In America, a flight from the cities

1968
"Nathan La Franeer" by Joni Mitchell

I hired a coach to take me
from confusion to the plane
And though we shared a common space
I know I'll never meet again
The driver with his eyebrows furrowed in the rear-view mirror
I read his name and it was plainly written 

Nathan La Franeer
I asked him would he hurry
But we crawled the canyons slowly
Thru the buyers and the sellers
Thru the burglar bells and the wishing wells
With gangs and girly shows
The ghostly garden grows

The cars and buses bustled thru the bedlam of the day
I looked thru window-glass at streets
and Nathan grumbled at the grey
I saw an aging cripple selling Superman balloons
The city grated thru chrome-plate
The clock struck slowly half-past-noon
Thru the tunnel tiled and turning
Into daylight once again I am escaping
Once again goodbye
To symphonies and dirty trees
With parks and plastic clothes
The ghostly garden grows

He asked me for a dollar more
He cursed me to my face
He hated everyone who paid to ride
And share his common space
I picked my bags up from the curb
And stumbled to the door
Another man reached out his hand
Another hand reached out for more
And I filled it full of silver
And I left the fingers counting
And the sky goes on forever
Without meter maids and peace parades
You feed it all your woes
The ghostly garden grows

2020

Americans leave large cities for suburban areas and rural towns

A combination of the coronavirus pandemic, economic uncertainty, and social unrest is prompting waves of Americans to move from large cities and permanently relocate to more sparsely populated areas. The trend has been accelerated by technology and shifting attitudes that make it easier than ever to work remotely. Residents of all ages and incomes are moving in record numbers to suburban areas and small towns.

A perfect storm of factors makes the decision to leave major cities like New York very obvious. The dense nature of urban living and the lack of proper local government planning led to the coronavirus spreading five times faster in New York than the rest of the country. The city that never sleeps now resembles a ghost town in many areas after thousands of its wealthy and middle-class residents fled early in the pandemic.
[...]

The flight began much earlier than the pandemic; Covid only accelerated it. A half century ago Canadian Joni Mitchell's haunting song expressed the feelings of urbanites who felt trapped in a way of life they had begun to see as dehumanizing, alienating.  But it was Australia's Gregory Copley who echoed Plato to explain the worst aspect of life in the big cities. From a review of his 2012 book, UnCivilization:

... Copley remarks that urbanization entails distortions in epistemology and ethics. The apocalypse of the megalopolis, its apparent (but false) independence, its triumphant concentration of power and wealth, provokes the urbanite into “disregard… of respect for hierarchy,” which, while it “has not yet reached the status of anomie,” has nevertheless become “that which Plato feared most about democracy,” namely “ochlocracy (mob rule), and the demands for gratification which are the hallmark of all mobs.”

Why yes. The megacity, which should be the crowning glory of democracy, is actually the agent of its doom. I doubt the majority of Americans now fleeing cities have thought about the matter as deeply as Copley -- or Plato, for that matter. But they know, as Joni knew a lifetime ago, they are fleeing something that is terribly wrong for the life of the individual. 

Today, large swaths of residential buildings in New York City stand empty -- not because they're abandoned but because they've been bought or rented by wealthy foreigners, who use the domiciles as boltholes in case they have to flee their country -- and as safe deposit boxes to house their valuables. It's the same in London, England.  

But you can't expect a viable democratic political climate to flourish in a ghost city.

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