When this emergency is over, people are likely to emerge into fundamentally changed cities, with economies in crisis and beloved restaurants, businesses and cultural institutions gone for good. “We all need to be worried about the corner diner and the new coffee shop and the bodega and the small nonprofit organizations,” said Eric Klinenberg, a sociology professor at New York University and the author of “Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.” “There’s just countless operations that are vulnerable right now because everyone is pulling in.”

New York City is launching a loan program for small businesses, and hopefully state and federal governments will follow with more substantial rescue packages. But Gregg Bishop, commissioner of the New York City Department of Small Business Services, told me, “There’s probably going to be some businesses that may not be able to recover from this.”

I wonder if our cultural romance with urban living will recover either. In recent decades, millennials, who tend to be more averse to suburbia than their parents and grandparents, have helped fuel an urban resurgence. If the shock of the coronavirus is devastating enough, that could change, as more people seek their own personal bunkers.

“We have lots of previous historical experiences that generated new anxiety about the city and pushed people out into the suburbs,” said Klinenberg. “There was a post-World War II anxiety about nuclear war that gave some people the fantasy that the suburb would be a safer place. Before that there were anxieties about infectious diseases, or public health hazards like cholera, that pushed people out of the city as well.”

Klinenberg is far from convinced that this will happen again. “What I hope for is that this rising generation learns to appreciate just how deeply connected we are to each other, just how valuable it is to invest in public goods, and how precious and important shared experiences in public spaces are,” he said.

I hope so too. Maybe when this ends, people will pour into the restaurants and bars like a war’s been won, and cities will flourish as people rush to rebuild their ruined social architecture. But for now it’s chilling to witness an entire way of life coming to a sudden horrible halt. So many of the pleasures and consolations that make dwelling in cramped quarters worth it, for those privileged enough to choose city life, have disappeared. Even if they all come back, we’ll always know they’re not permanent.