Harvard economics professor Ed Glaeser is one of the leading authorities on the role of cities in modern life — and throughout human history. His 2011 book The Triumph of the City lays out the central place of cities in driving innovation and economic vitality. He dubs them “our greatest invention,” and his book’s subtitle says they make us “richer, smarter, greener, and happier.” 

But does the coronavirus pandemic, with millions working remotely and a sudden surge of migration to the suburbs and rural areas, spell the end of all that? 

Glaeser, the guest on this week’s episode of The Codcast, thinks cities — and face-to-face work settings — will retain a central place in society, but he says they do face enormous new challenges in the wake of the pandemic’s harsh reminder that we remain vulnerable to the ravages of infectious disease, despite a hundred-year run in which easily transmissible illnesses have steadily receded as a major cause of death in the developed world. 

“I don’t think that in any sense the core arguments of that book have been upended,” he says of Triumph of the City’s thesis about the great catalyzing role of cities, which the book says have been “engines of innovation since Plato and Socrates bickered in an Athenian marketplace.” 

“But we certainly have been reminded that a contagious disease is a longstanding companion of city life,” Glaeser said in our conversation. “The plague of Athens leveled that brightest of lights in the Mediterranean world 2,400 years ago. In the 19th century, American cities, including Boston, were routinely hit by epidemic events, yellow fever in the first decades of the 19th century, cholera in the middle of middle decades, influenza in 1918-1919, that were far deadlier than COVID-19 has been.”

Glaeser says one crucial variable will be whether government makes the kind of investment in public health infrastructure — which he says it should have been doing all along — to protect against future pandemics.  

Glaeser says two big questions loom when it comes to the future of cities in the post-pandemic era: The first is whether “face-to-face urban life” is under existential threat, the second is whether cities like Boston, which have been huge winners in the knowledge economy of the last several decades, are particularly vulnerable.