How the ‘urban doom loop’ could pose the next economic threat
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
The most common reasons I hear that people move out of the city once they go fully remote is:
1. Price. Cities have become way to expensive to live in, especially big ones like NYC and SF.
2. Crime. Crime has risen since 2020 and many feel their city officials are doing nothing about it (see the recall of Chesa Boudin in San Francisco). Those with families often flee to the suburbs
3. Homelessness. Some cities are plagued with homelessness, and some downtown areas have had their sidewalks turned into tent cities (this relates to issue #1 and #2).
4. Noise and environment. This is not universal, since many cities developed differently. But some cities focused all of their infrastructure on roads and car-centric development, which has led to loud neighborhoods with lots of traffic going through them. Loud engines and honking can make the city a very stressful place to live. Additionally, a lot of cities are really lacking in greenery. Where I lived in the suburbs was full of trees and grass and plants. Where I now live is like concrete hell. There are other, older parts of the city I live in which have a nice tree canopy over the sidewalks and streets that give the city its southern feel. Other cities relegate all nature to designated spots in public parks, where some people don't feel safe due to #2 and #3.
I think if cities want their downtowns to thrive again, they need more of a selling point than "you work here, so you have to spend your money here". The 15-minute city movement, zoning and housing deregulation, and the push for more public transportation can turn mid-size American cities into the great places that they used to be, and people will choose to live there
But if people continue to drive or commute out of their way or live in a more expensive city because they just really really like that city, then there will be no problem.
My hypothesis is that most people do not want to live in these cities, for the reasons I mentioned above, and if we want to save the jobs that are now at risk because of these knock-on effects, then we need to make cities more livable for people and less drivable
The article is concerned with mid sized cities though, which don't have the cultural appeal of Manhattan or other economic factors keeping it afloat. Some of these cities depend on the office jobs from a handful of companies
We're already seeing the start of cities going bankrupt or into heavy debt because all of the sewers and infrastructure they built 30-60 years ago need replacements that taxes can't possibly cover - and that's before you consider how subsidized the suburbs are with roads, cheap gas, and so on.
I agree that urban living is still desired, but that desire is only part of the price story.
Tiger penis is much more expensive than ribeye steaks. But ribeye steaks are more desirable across the whole population.
Under 20% of the population wants to live in an urban area: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america.... But far less than 20% of housing is in urban areas.
If cities fixed their problems, they might become more desirable across the population. That might drive up prices in the short term, but ultimately would drive down prices if that creates a critical mass of voters who want to live in an urban area.
My biggest complaint is the schools -- as soon as you have kids you won't be willing to live in more affordable neighborhoods you would have been ok with previously (or else resort to private, so you pay either way in tuition or rent) -- but truth be told, great suburban school districts are expensive too so there's not really that big a difference anyway there. In the end all you really give up for city life is the grassy yard, and for many people it's worth it.
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america...
You can attribute the change in this article to covid, but they were already pretty unpopular before then. Suburbs are the plurality choice among Americans, with cities coming in last of 3. A great deal of people who live in cities only do so because they have to
The main takeaway I have is that post-pandemic no municipality should be taking things for granted. The presence of a large business downtown will no longer guarantee demand for residences, restaurants, etc. so cities need to focus on building the things which make them appealing (community, culture, sustainability, etc.) and addressing the problems which make people leave. If your downtown is a mess of highways and parking to serve suburban commuters, even fewer people are going to want to pay a premium for housing so their taxes can subsidize those commuters rather than their neighborhood.
The same applies to suburbs: all of that car infrastructure is really expensive and most places don’t have taxes high enough to maintain it. As things age, blocking density and transit is going to lead to higher taxes and people leaving, especially if the nearby cities are smart about adding housing. If people are only living in your suburb because it’s where they can afford a house in commuting distance, telework and transit improvements are going to encourage people to leave - they’re not sticking around for the nightlife at Applebees #7649.
> If people are only living in your suburb because it’s where they can afford a house in commuting distance, telework and transit improvements are going to encourage people to leave - they’re not sticking around for the nightlife at Applebees #7649.
I think that you will find people moving out even further to even more remote suburbs if they are no longer required to be in an office in the city.
Another thing that's lost in the conversation is the amount of commercial real estate in the suburbs. Since the 1970s, a huge chunk of commercial real estate has sprawled its way into the suburbs:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/office-sprawl-the-evolvin...
> Suburbs now contain the majority of office space in many of the country’s top metropolitan office markets, according to this survey. Before 1980, central cities dominated the office market, but over the last two decades, office space has become much more dispersed. A new urban form, an “edgeless city,” is emerging.
I take my home of Northern Virginia as an example: many people assume that those living way out in Loudoun County (where the DC metro has a station) are living there for the cost while working in DC. In fact, very few people I know there worked in DC. Rather, they worked in a nearby suburban town (Reston, Chantilly, Fair Oaks, Tysons Corner, Herndon, etc.) and lived in a suburban town. You get this huge amount of suburban sprawl which is only tangentially related to the main city which it is attached to. Once those offices crumble, I wonder how it will reshape the geography of suburbs
My main thought is that a lot of urban planners have been phoning it in and are going to have to figure out what gives their area something a neighboring municipality can’t easily match now that “10 minutes less driving” isn’t as persuasive.
Like my brother lives in what we call a "sleep town" but when he goes out he takes the train or tram to a bustling downtown area. Real estate tip: buy property near train station. Investment return guaranteed.
That’s making a big assumption that these things don’t also exist in suburbia. I live in about as copy/paste suburbia as you could imagine and rarely need to go into downtown to do any of the things you listed. If I want to go to an NBA game then I’ll have to go downtown but otherwise there are good restaurants,theatre, concerts in suburbia.
> What do you do in your free time, just sit in your big McMansion in copypaste suburbia?
In my free time I do stuff with my family, read, and work on my hobbies. Probably not that much different from people in dense city centers.
Everywhere I'd want to be regularly is easier for me to get to when living in the suburbs. Clubs, theaters, museums are still within a short drive on the occasions I want to be there, but no one is going to be there every day. I have more desire to be out in nature than I do in a club.
A non-exhaustive list:
- I don't need to travel 2+ hours to see nature, it's outside my door and huge swathes of public land are available with real nature and wildlife, not manufactured parks full of homeless.
- Restaurants and bars aren't restricted to cities, we've got plenty of them. If anything more of them have more usable outdoor spaces where I'm not sitting 5ft from a pile of garbage.
- I can host more than a handful of people for a dinner party, board game night AND I can do it with comfortable seating/table space for all (impossible in NYC)
- I've got space for _all_ my hobbies: DIY, woodworking, flower preserving, kayaks, cooking. I'm also not restricted by a lack of space to pick up new ones.
All of that _and_ I can be in a city and enjoy its benefits whenever I want to be with a short drive. 99% of my travel by car here takes less time than an equivalent trip by public transportation in NYC from where I could afford to live.
Anyways…
The current local news cycle is toxic -- surprise
What evidence do you have for this? It sounds like conspiracy thinking to me.
I've seen the term "submarine article" used to describe PR-encouraged articles. Practically, they're not "directing" news outlets but they are "informing" them in likely biased ways.
"Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month."
Wondering how much real estate bros are paying to promote the archaic, regressive, idea of working on site.
The idea that it’s not evidence of a lack of so called conspiracy thinking is not so obvious. It seems like there’s an industry that’s ready to exactly serve this purpose of spreading a story.
The article makes no such argument; it merely says that shifts in how people work may cause problems. Everyone wins if we try and anticipate problems and prevent them. No one is being manipulated and no one is pulling any strings here.
I can claim anyone and anything I don't like is being "directed", without evidence of course. Fact is, sometimes a change (a neutral change, or even a good change) can also cause unintended side-effects, and that's not a conspiracy.