system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[MCU] Why didn't people start flocking to major cities after Infinity War?

This has bothered me ever since the movie came out. 

After the 

>![5 YEARS LATER]

flash forward, New York and San Francisco look like they're still basically abandoned. I've always assumed that after that kind of cataclysm, people would flock towards cities, since, and I could be wrong, there would be a "stockpile" of food and water. And rent would probably be a whole lot cheaper. Am I overlooking something, or did the screenwriters just not take this into consideration?
gpt
Cities don't really maintain a "stockpile" of food. Especially nowadays, with many businesses doing their best to operate on a "just in time" logistics model, most stores aren't equipped to go more than a few days past their regularly scheduled deliveries. During regular disaster scenarios, resources tend to be stripped in short order, with panicked rushes to beat the stocks being sold out creating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, leaving bare shelves everywhere. 

That's during a normal disaster. The Snap affected every square inch of the Earth, took out half of the truck drivers and merchant mariners on the planet, and left every road jammed with 50% of it's regular traffic in abandoned cars. It would take some harsh measures just to get the roads clear enough for emergency vehicles (think less tow trucks, more heavy-duty construction equipment being used to physically shove the cars off the road), let alone restore the critical transport systems responsible for bringing resources into the cities. 

If anything, you'd probably see a further drop in urban population after the Snap, as people abandon the cities for what they see as safer locales. Once a few years have passed and things have settled down a but, there'd be some return, but some might hesitate, either because they've established themselves somewhere else or don't want to roll the dice on being stuck in a city again if another calamity happens.