COVID-19 Is Prompting “Wealthy” People to Move Out of Cities.
COVID-19 Is Prompting “Wealthy” People to Move Out of Cities. Thereby putting a wrench into gentrification plans and processes that are already in motion. Real Estate prices and cost of living were spiking in cities and towns such as Philadelphia, NYC (especially Harlem), San Francisco-Oakland, Denver, Boston, Miami-Fort Lauderdale and New Orleans, prior to the pandemic, affecting black and brown or low-income families who were being displaced or moved to rural areas.
The gentrification in the 2010s was related to job growth and transit. But as the pandemic continues, the demand to live in central cities may decline prompting the wealthy to move. In New York City, for examples, some wealthy families have left Manhattan for good and plan to enroll their children in schools closer to their second homes in places like the Hamptons so as to avert any risk of infection when schools reopen in the city in September.
This is not new, the rich has always enjoyed such ease of mobility, travel and safety over the masses who are left to the whims and fancies of a society largely stacked against them.
This puts into view an essay I submitted to the University of Penn. In the essay I postulated that many economic and social scientists have asserted that Neo-Liberalism creates inequality and poverty. Indeed, Human beings are nomads who have been traveling from place to place all their lives, because of an inequality of opportunities. This mobility has increased significantly because of neo-liberal globalization. Neo-liberal globalization, putatively based on the free movement of people, goods and services across borders, has largely ostracized the masses in the global south exploiting their labor and limiting their freedom of movement, while capital is free to go wherever it desires.
This continues today as the wealthy enjoys this freedom of mobility based on the advantages and benefits to be gained while the poor are placed wherever and whenever society dictates based on the needs of the wealthy.
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