COVID and 2020 protests spell doom for medium-sizes cities

“STAY HOME ST LOUIS” the downtown traffic signs read during the pandemic. The locals obeyed then. And they are still staying out of downtown St. Louis today. “The office district is empty,” the Wall Street Journal recently reported, “with boarded up towers, copper thieves and failing retail — even the Panera outlet shut down. The city is desperately trying to reverse the ‘doom loop.” Yet another downtown has fallen in the post-COVID, post George Floyd era. While America’s largest metropolises are persisting in reduced states, the middle tier of cities...