a tradition almost as old as the city itself: utopian dreaming. In our cover story, tech entrepreneur Marc Lore tells Joshua Brustein about his plans to build a city for 5 million from scratch in the American West. If that's not ambitious enough, Lore also sees the city as saving capitalism from itself.

This pandemic is far from over. The highly infectious delta variant has quashed hopes of a roaring comeback. But effective vaccines point to an ending, at least, and in many parts of the world, the rhythms of pre-pandemic life have started to resume. Click here to read about how cities are battered but surviving. —Amanda Kolson Hurley