The debate on what will happen to our cities is very polarized: between those who are convinced that it will soon be over and those who think that we will still have to live with the pandemic for a long time to come.

Between those who think that nothing will change, we will soon return to business as usual, and those who believe that we will have to profoundly change our development model.

It is better to start from facts and understand what transformations have happened or are happening that are powerful change factors.

First of all, there has been a leap in telework and in the activities that can be carried out at a distance, from teaching, to services, to care of people.

In Manuel Castells‘ book of the mid-1990s entitled “The Birth of the Network Society“, it was said that in the face of the great debate on the spread of telework, in his opinion, there were more researchers studying remote working in n those years than there were those who actually worked remotely.

Today the situation has completely changed.  From then on, there has been a very rapid development of all telecommunications forms. Still, we discovered that the development of distance relationships did not replace but rather multiplied the reasons for displacement and physical encounter.

We have more interactions, and, therefore, we have more reasons to move and meet. So much so that in the face of the end of the city’s prophecies, due to the internet, cities have experienced the most remarkable phase of expansion in history.

We have discovered with the leap of distance activities, forced by the pandemic, that many of them can be carried out even in times of peace, but this requires the availability of broadband distributed unevenly today, digital literacy, a complete reorganization of activities, the need to add space in common safely to those who do not have adequate private space, and finally the recognition of the necessary persistence of work that cannot be carried out remotely: all networked infrastructure and its maintenance, health care, food production and distribution, etc .

There are undoubtedly new opportunities to not be forced to live always expensive and congested cities.There is much talk about it still more than abandoning the cities, this seems to open to a more flexible type of living, which can certainly benefit many smaller and good quality centers, not too far from the cities.

There may be consequences on demand for office space: already some large companies such as Google have announced that they will extend the period of work at a distance and reorganize in that direction.

There may be consequences on demand for housing, from the importance of balconies to the enhancement of the condominium model, to the greater importance of housing size if it must be not only housing but also a place of work, study, loisir.

There is a deep questioning of the traditional forms of zoning that rigidly define and separate functions; today that the residence also becomes a place of work, that restaurants also become places of production of food to be distributed at home, that workplaces become more temporary, the mixitè can also enter the homes, offices, places of consumption.

All cities, forced by the needs of physical distancing and lockdown, are proposing policies to support the development of sustainable individual mobility (bicycles, scooters, pedestrians), policies to reorganize the city by districts 15 minutes -within which to find schools, commerce, catering, public green, pharmacies, primary medicine, essential public offices-, Paris has even established a deputy mayor position on this, policies for allocating public space for private collective use (restaurants, bars, etc.).

It is interesting to note that these measures coincide with the auspices contained, for example, in objective 11 of the UN SDG: to make cities inclusive, healthy, resilient, and sustainable.

The question is whether we can and will be able to catch this dramatic event to accelerate the movement in this direction of which there were already some signs, or if we have to wait for the storm to pass completely.

What is certain is that we are going through an unprecedented challenge and that there is significant uncertainty about the future.

Still, we have to live in this contradiction, trying to better understand problems and opportunities.