HOW WILL the coronavirus pandemic affect cities? Almost as soon as it struck, the prognostications started to fly. Some suggested that white-collar workers would flee large conurbations for remote “Zoom towns”. Richard Florida, an urbanist, thought that some people might be drawn to distant suburbs and rural areas, while others would plump for appealing inner-city areas close to their jobs. Others reckoned that every urban flat and house vacated by a timid middle-aged person would be snapped up by a gleeful 20-something.
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Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and Arjun Ramani, a student at that university who will take up an internship at