# Was NYC's urban density really the problem?

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly), 2020-07-22

coronavirus, florida, health, miami, new-york, new-york-city, united-states, urban-density, urbanism, wall-street-journal

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https://twitter.com/donnelly\_b/status/1285754618547449856?s=20

I posted this chart on Twitter last night. It's from the WSJ showing new weekly confirmed COVID-19 cases in Florida, New York, and the U.S. as a whole. Now, the first thing I will say is that I relinquished my hopes of becoming an amateur epidemiologist back in April. I have no idea how this is all going to play out. But as an urbanist, it is interesting to note that back in April, many believed that New York City's [urban density](https://brandondonnelly.com/2020/05/07/sidewalk-labs-uber-lime-and-the-demise-of-urban-density/) was a real problem and the almost singular cause of its high number of cases (despite many other big and dense cities around the world doing much better). There was also a belief (or hope) that [warmer temperatures might have a positive impact on transmission rates](https://brandondonnelly.com/2020/03/16/how-temperature-impacts-the-transmission-of-covid-19/). That's maybe why Florida was doing relatively better. But things have flipped. Cases in Florida are up and [California just surpassed NY](https://www.ft.com/content/a3b6dadf-d288-4221-8c53-04610022517b) for the US state with the most number of cases. So who knows what will happen next. But what I do know is that wearing a mask isn't a big deal (I have mine with me all the time) and that big urban centers will be just fine. [City Observatory recently published apartment search data](http://cityobservatory.org/the-exodus-that-never-happened/) suggesting that dense cities have actually been getting more, rather than less, attention in the wake of COVID. That doesn't surprise me.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://paragraph.com/@brandondonnelly/was-nycs-urban-density-really-the-problem)*