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March 6 Grand Ave. Bridge closing party, a final pre-pandemic gasp of “civic density”: When will such events resume?
New Haven will weather the Covid-19 storm and resume its renaissance — but may encounter some devastating blows in the short term.
That is the assessment of New Haven’s keenest academic observer of how cities have evolved over time, Douglas Rae.
Rae, author of the classic New Haven study City: Urbanism & Its End and a Yale professor emeritus specializing in political science and the intersection of business and government, offered that assessment during an appearance Thursday on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program. (Objectivity alert: I coauthored a book with Rae, took a memorable class he taught in 1978, and am a longtime friend.)
“I’m cautiously optimistic,” Rae said on the program. He observed that New Haven has benefited in general from the “renewal of the tendency of the last 20 years to learn to like cities all over again.” New Haven has additionally benefited from sitting close enough to New York to draw people who want to live in diverse, active urban communities but not amid the overwhelming scale of metropolises.
So a long-term move away from the biggest cities in the wake of Covid-19 could even benefit New Haven, Rae suggested: “Second or third-tier cities that are a lot smaller than New York will benefit from out-migration from the real metropolises like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.” New Haven will remain “a real attraction for people who like cities but don’t want to pay the rents” and deal with the stresses of New York.
Rae appearing Thursday on WNHH’s “Dateline New Haven.”
“The real-life intimacy of daily life before Covid-19 was a real plus for New Haven. People really like being part of neighborhood communities and out and about,” Rae said. Once a vaccine is developed and testing and treatment capacity is adequate, he predicted, New Haven can reclaim that dynamic.
Rae further argued that long term, Yale and Yale New Haven Hospital — the two largest employers and generators of local business activity — will continue to grow.
That said, he spotted danger signs, especially in the short term.
It’s still unclear if Yale students will return in the fall, along with other college students in the area. If they don’t, New Haven could see a 20 – 25 percent closing rate of restaurants and other small businesses, Rae predicted. “The city is going to be injured pretty seriously” if that happens, he said.
He also expressed concerned about the fate of booming immigration-fueled commerce. “I’m a little fearful that if we don’t see the economy up and going by late summer,” many of the “businesses along Grand Avenue” will fail.
Immigration has helped boost New Haven’s economy over the past few decades, Rae observed. So the next election will help determine whether New Haven continues to receive that boost, or if a temporary pandemic-aided closure of the borders will persist. “The Trump-[Stephen] Miller policy of ‘Make America White Again’ is disastrous,” he stated.
Another concern: New Haven is probably headed at some point for a real estate market-correction similar to the one that occurred during the early 1990s recession following a 1980s building boom.
Click on the video below to watch the full interview with Douglas Rae on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven.”