The Covid-19 pandemic unsettled many assumptions about cities and urban life. Even discounting media fears about urban ‘collapse’, the pandemic and its aftermath have led to real uncertainties about the trajectory of urban development. While the struggles of ‘superstar’ cities in the Global North have attracted significant attention, here we shift focus onto the experiences of regional second cities in an attempt to capture a different perspective. In doing so, we avoid both the sensationalism of ‘doom loop’ projections that herald the end of major cities and the uncritical embrace of new ‘opportunities’ for peripheral cities in the wake of pandemic turmoil. Instead, we offer a more critical view that acknowledges some new possibilities while highlighting both their constrained parameters and the related threat of regional gentrification. As cities around the country begin to recover from the turmoil of pandemic disruption, we accordingly question the applicability and consequences of some of the more prominent recovery strategies beyond the context of major cities and suggest careful consideration of alternative development paths for regional second cities. To illustrate the regional second city experience, we explore recent outcomes in Tacoma, Washington, where the city’s post-pandemic development strategy embraces a reliance on luxury residential growth and associated consumer amenities, defined in relation to the dominant neighbouring city of Seattle. Cautioning over working-class displacement, regional gentrification and other vulnerabilities associated with this version of recovery, we conclude by looking at emerging housing activism in Tacoma for insights into how the present moment might generate new political organising for more equitable urban development.

中文翻译：

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对大流行病复苏的质疑：区域第二城市的视角


Covid-19 大流行扰乱了许多关于城市和城市生活的假设。即使不考虑媒体对城市“崩溃”的担忧，疫情及其后果也给城市发展轨迹带来了真正的不确定性。虽然北半球“超级明星”城市的挣扎引起了广泛关注，但在这里我们将焦点转向区域二线城市的经验，试图捕捉不同的视角。这样做，我们既避免了预示着主要城市终结的“末日循环”预测的轰动效应，也避免了在大流行病动荡之后不加批判地拥抱外围城市新的“机会”。相反，我们提供了一种更批判性的观点，承认一些新的可能性，同时强调它们的局限性和区域高档化的相关威胁。随着全国各地的城市开始从疫情造成的混乱中恢复过来，我们相应地质疑一些在主要城市之外的更为突出的恢复战略的适用性和后果，并建议认真考虑区域二线城市的替代发展道路。为了说明该地区第二城市的经验，我们探讨了华盛顿州塔科马的最新成果，该市的大流行后发展战略包括依赖豪华住宅增长和相关的消费设施，这是相对于邻近的主导城市西雅图而言的。出于对工人阶级流离失所、地区中产阶级化以及与这种复苏相关的其他脆弱性的警惕，我们通过研究塔科马新兴的住房激进主义来得出结论，以深入了解当前时刻如何产生新的政治组织以实现更公平的城市发展。