Four years ago this month, I boarded an eerie, near-deserted flight from Los Angeles to Washington. (A week earlier, it would have been full.) The Uber driver who picked me up from a ghost town calling itself Dulles airport said I was his second fare of the day. (I should have been his 20th.) A medieval silence fell on the capital of the free world that night, and not through coercion. Lockdowns were still a while off.
四年前的这个月，我登上了一架从洛杉矶飞往华盛顿、几乎空无一人、令人毛骨悚然的航班。（一周前，这趟航班是满员的。）在已经沦为鬼城的杜勒斯机场接我的优步司机告诉我，我是他当天的第二位乘客。（按理说，我应该是他的第20位乘客。）那天晚上，自由世界的首都沉浸在一种中世纪般的寂静之中，这种寂静并非强加的。此时距离疫情封锁还有一段时间。
As the pandemic wore on, I guessed it would be 2025 before cities felt normal again. And I was on the upbeat side of things. In the end, the urban comeback happened in, what, Q2 2022? According to the Centre for Cities this week, London is “now almost certainly” above its all-time peak population, with a figure of 10.1mn people doing the rounds.
随着疫情的持续，我预测可能要到2025年城市才能恢复正常。而我当时的预测还算乐观。然而，城市的复苏竟然在2022年第二季度就发生了，是吧？根据城市中心本周的数据，伦敦的人口“现在几乎可以肯定”超过了其历史最高峰，达到了约1010万人。