LOCATION, LAND USE, AND CORONAVIRUS.

Reason offers a report from the field.

Senior Editor Elizabeth Nolan Brown moved from an apartment in the heart of Washington, D.C., to a suburban apartment building in Cincinnati, Ohio, while Staff Editor Liz Wolfe moved from a house with a chicken coop in Austin, Texas, to a brownstone apartment in Brooklyn.

Land values have gone up in suburban Cincinnati.

Now, within a few miles of my suburban Ohio apartment complex, I can choose from four local independent breweries (plus a number of other restaurants that at least keep a couple of local and seasonal beers on tap). I can get good Thai food right on my block and fast-food mediterranean fusion across the street. I can find decent wine and grass-fed, organic beef at the nearest gas station convenience store. I could find, were it not for the pandemic, free park yoga and a farmer's market. And in part because it is the pandemic and in part because these are just our times, most cultural or intellectual products I want can be accessed online.

I know these are all small or aesthetic things on their own. But being back here has really driven home how certain parts of the suburbs that used to, well, kind of suck don't suck anymore.

One downside? There are far fewer drive-in movie theaters around than when I was growing up. Bring back drive-in theaters!

Sorry, all those metrofexuals with their artisanal store fetishes have driven up the land values, and that's why the drive-in theaters went.  In New York, on the other hand, the technocrats are destroying the agglomeration economies that once made the cities the places to be.

Like with so many things, this is a tale of unintended consequences and the inability of central planners to forecast how people respond to restrictions. The ever-changing restrictions will also blindside restaurant and bar workers, many of whom have put considerable effort into adapting to previous rounds of rules and restrictions.

It's hard not to feel bad for the bar on my block, which opened in December 2019 and was hit with pandemic restrictions less than four months after opening. Like so many other Brooklyn and Manhattan restaurants, the bar extended seating into the street, and the ugly barricade boxes were transformed into gorgeous planters. The patio got a roof and removable walls in the last few weeks to protect bargoers from the elements. They're doing everything they can to adapt, but it still might not be enough to stay profitable.

I'm horrified by how many service industry folks—and people in other high-contact industries that can't be made remote, like tattooers—who have worked incredibly hard throughout this pandemic might descend into undeserved pauperdom as the virus and the state work in tandem to shut things down.

I see this reflected in the disparate effects between my New York and Texas social circles. In New York, many friends are white-collar workers who can work remotely from home, whereas a striking number of friends in Texas have encountered loss of income or significant work disruptions that arise from working in jobs where you can't transition to remote. In Texas, I know nannies and pastors and animal control responders and bouncers and barbacks whose jobs have changed dramatically since March. And some jobs no longer exist at all, of course.

Oh, the jobs still exist, but the transaction costs incurred to make the necessary contracts have just become so high that it's uneconomic to overcome them.