It is young people who will save our cities in the wake of coronavirus

We don’t know what the jobs of tomorrow will be but we know it will be young people who create them. And if they live and work close together then our urban areas will thrive, writes Hamish McRae

Life has gone out of the City during the pandemic (Getty)

Young people will save our cities. Anyone who walked across the City of London – or I understand central New York – in recent days will be aware it a ghost town. The gleaming office blocks are virtually empty, save for a janitor on the reception desk.

The once buzzing coffee bars are shuttered. The streets are empty. The life is gone.

We all know that some of it will come back when offices reopen, but how much, and when? It is scary from both an economic and a social point of view. Think of what happens to once bustling manufacturing towns when the main employer shuts shop, unemployment shoots up and the ambitious young leave. Towns die, it is misery for all, and it take years of effort to counter the social deprivation that come with the loss.