From Wuhan to New York: The Road To Pandemia

I’ve been bad-mouthing big cities for quite some time now, most of it from a love-hate optic. I was born and grew up in three big cities, though by Manila standards my three country capitals might as well have been adorable little towns. 

I also eventually lived in 10+ million metropolitan sprawls, which is possibly where the dysfunctional relationship began for me. For those familiar with the term “gerrymandering”, the practice was not born merely out of voting suppression tactics. Migration, economics and ethnic control have fueled the driving force behind gerrymandering over the years. 

Google “Chicago population” and it spits back “2.7 million”. Yeah, right. That’s just the number of cars on the Kennedy Expressway at any given hour of the day, give or take an orange barrel. The true MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) population of Chicago is closer to 10 million. NYC says it’s 8.3 million peeps. I counted that many alone at the Simon & Garfunkel concert in Central Park. The greater New York MSA is closer to 20 mill.

I believe the Great Pandemic of 2020 will be the last nail in the coffin of the Big City. About time I might add, not a minute too soon. Oh it’s not going to happen overnight. Megacities probably have a few more supernova years left in them. But don’t bet the farm on their comeback. Especially now.

I’m not alone in my prophecy of urban doom of course. We are a visible number of big city skeptics. Some of them are pint-sized fresh new faces like Greta Thunberg. Others are old dogs like David Attenborough. Climate Change drives their skepticism. Mine as well, though with an evolutionary twist.

My love-hate dysfunction with the big apples began while living in the third largest city in the US. A country that happens to host the third largest population in the world (can someone get me a bronze medal, thank you very much). I was in architecture school, with a heavy dose of urban planning and engineering in the curriculum. It was the City and Regional Planning batch of courses (carelessly abbreviated as “CRP”) that first caught my attention. As it turns out, there is an optimal density number for human populations... who knew. Whether you like it or not. Whether you believe in it or not. And whether you believe it to be relevant or not. That number tops out at 100 people per square kilometer. That’s 260 people per square mile. Just over two US acres per person. One-fifth of an hectare per person, or five people per hectare.

For perspective, here’s where some US and world cities fall when compared to the optimum density of 100 people per square kilometer:

Chicago: 4,582 people per square kilometer.

New York City: 10,431 people per square kilometer.

Paris: 20,535 people per square kilometer.

Bnei Brak (Israel): 27,338 people per square kilometer.

Manila: 41,515 people per square kilometer.

In case you’re wondering, Manila is where we cap off as a human race, the highest population density on the planet. No point in casting stones there when New York City, one of the world’s most admired cities, is one thousand times over the limit for a sustainable and healthy population density. Are there gerrymandering factors at play? You betcha. Wuhan China clocks in at a density just over Chicago’s, though given China’s lack of transparency it is anyone’s guess as to where Wuhan’s true density lies. But this being 2020, we actually know one thing: cities like Wuhan are prime incubators of the worst kinds of diseases and pollutants. When it comes to megacities, I think there is nothing to debate anymore: their time has come and gone. They contributed great things, but their wonder years are dangerously close to a zero-sum game. I would hate for that day to come. We weren’t meant to live on top of each other like bats. The skyscraper technology mesmerized us for a century, but it’s time for us to grow up. There is nothing cool about human waste raining down a dense forest of PVC tubes, within just a few square kilometers. 

As for the planet itself: remove water and uninhabitable land and at 7.5 billion we are approximating 300 humans per square kilometer. As a planet, the needle is twitching into the red.

So who are these so-called experts that set the optimal population density bar that low? And why should we believe them? After all, people lead productive and relatively long lives in New York, Paris, and Manila. Well, those experts are highly qualified researchists from leading academic institutions. They are no different than the scientists who have been telling us for decades that we need to mind our levels of DDT and carbon emissions, or our intake of sugar and fat. Yet in spite of their warnings, life goes on. Overblown? Not exactly: false equivalence, pure and simple. My individual survival, or even my thrive, means squat to the gods of evolution. We either thrive as a species or we're useless to the life farmers of the universe.

There are fair warnings, there’s fear mongering, and there’s bias confirmation. Your choice. Mine? For whatever it’s worth, I was born in a city that today is denser than New York City. It’s been a long and winding road for me, through unsustainably-dense cities that I will always love. But not to live in them, ever again. In 2020 I moved to a density of just over 100 people per square kilometer. When I look outside my window I see a wonderful world. One where our neighbors are friendly but we all know how to keep our respectful distance.