Grieving for My Sick City

By Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times

18 March 20

For those who revel in urban life, it’s hard to believe it can just stop.

here is a lot to mourn right now. Many thousands of people all over the world are mourning dead loved ones. People are mourning lost jobs, lost savings, lost security. Senior citizens in locked-down nursing homes are mourning the loss of visitors. I’m lucky; I’m just mourning the city.

To live in a city like New York, where I’ve spent most of my adult life, is to trade private space for public space. It’s to depend on interdependence. I don’t have a dining room, but I’ve been able to eat in thousands of restaurants. I have no storage space, but everything I needed was at the bodega. I don’t have a home office, but I could work at coffee shops.

Now those supports are gone. The coronavirus disaster is going to devastate communities all over the country, even if many in red America don’t realize it yet. But it poses particular challenges for urbanites, and not just because the disease spreads more easily where people are packed close together.

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