TDL Brief: People Want to Be Outside Cities
People are leaving cities for the suburbs at an increasingly rapid rate. In America, USPS data shows that the rates of people moving spiked during the first several months of the pandemic. Big cities experienced the largest net losses, with New York City, Chicago, and San Fransisco being the biggest losers.
The reasons behind this accelerated shift from the urban to the suburban are two-fold. First, the pandemic has caused residents of many cities—especially densely populated ones like New York City and San Francisco—to seek out more space. Most often, that means (at least temporarily) leaving the city.
Second, the pandemic accelerated a shift toward working from home, leaving city-dwellers to question whether living in a city is still worth it. Prior to the work-from-home revolution, the economic and social mobility benefits that cities offered outweighed costs such as overburdened infrastructure, long commutes, and excessive noise.
Now that many residents can get those same benefits while living outside of cities, however, cities are facing a fiscal crisis as the tax base moves away. Before the pandemic, Phoenix, Arizona was projecting a $28 million surplus for the upcoming fiscal year. Now, it’s anticipating a $26 million deficit. New York City is projecting a deficit of at least $6 billion. San Francisco was running a $420 million deficit before the pandemic—now, the city is expected to run a deficit north of $1.5 billion.
So how can cities keep their residents, or win them back? Behavioral science offers some low-cost, high impact solutions.
Tom Spiegler, TDL Managing Director
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Sekoul is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. A decision scientist with a PhD in Decision Neuroscience from McGill University, Sekoul's work has been featured in peer-reviewed journals and has been presented at conferences around the world. Sekoul previously advised management on innovation and engagement strategy at The Boston Consulting Group as well as on online media strategy at Google. He has a deep interest in the applications of behavioral science to new technology and has published on these topics in places such as the Huffington Post and Strategy & Business.
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