Downtowns as a joyful remedy to isolation

"We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone—we find it with another." - Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

During this holiday season, as lots of folks gathered with loved ones, I reflected on how the joy of being together with family and friends drives much of how we try to generate cheer in the bleak midwinter. And because I often my mind turning to the urban doom loop (perhaps in the same way that some men think a lot about the Roman Empire), I realized that the same underlying joy of sharing space and place is precisely what will propel the future of downtowns.

This is why downtowns will not loop to doom. Already, in 2024, we saw continued downtown recovery and the bottoming out of commercial real estate. 2025 looks poised to be brighter, even though there will continue to be headwinds, especially on lagging metrics like property taxes. I am bullish on downtowns not because of any specific policies or even economic trends (although I think there are some exciting ones), but because of some fundamental qualities of being human, especially in the social media age.

Image of screen next to an image of a holiday scene in a downtown

Screens vs. shared spaces

“Man is by nature a social animal” - Aristole (ancient, but not a Roman)

During the COVID-19 shutdown, employers were able to shift many office jobs to virtual work. By leveraging critical virtual tools like Zoom, many workers experienced the benefits of fewer commutes, more flexibility, and more geographic freedom, resulting in far fewer trips to offices and downtowns. Screens could replace the need to be in person…for a time.

But hidden behind these benefits was a heavy reliance upon the less visible social capital that had been built over time by colleagues working face to face. Over the last four years, as people changed jobs and new workers entered the workforce, virtual work, and even types of hybrid work have started showing their shortcomings. Virtual work is not conducive for hallway conversations or unprogrammed conversations and has been shown to reduce mentorship. It cannot help people fortuitously come up with new ideas or projects, resulting in reduced innovation. Remote work can blur the lines between work and personal life. And it has proved to be a very challenging method of building rapport, with many workers reporting declining social skills and mental health.

Engaging others solely through screens also proved to be exhausting. I was with a group of higher-ed instructors discussing their in-person compared to their virtual classes. One observed that they were getting tired of asking everyone to turn their camera on. Instructors grew tired at monitoring their students’ attention and of hearing lots of awkward silences. On the other end of the screen the students found it challenging (maybe even boring) to focus on graduate level content on a computer for 3 hours at night. This screen tedium is also felt by many virtual office workers who spend hours (and days) in virtual meetings.

The shortcomings of screens are not limited to work or higher ed. In 2024, Jonathan Haidt made a splash with research tying growing use of social media among children and teenagers with numerous negative outcomes. And while many pushed back on his research, there is general agreement with Haidt’s recommendation for more in-person activities and play as a part of a healthy childhood.

Up the age ladder, the Surgeon General issued an advisory about the need for social connection and the negative health implications of loneliness. Others have weighed in on growing isolation, including Robert Putnam reflected on his pathbreaking book from 2000, Bowling Alone, on how the loneliness epidemic has only grown since his pre-Facebook research. Much of this is tied to the rise in social media and new technologies.

So in work, life, and play, screens have pushed us toward isolation.

Downtowns exist to share space and can combat isolation

"The city is the soul writ large." - Plato (another ancient non-Roman)

The surgeon general recommends building more social infrastructure as one way to combat social isolation. What the report did not say, but should have, is that cities and downtowns in particular have been built precisely to facilitate social interactions and shared space. For millennia, cities have been intimately tied to the growth and development of humanity through our religious, educational, governing, commercial, artistic, and cultural institutions. It turns out being in a space together not only facilitates commerce, but also innovation, connection, and, perhaps most importantly, joy. I think this is what Plato meant when he referred to the city as “the soul writ large.”

Downtowns were built to facilitate sharing space with others and tapping into this innate human joy. As the center of cities and regions, they are the most accessible place in a region, so are the best places to foster the largest number of diverse interactions. Most specialized in facilitating business and commerce, but have also become prime places to do things like see a musical, grab lunch with a friend, or attend programming at a central library. They are also unique for the size and amount of great shared public spaces like large urban parks, outdoor markets, and active sidewalks with shopping and dining that can help people connect actively or just enjoy passive people watching. Downtowns create connections that are in many ways opposite of the kind of engagement and interactions offered by technology and social media. They offer an antidote to some of the negative isolating effects we are seeing from screens. And this is what will propel their future growth.

As it relates to office work, it seems we may have moved past peak virtual work. Businesses seem to be swinging back from virtual work. Amazon is requiring office workers to be in the office 5 days a week starting January 1, and other major companies are also pushing for a return to the office. In the meantime, a proposal from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to require federal workers to return to office is one of the very few areas of agreement between DC Mayor Bower and President-elect Trump.

Even as offices may become less empty, downtown recovery will not result in a return to pre-pandemic life, and that is for the better (maybe one day I can write an obituary for rush hour). We are seeing significant and lasting shifts in when downtowns are visited, with every major city showing stronger growth during non-office hours. That is because there are other major opportunities for downtowns to grow, especially related to entertainment. This sector has seen notable growth in spending, resulting in the new term “funflation” as people have yearned for in-person experiences. Downtowns can host major events and experiences through convention centers and venues such as theaters. Perhaps this is why there have been a raft of investments in professional sports venues (see DC, Philadelphia, Calgary, and Knoxville) in downtowns.

Downtowns can also host unique experiences such as holiday markets, fun runs, and other events. DC’s Art All Night, which attracted tens of thousands of people to downtown around the Martin Luther King Jr. library is one example that could be a model for other cities. And because they typically have major civic infrastructure of parks and libraries, downtowns have assets that can attract people everyday. All of these events and the related infrastructure can not only bring daytime visitors, they can also support growing tourism, which is a critical area of growth for many downtown economies. All of these related elements exist and will grow because they foster the opportunity to be together in person in a real place.

They may not always be shiny and growing (and may never actually ever be shiny), but they will always be needed and outlast any doom. Indeed, in the tumult of changing ways of living and technologies, it is the ability of downtown to foster and create joy through human connection that will continue to propel their relevance and importance, and will even help address some of our increasingly serious social challenges.