Thanks for such a thoughtful piece, while it is hard to predict what the future of cities will look like, these ideas don’t sound apocalyptic to me but rather a chance to reimagine cities as more resilient and sustainable by acutely daylighting all of their vulnerabilities.

I am one of those millennials who left the city within the past couple of years — the ability to work remotely (and finding a community with rural broadband infrastructure) made this possible. And I am not alone; I’ve met others from Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Austin, Brooklyn. Many of us maintain economic and cultural ties to the city, while contributing to our local communities and living a life that isn’t so traffic-jammed and expensive.

You mentioned domestic manufacturing finding a place in suburbs and rural counties, but I think we may also find this mixed with technology workers who no longer need to be tied to major metros. There is a real potential here for post-recession economic gains to be felt across both urban and rural geographies, ending the unfortunate (and unnecessary) political and economic dichotomies between the two.