Regarding your Big Read article “Urban transit on the line” (May 23), the market pressures for adaptive reuses of city centre real estate, far more than the extent of new public investments in the extension of transit infrastructure, will drive the future direction of metro ridership statistics.

City centres serve an array of social functions, as spaces of economic life, political power, cultural influence, etc. They essentially exist as an efficient spatial solution to a range of socially determined needs for access.

We are now at an inflection point, hastened by the onset of a pandemic. Highly efficient forms of information and communications technology are viable substitutes for many existing uses of city centre space.

The future of urban transit will be largely determined by the new uses that emerge to fill the gap for this real estate as older use imperatives fall away.

Elliott Sclar
Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning
Co-Director, Center for Sustainable Urban Development, Climate School
Columbia University
New York, NY, US