Philadelphia

High-Rise Datacenters: Potential to Assist Downtown Recovery

Wendell Cox — Sun, 05 Nov 2023 19:28:38 -0500

The largest Central business districts (CBDs or downtowns) face a serious crisis as working from home has seriously reduced the demand for five-day on-site employment. The CBDs most at risk are typically those with the strongest transit work trip market shares, at from 30 to 80 percent — New York (Manhattan), Chicago (the Loop and adjacent areas), Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, San Francisco and Seattle. In Canada, this includes Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary. Other CBDs, with smaller transit market shares are also experiencing severe difficulties, such as Atlanta, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and Portland.

Commutes to these locations are considered anything but rewarding for many. Fully remote workers are employed virtually full-time from home and many of these have moved far away from their on-site employment locations.

Other workers have hybrid schedules, working on-site some days and from home on others. A recent Kastle Systems report of on-site work in 10 large metropolitan areas indicated that Fridays now have an the lowest employee occupancy rate of only 26% to 42%. The top day, generally Tuesday, has an employee occupancy rate of 49% to 71%.

In 2022, 15.2% of US workers worked from home, which marked a decrease from the 17.9% recorded in 2021. However, this percentage remained significantly higher than the 5.7% observed in 2019. The prevalence of remote work surged during the pandemic, with a brief period where it accounted for over 60% of paid work hours. Notably, this increase in working from home had a more adverse impact on public transit compared to driving. According to data from the American Community Survey, between 2019 and 2021, the share of workers using transit dropped by 37.0%, while the percentage of individuals driving alone decreased by 9.6%, and carpooling experienced a 2.4% decline.

The financial fallout for core cities is substantial. The demand for CBD office space is declining. A number of office buildings with Grade A space have been sold for far less than their pre-pandemic values. There have been defaults and hundreds of billions in office building mortgages come due for refinancing in the next five years.

The impacted municipalities are desperate to preserve their CBDs, not least because of the property tax and other tax revenues they produce so crucial to balancing budgets. Further, the last thing the cities need is expanding the all too often hollowing out that has occurred in recent decades.

An obvious solution is to convert disused office buildings into residential buildings. There are already success stories around the country, where empty office buildings have been converted. For examples, the city of Los Angeles, with its adaptive reuse approach has been a model for two decades. One great advantage of the residential conversions would be to moderate the intensively unbalanced jobs to worker ratios. For example, Manhattan in 2019 had 3.1 jobs for every resident worker, according to the American Community Survey (excluding those who work at home).

But not all empty office buildings can be converted to residences at a cost that permits a competitive return on investment for developers. A particular problem is that many of the newer buildings with larger floor plates cannot efficiently be converted to residential, because some apartment rooms would not be able to have windows.

Data centers could provide an opportunity for conversion from office space, where residential conversion is infeasible. According to Bard (Google’s artificial intelligence program), “A data center is a physical facility that houses computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. Data centers are essential for the operation of the internet and other critical infrastructure. They provide the computing power and storage capacity needed to run websites, applications, and services, and to store and manage data.”

Companies have historically had their own on-premises data centers, but in recent years many have shifted to using third-party (cloud) data centers, where multiple companies can purchase the storage and services they need. There are more than 2,000 datacenters in the United States. Most are low-rise.

High-Rise Data Centers

But there is considerable potential for data centers in the traditional CBDs.

The One Wilshire Building in downtown Los Angeles is a good example of a high-rise data center (Top Photo). One Wilshire opened in 1966 and was the fourth tallest building in downtown Los Angeles, at 30 floors (trailing the Union Bank Plaza. City Hall and the Occidental Center). In its early decades, One Wilshire was a modern, conventional office building. However, the building was converted to a data center in the 1990s. According to Wikipedia, the Los Angeles Times reported that One Wilshire had become one of the three top telecommunications sites in the world, along with 60 Hudson Street (below) in New York and Telehouse in London. Other examples follow.

The Terminal Commerce Building in center city (401 North Broad Street) Philadelphia (below) has been converted to a data center. The 14 floor building was constructed by the Reading Railroad and opened in 1931. It is within a short walk of City Hall.

The 34 story Westin Building (below) in downtown Seattle started out in 1981 as the corporate headquarters of Westin Hotel. It has been converted into a data center.

The Google Building (111 8th Avenue) in Manhattan started out in 1932 as the Port Authority Building (below), built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It is a 15 story building, which was purchased by Google in 2010 and has been converted into a data center.

A New York Times article singled out the St. Louis downtown area as having substantial potential for office building conversion to data centers.

Rising Demand

The demand for data centers is increasing rapidly, with a doubling expected in power consumption in the United States alone, between 2022 and 2030. Much of this is due to the expansion of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, the industry faces greater challenges, such as the rising costs of land and community opposition to placement near residential areas. CBD locations could be a godsend, requiring considerably less land and being separated from residential areas.

Conclusion

High-rise data centers will not, in and of themselves, restore downtowns to their former glory. It is always a compelling task to repurpose built environment to accommodate activities for which they were not designed. But high-rise data centers could provide a partial solution to city officials facing a difficult challenge.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Photos: Top photo, One Wilshire Building, downtown Los Angeles via Flickr; 60 Hudson Street, New York via Wikimedia; Terminal Commerce Building via Wikimedia; Westin Building via Wikimedia; Google Building via Wikimedia; under CC 2.0 License.

MAGA Attacks on Cities Are Not Working

Pete Saunders — Tue, 10 Oct 2023 20:28:38 -0400

We’re 13 months away from the 2024 presidential election, and just 3 months away from the primaries. The dominant themes of the election are forming. The Republicans have let it be known that one theme will be the crime, drugs, homelessness, and the general lawlessness of “Democrat-run” cities is a disqualifying factor for Dems, and a point in their favor.

Several cities around the country have been featured prominently on television and social media for frightening criminal acts and intractable social problems. Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and Philadelphia have been noted on many outlets at different times; New York is increasingly being described as a dystopic environment. The message? Republicans can get tough on crime and end this nonsense.

However, for the first time in memory, the strategy is not working.

Origins of the Urban Demon

How did demonizing cities become a political strategy? Well, there’s always been at least a slight anti-city bias in America since its formation. The nation was founded on the principle of self-determination, and the agrarian lifestyle was often viewed as the pinnacle of American living. Cities, however, were viewed as complex, interdependent places that made personal success more complicated.

The rise of the modern industrial economy after the Civil War was centered on cities. Labor was needed to fulfill the mass production needs of large corporations and immigrants from around the world were willing to meet the rapidly expanding need. Cities became the landing spot and training ground for a new group of Americans. However, the rapid economic and social changes of the time caused many people to question whether growth came at the expense of American values, and whether the urban lifestyle was anathema to the self-directed American Dream. In the late 19th and early 20th century, cities were gaining a reputation as disruptive and unmanageable places at best, and disorderly and violent places at their worst.

People who had the desire and ability to escape the chaos of cities did so, fueling the rise of early suburbia. The development of suburbia expanded modestly before World War II and accelerated following it. By the 1960’s there were competing narratives on American living: suburbs on the rise, rural areas in decline, and cities in flux.

And yes, it’s the 1960’s where city demonization goes to the next level. Protests against the Vietnam War, in favor of (and against) the Civil Rights Movement, and the urban riots in several cities in response to poor conditions and treatment in cities became the rule at the time. This all came to a head in 1968. Vietnam War anger forced President Lyndon Johnson to forego seeking reelection. The release of the Kerner Commission Report detailed the inequity in cities that was at the root of the frustration that powered urban riots. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy symbolized an America out of control.

The Impact of 1968

Enter Richard Nixon and George Wallace.

The 1968 U.S. presidential election between Republican Richard Nixon, Democrat Hubert Humphrey and segregationist independent George Wallace led to an American narrative of cities that continues to resonate until today. Nixon ran on a “law-and-order” platform, promising to restore control in tumultuous cities. Humphrey’s campaign sought to continue President Johnson’s Great Society and War on Poverty programs, while maintaining a commitment to the Civil Rights Movement. Wallace was essentially a single-issue candidate, opposing desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement.

The election was close. Nixon won a narrow victory (less than 1%, or about 500,000 votes) over Humphrey. The election was made close by the strong showing of Wallace, who won 13.5% of the national vote, carried five southern states and won 46 electoral votes. It didn’t take long for Nixon to realize that Republicans that they could secure a stronger national majority if they made appeals to Southern voters who voted for Wallace.

After Nixon’s close 1968 win, he focused on a strategy that merged traditional “Middle America” conservative values with the populist and distinctly segregationist Southern voters who supported George Wallace. That merger brought together small town and rural Midwestern voters, an increasing number of suburban voters, and Southerners, who could agree on one thing – their dislike of large cities and the problems they incur.

Nixon’s silent majority and southern strategy plans paved the way for the GOP for the next 40 years. Nixon was able to win in 1972 in a landslide, and Northern Democrats would not win another presidential election until Barack Obama won in 2008.

Cities in the wilderness

What did this mean for cities between 1968 and 2008? Essentially it meant a 40-year period in the wilderness. Federal funding directed at cities during the Great Society era began to wither away by the mid-1970’s. Prominent issues of the Civil Rights Movement, like fair housing, poverty reduction and school desegregation, became issues of the past. Cities were left to their own devices to find a way out of the wilderness.

Cities chose one of two ways to prosper during this avidly anti-city period. One way was to tap into the still-expanding suburban development model. Younger cities largely developed as super-sized versions of suburbs, particularly in the South and West. Older cities tended to double down on their economic strengths as a growth strategy, but with a twist that led to diverging fortunes. Manufacturing centers struggled to keep good-paying manufacturing jobs in the face of international competition. Cities that were already strong in the information and service sectors took advantage of the economic winds that favored things like technology, finance, healthcare and biotechnology, advanced professional services like law, science and engineering, elite higher education, and entertainment.

Things have worked out well for the cities that became super-sized suburbs or relied on information and service sectors that would benefit from a transformative global economy. Things did not work out so well for former manufacturing hubs.

Cities and suburbs today – near-equal footing?

So here we are, in 2023. Republicans are using the same kind of attacks on cities that they used in 1973. Why is the attack that worked then not working now? Five reasons come to mind.

Read the rest of this piece at Corner Side Yard Blog.

Pete Saunders is a writer and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy. Pete has been the editor/publisher of the Corner Side Yard, an urbanist blog, since 2012. Pete is also an urban affairs contributor to Forbes Magazine's online platform. Pete's writings have been published widely in traditional and internet media outlets, including the feature article in the December 2018 issue of Planning Magazine. Pete has more than twenty years' experience in planning, economic development, and community development, with stops in the public, private and non-profit sectors. He lives in Chicago.

Photo: Former president Donald Trump's infamous photo op in front of St. John's Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, June 1, 2020. The photo op was meant to demonstrate successful "law-and-order" efforts to quell violence in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests. The photo op was later viewed as a failure after being condemned by military and religious leaders, as well as elected officials from both major political parties. Source: Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead, in Public Domain.

The Battle for Cities

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 20:28:58 -0400

America’s cities face an existential crisis that threatens their future status as centers of culture, politics, and the economy. Many urban advocates continue to delude themselves that U.S. cities are about to experience a massive post-pandemic return to “normal.” But the disruptive technological, demographic, and social changes of recent times are more likely to upend the old geographic hierarchy than to revive it.

A representative New York Times article from July 12 denied that the pandemic has impacted dense urban areas in particular, and blamed negative attitudes toward cities instead on what it called “alluring” anti-urban attitudes. Perhaps urban advocates need to ditch their own attitudes and confront reality (and the statistical evidence): Many key problems facing our core cities—growing social instability, rising crime, out-migration, increasingly radicalized politics, high costs, and tight regulation—predate the pandemic, and are not likely to go away easily. Clever proselytizing by urban media likely won’t be enough to convince Americans liberated by the efficacy of remote work to eventually return.

To survive and thrive, American cities need to reinvent urbanity by returning to a more diverse economy concentrated not in the central districts but in neighborhoods stretched across the city. Such a shift can only take place if the trajectory of urban politics changes. Some cities, notes Seth Barron, author of the newly published The Last Days of New York, have been captured by “an equity oriented social ideology” paid for by real estate interests and public sector unions, and backed by mainstream media and nonprofits, that has proven profoundly self-destructive. Outside New York, political leadership in cities like Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis; Seattle; and San Francisco continue to work assiduously to restrain law enforcement, even in the face of rising crime.

There appears to be a growing pushback against the progressive urban agenda, whose journalistic promoters often minimize social disorder. Defunding the police has not turned out to be a progressive success; the five cities that reduced their police budgets the most in 2020—Austin, Texas; New York; Minneapolis; Seattle; and Denver—have seen murders spike over the past year, well above the national average. Having partially gone down the path of defunding in 2020, New York, Baltimore, and Oakland, California, have now taken steps to restore some police funding. In ultraliberal San Francisco, the vast majority of city residents want more police; almost half are considering leaving the city, citing social disorder as a key reason. Residents of the fashionable Capitol Hill area in Seattle are erecting barriers to keep out the homeless.

But if the urban gentry are upset, the real shift is further down the social pecking order. The surprising victory of ex-cop Eric Adams as New York’s next mayor took place amid a surge in violent crime, garnering support for his centrist, pro-police platform from the city’s minority voters. My colleague Charles Blain, president of the Urban Reform and Urban Reform Institute in Houston, noted that opposition to “defunding” has come primarily from African American and Latino politicos in his city, while support seems to stem mostly from affluent white liberals.

Political divides within cities increasingly defy traditional definitions of right and left. There’s a growing conflict between those largely dependent on public schools, spaces, and transit, and those free of the need for public services due to their ability to live close to work, send their kids to private schools, or choose not to have kids at all. Much of the base of urban radicalism has shifted from minority communities to the ultrawoke, largely white, educated left.

Yet progressives, due in part to small voter turnouts, still dominate representative bodies like the New York City Council; the newly elected Manhattan district attorney follows the left’s program of low-intensity crime enforcement. In Buffalo and Pittsburgh, recent elections have favored far-left candidates. In Philadelphia, a recent attempt to remove the George Soros-backed District Attorney Larry Krassner failed miserably, despite rising crime.

The current urban trajectory is downwind of demographics. Despite the media hurrahs of a massive “back to the city” movement, Americans have been moving in the opposite direction for most of the past decade. Since 2012, suburbs and exurbs have accounted for about 90% of all metropolitan growth. The rate of growth in America’s biggest and most expensive cities began to decline as early as 2015, and the population shift to suburbs, exurbs, and smaller cities has accelerated, something evident well before the pandemic.

Read the rest of this piece at Tablet Magazine.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: JJ, via Flickr under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 License.

Census Bureau Releases 2020 City Population Estimates

Wendell Cox — Fri, 28 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The US Census Bureau has just released its July 1, 2020 population estimates for the approximately 19,500 incorporated municipalities (principally called cities, towns, villages). This article provides information on the 50 largest municipalities in the nation (Table below).

All of the three largest municipalities, the cities of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, lost population from 2019 to 2020.

Observations on Individual Municipalities

With 8,253,000 residents in 2020, the city of New York had its lowest annual reported population since 2010. Its 90,000 loss in 2019-2020 was the greatest sustained during the decade, while its gain over the entire decade was only 61,000. According to the Census Bureau estimates, New York’s population had peaked at 8,469,000 in 2016 and fallen by more than 200,000 over the past four years.

New York is not the only big city with a declining population. A decade ago, the California Department of Finance announced that second ranked LA city’s population had exceeded that number. But according to the Census Bureau, it never got there. In 2020 the city of Los Angeles population was 3,970,000, down 13,000 from 2019. At no point do Census Bureau estimates show that the 4,000,000 mark was ever met, despite stronger growth earlier in the decade propelled the city’s population upward by 175,000. Meanwhile, Los Angeles County, the most populous in the United States, lost 68,000 since 2010 and fell below 10 million, having lost population four years in a row.

Third ranked Chicago is the largest city to have lost population over the decade (20,000) The city lost most of those residents in the past year, with a 2019-20 loss of 14,000. Chicago lost population in each of the last six years.

Houston ranked fourth and had only a modest gain in the last year. Over the decade, the city gained 10%, to 2,316,000, but grew more slowly with the downturn in energy prices. Houston is one of five Texas municipalities among the nation’s 13 most populous. San Antonio ranked 7th and grew a strong 1.3% over the past year and 17.9% over the decade with a 2020 population of 1,567,000. The city of Dallas ranked ninth, growing little over the past year despite far more rapid growth elsewhere in the metropolitan area, and 12% over the decade to 1,343,000. Austin, will soon be the 11th city in the nation to reach a population of one million had 995,000 residents. Austin grew at a very fast 1.7% rate in the last year and added 23.5% over the past decade. Fort Worth, with 928,000 is the largest “second city” in any US metropolitan area (Dallas-Fort Worth) ranking 12th and posted a nearly 18% growth rate over the decade and 2.1% in the last year.

Phoenix passed Philadelphia during the decade, to become the fifth largest municipality. Phoenix has reached 1,708,000, growing 1.5% in the last year and nearly 18% over the decade.

Sixth ranked Philadelphia has seen its population stabilize, after earlier losses. Philadelphia’s 2020 population was 1,578,000, up 3.3% from 2010, but down 0.3% from 2019.

Eighth ranked San Diego grew about nine percent during the decade, reaching 1,422,000. However, growth stalled, at only 0.2% in the past year.

Tenth ranked San Jose fell 1.3% to 1,027,000 from 2019. Over the decade San Jose grew 6.2%.

Nearby San Francisco, ranked 17th, had 867,000 residents in 2020. This is up 7.6% over the decade, but with a loss of 1,4% over the last year.

Particularly strong population growth over the decade occurred in 14th ranked Columbus (113,000), 15th ranked Charlotte (162,000), 18th ranked Seattle (159,000), 19th ranked Denver (133,000) and 20th Washington (108,000).

Detroit continued to lose population, with 665,000 residents in 2020. This is down 5.6% in the decade and minus 0.75% in the last year.

Top and Bottom Percentage Gains

The largest percentage gain among the top 50 was in Seattle, at 26.0%, followed by Fort Worth (24,0%), Austin (23.0%), Denver (22.0%) and Charlotte (21.9%).

Despite much hopeful reporting of a renaissance, Detroit had the largest percentage loss over the decade among the top 50, at minus 6.4%. Following Detroit were Baltimore, down 5.6%, Long Beach (in the Los Angeles metropolitan area) at minus 1.7%, Milwaukee minus 1.0% while Chicago minus 1.7%.

Over the past year, the largest percentage gains have been in Seattle (2.18%), Fort Worth (2.12%), Mesa, in the Phoenix metropolitan area (1.86%), Austin (1.71%) and Tampa (1.65%).

The largest one-year percentage losses were in Baltimore (minus 1.42%), San Francisco (minus 1.39%), San Jose (minus 1.26%), New York (minus 1.08%) and Long Beach (minus 0.83%).

U.S. Population Growing Less and Dispersing

These data are estimates and are not from the 2020 Census, which has not yet published data below the state level.

These results do not reflect the total impact of the Covid pandemic, since only some three months of that period are included in these findings. Since then, there has been much evidence of population shifts from the largest and densest cities to more dispersed cities, suburbs exurbs and rural areas. For example, US Postal Service change of address data indicates the strongest out-migration in the cities of New York and San Francisco, according to The Wall Street Journal. These are the densest municipalities in the top 50.

The Covid epidemic principally affected the last quarter of the estimation periods --- one of the four 2019-2020 quarters and one of the 40 2010-2020 quarters. Over the decade, six of the top 50 municipalities lost population, while 14 lost population in 2019-2020. The deterioration in losses has multiple causes, such as the accelerating dispersion (domestic migration) from larger metropolitan areas and the generally slowing US population growth rate. At the same time, our previous research has shown that the urban cores have not even maintained their share of metropolitan populations (See: “Latest Data Shows Pre-pandemic suburban/exurban population gains”).

Click here to download a PDF document with the 2020 municipalities data
(document opens in new tab or window).

Photo: City Hall, Philadelphia (by author).

Combined Statistical Areas Lead Continuing Dispersion: 2010-2020

Wendell Cox — Sun, 23 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

A commenter asked about population trends in combined statistical areas (CSA) in response to my article “Demographic Implosion in the San Francisco Bay Area?, posted on May 18. This article deals with CSA population trends in the 88 CSAs with more than 500,000 population.

More Evidence of the Dispersion

The nation’s largest combined statistical areas (over 1,000,000 residents) are showing a substantial decline in population growth and net domestic migration, while middle-sized CSA’s (500,000 to 1,000,000) are showing gains.

From 2010 to 2020, Census Bureau estimates indicate that the 58 CSAs with more than 1,000,000 population gained 9.1 million residents between 2010 and 2015, before dropping more than 30% from 2015 to 2020 to 6.3 million. By comparison, the 30 CSAs with from 500,000 to 1,000,000 population gained 933,000 residents both in the first and second half of the decade. Over the decade, the gross population increase rate was 8.0%, relative to the 2010 population.

Overall, the larger CSAs gained 127,000 net domestic migrants (people moving from into a CSA from another part of the nation) in the first half of the decade, then suffered a net loss of 635,000 in the second half. This represents a gross rate of minus 2.6% relative to the 2010 population. Among the middle-sized CSAs, net domestic migration increased from 121,000 in the first half of the decade to 451,000 in the second half. This calculates to a gross rate over the decade of 2.0% relative to the 2010 population.

This is more critical than simply a response to the pandemic. In reality these trends existed overwhelmingly pre-COVID — a single quarter out of 40 — during which multiple reports say has now increased more.

What is a CSA and How Does it Relate to Metropolitan Areas

A combined statistical area (CSA) is a set of overlapping labor markets (metropolitan and sometimes micropolitan areas) that have a significant interchange of workers (commuters) between homes and employment. There are 384 metropolitan areas in the nation and 543 micropolitan areas. The only difference between metropolitan and micropolitan areas is that metropolitan areas are based on urban areas of at least 50,000 residents, while micropolitan areas are based on urban areas of from 10,000 to 50,000. The 927 Metropolitan and micropolitan areas are collectively referred to as “core based statistical areas.”

There are also 175 CSA’s, made up of 551 complete metropolitan and micropolitan areas.

Observations on the Largest CSAs

Each of the six largest CSAs experienced much worse population growth trends in the second half of the decade (Table).

The 15 largest CSAs are summarized below: A number of metropolitan and micropolitan areas are not in CSAs and are not shown in the table. includes some of the largest metropolitan areas, such as San Diego, Austin, Las Vegas, and Rochester.

New York gained 441,000 from 2010 to 2015, but lost 205,000 in 2015-2020. In the last year New York lost 114,000.
Los Angeles gained 654,000 in the first half and only 99,000 in the second half. The Los Angeles CSA includes the Riverside-San Bernardino metro, which has grown rapidly in the past, but not enough to cancel out the loss in the rest of the CSA, particularly in the core Los Angeles County, which lost 69,000 Among the five counties, only Riverside and San Bernardino counties posted gains. Throughout the whole CSA, there was a 40,000 decline in 2019-2020.
Washington-Baltimore growth dropped from 554,000 in the first half of the decade to 261,000 in the second half and only 28,000 in the last year. Washington-Baltimore (9.865 million) has displaced Chicago (9.770) as the third largest CSA. Washington-Baltimore added 815,000 new residents in the 2010s, while Chicago lost 71,000.
Chicago added 84,000 in the first five years, but lost 155,000 in the last half. There was a loss of 50,000 in the last year. As noted above, Chicago’s CSA dropped from 3rd to 4th, now behind Washington-Baltimore.
The San Francisco Bay CSA, which stretches nearly halfway to Los Angeles (to the Merced County/Fresno County line), added 567,000 from 2010 to 2015, but only 117,000 from 2015 to 2020. In the last year, the Bay Area experienced a 40,000 loss. The San Francisco Bay CSA (San Jose-San Francisco) grew 684,000 to 9.608 million and is challenging Chicago for third place. However, the Bay Area’s strong start in the decade morphed into a loss so at the 2019-2020 rate, it will take the Bay Area 16 years to catch Chicago.
Boston's growth fell from 269,000 to 132,000, with the last year falling to a nominal 5,000.
Dallas-Fort Worth did the best of the top 10, gaining 689,000 in each of the five year periods, and exceeding a 1,000,000 gain for the second decade in a row. The last year gain was 127,000. Dallas-Fort Worth, unlike its more established rivals, has experienced stable growth, with the lowest year in the decade being 110,000 and the highest 159,000.
Houston also added more than 1,000,000 residents for the second decade in a row. In the first five years Houston’s gain was 755,000 — more than Dallas-Fort Worth. However, growth dropped to 486,000 in the last five years during the downturn in the energy industry. Houston added 92,000 in the last year, more than any CSA beside Dallas-Fort Worth and Phoenix.
Philadelphia's growth dropped from 100,000 in the first five years to 46,000 in the second five. In the last year Philadelphia gained 3,000.
Atlanta, hit very hard by the Great Recession, did not repeat its greater than 1,000,000 growth in this decade. In the first five years, Atlanta gained 429,000 residents, and 455,000 in the second five. Atlanta was the largest CSA to have greater growth in the second half of the decade and gained 68,000 in the last year. Atlanta passed Miami in population in 2020.
Miami grew strongly in the first half of the decade, at 446,000, but fell to 261,000 in the second half. Growth in the last year was 21,000.
For all its population loss reputation, Detroit gained 13,000 residents from 2010 to 2015, but dropped by 13,000 in 2015 to 2020. A 19,000 loss in the last year however suggests the area’s recovery may be limited.
Phoenix had the best second half growth relative to the first half, increasing from 387,000 to 461,000. The 106,000 gain in the last year was second only to Dallas-Fort Worth.
Seattle also gained more in the second half than in the first (345,000 versus 333,000) and added 51,000 in the last year.
Orlando had a strong second half gain of 425,000 compared to its first half gain of 357,000.

The table (image and PDF link below) also contains net domestic migration data.

A Dispersing Country

Despite America’s increasing diversity, the dispersion that has generally waxed but less frequently waned since 1920.An acceleration among all CBSAs toward greater dispersion, which was covered in “Domestic Migration to Dispersion Accelerates Even Before COVID”, is the reality, even if the media, pundits and planners continue in denial.

Click here to download a PDF document with the CSA data (opens in new tab or window).

Photo: Virginia suburbs in the Washington-Baltimore CSA, with Potomac River and Maryland in the background (by author).

The Twilight of Great American Cities is Here. Can We Stop It?

Joel Kotkin — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 20:29:01 -0400

The dreadful death of George Floyd lit a fire that threatens to burn down America’s cities. Already losing population before the pandemic, our major urban centers have provided ideal kindling for conflagration with massive unemployment, closed businesses and already rising crime rates.

The forms of disintegration vary. In overwhelmingly white cities like Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Minneapolis, violence has featured white radicals endorsing the extreme agenda of the neo-Marxist Black Lives Matter. In more diverse cities, such as Chicago and New York, protests have devolved into basic thuggery as law enforcement has been curtailed and large portions of the prison population have been released.

The pandemic has shaken the once confident ranks of new urbanists. At a time when even The New York Times is suggesting that density and packed transit lines worsened the contagion, some still embrace theology over data, with some advocating ever greater density, more crowding in cities, and mass transit. Fortunately, people tend to be less theological about their locational choices. According to The New York Times, 420,000 people left New York City between March 1 and May 1. This nearly equals the city’s total population increase from 1950 to 2019, according to demographer Wendell Cox.

Pandemic Impacts

The impact of dense conditions on the pandemic is clear. Overall, high-density locations have suffered three times the COVID-19 fatality rate of less dense, generally suburban areas and eight times those of more rural environments. Cities’ vulnerability comes not simply by calculating people per square mile, but by “exposure density” brought on continued contact with people, particularly in crowded, unventilated places like subways, small apartments, elevators and offices. After all, the New York area, the epitome of dense, transit-oriented urbanization, still accounts for roughly one-third of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths.

Even as the pandemic has spread to other parts of the country — notably meat packing plants, border towns and Native American reservations — the correlation is simply impossible to ignore. High rates of poverty and overcrowding, clearly factors in COVID-19 infections, can occur anywhere but seem most devastating in places where poverty meets density. The Brooklyn and Bronx boroughs, with higher rates of poverty than fashionable Manhattan, have endured a fatality rate 7.5 times the national average.

Urban planners, real estate speculators and their flacks may ignore these numbers, but people take their own health, and that of their families, more seriously. A recent Harris poll suggested that upwards of two in five urban residents are considering a move to less crowded places. More people, notes the National Association of Realtors, are seeking out single family houses with yards and workspaces.

Read the rest of this piece at Daily Caller.

Photo credit: ED Yourdon via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

COVID Work Trip Reduction Estimates: CSAs with Transit Legacy Cities

Wendell Cox — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:29:01 -0400

America’s elite central business districts have symbolized the ascendency of big cities, epitomized by soaring office towers. But today, due the COVID-19 pandemic, so much office work performed in these CBDs can be done remotely, that their future seems far less towering than in the past. In contrast, less dense areas, notably exurbs, appear to have suffered less loss in their employment patterns.

This is not because these functions are unnecessary, but they do not need nearly the office space once imagined. much of their economic activity has continued outside the office. A Stanford University survey indicates that 42 percent of the workforce is working remotely — about 8 times the normal rate reported by the American Community Survey for 2018.

This article describes the reduction in work visits, by counties within the six combined statistical areas (CSAs) that have the nation’s six “transit legacy cities” (the municipalities of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston and Washington) at their cores. These cities (which are to be contrasted with metropolitan areas) accounted for 58% of transit commuting destinations in 2018 and have the six largest downtowns (central business districts or CBDs) in the United States. These dense developments function as the urban cores of the larger labor market CSA definition by the Office of Management and Budget. Each of these CSAs well served by lengthy commuter rail systems, as well as radial express freeways.

The Google Mobility Reports

The data is from the “Google COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports,” which estimate trips by people compared to a base of for various activities, including trips to the workplace. According to Google:

The reports use aggregated, anonymized data to chart movement trends over time by geography, across different high-level categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential. We’ll show trends over several weeks, with the most recent information representing 48-to-72 hours prior. While we display a percentage point increase or decrease in visits, we do not share the absolute number of visits. To protect people’s privacy, no personally identifiable information, like an individual’s location, contacts or movement, is made available at any point.

Trip rates are compared to a baseline of January 3 to February 6, 2020. The period covered is the month of June, when many parts of the nation were “locked down.” We have used the Google daily data, developing daily averages compared to the baseline period of January 3 to February 6, 2020.

These data reflect the economic disruption that COVID-19 has unleashed upon not only the CSAs, but their suburban and exurban ring components. They capture a measure of the decline in trips to work by people now working from home and by people who have lost their jobs, either permanently or temporarily. Both of these factors have created economic disruption. The first, working at home, has severely impacted businesses, for example downtown restaurants, bars and hotels that rely on work location driven commerce. Many are now deserted, and, like empty offices, could impact commercial real estate in the longer term, depending on how permanent is the current increase in remote working. The more challenging economic prospects of those who have been laid off is perhaps the most important disruption.

The discussion below describes the classification into CSA sectors (generally core, suburban and outside the principal metropolitan area), weighting the Google work visit figures by the workplace employment in each county (using ACS 2014-2018 work place data). These data are provided as very general estimates.

New York CSA: The 41 county New York CSA (12,400 square miles, 33,100 square kilometers) extends beyond the metropolitan area to include counties such as Fairfield (Bridgeport-Stamford) and New Haven in Connecticut, Mercer (Trenton) in New Jersey, Dutchess and Orange in New York and Monroe in Pennsylvania. New York is the largest CSA and has a sufficient number of counties to produce a more fine-grained analysis. Further, the New York CSA has the most diverse in urban form in the nation, with by far the nation’s densest central business district and the highest density neighborhoods as well as overall suburban densities in the New York barely one half that of Los Angeles suburbs, and smaller urban area densities that are one-third to one-fifth that of Los Angeles suburbs (New Haven and Poughkeepsie).

The largest percentage loss in workplace visits was (Brooklyn Queens and Hudson [Jersey City]). New York City’s four outer boroughs experienced a loss of 42.5% workplace visits. The inner suburban counties, all of which are adjacent to the city of New York, had an average loss of 38.2%. The outer suburban counties, which include all other counties in the metropolitan area, lost a considerably lower drop of 32.8%. The counties in the adjacent metropolitan area (in the CSA, but not in the MSA) lost 31.4%. Overall, workplace visits were down 41.1% in the New York CSA (Figure 1).

San Francisco Bay CSA: The 14 county San Francisco Bay CSA (10,600 square miles, 27,500 square kilometers) extends beyond the 5-county MSA to include counties such as Santa Clara, Sonoma, Solano and three in the San Joaquin Valley (San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced).

The city of San Francisco equaled Manhattan in its drop in workplace visitations, at 55.0%. Santa Clara County (San Jose), the center of Silicon Valley, but outside the San Francisco metropolitan area, suffered a drop of 48%, while suburban San Mateo County lost 46%. Overall, the employment weighted loss in the suburban counties of the MSA was 42.1%, while the loss in the CSA counties outside the MSA such as San Joaquin and Merced was 37.4%. The overall CSA loss was 41.9% (Figure 2).

Washington CSA: The 41-county Washington-Baltimore CSA (13,600 square miles, 35,100 square kilometers) was created by the merger of two of the nation’s largest metropolitan area. It extends to counties in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. This analysis separates the city of Baltimore, rather than considering it a suburb of Washington.

The city of Washington experienced the third worst workplace visitation loss among the six CSAs, at 50%. The largest loss in the CSA was in Arlington County, VA, adjacent to the District of Columbia, at 51.0%. The city of Baltimore, which is not a transit legacy city, has a smaller downtown and less reliance on transit had a loss of 35.6%. The other counties of the MSA lost 42.2%. The counties outside the MSA lost 33.2%. The overall CSA loss was 40.7% (Figure 3).

Philadelphia CSA: The 16-county Philadelphia CSA (7,300 square miles, 19,000 square kilometers) includes additional counties in Pennsylvania, such as Atlantic (Atlantic City) and Berks (Reading). The city of Philadelphia lost 39.0% of its workplace visits. The suburban counties declined 35.2%, while the counties outside the MSA lost 28.9%. The overall CSA loss was 35.2% (Figure 4).

Boston CSA: Unlike the CSA’s above, the 19-county Boston CSA (9,700 square miles, 25,100 square kilometers) does not have a separate county equivalent jurisdiction for its core city (Boston). The core Suffolk County is largely dominated by Boston, and which experienced a workplace visit loss of 41.7%.Suburban MSA counties lost 39.0%, while counties outside the CSA lost 29.3%. Overall, the Boston CSA loss was 36.9% (Figure 5).

Chicago CSA: The 19-county Chicago CSA ((8,900 square miles, 23.000 square kilometers) core county is Cook, includes the city of Chicago and a large suburban population. Cook County’s workplace visits were down 37.2%. It is likely that the city of Chicago’s workplace visits were down more, because it represents a smaller percentage of the central county than in the other five CSAs. The suburban counties had a loss of 30.9%, while the counties outside the MSA lost 20.2%. The overall loss was 33.9% (Figure 6).

Denser Areas Subject to Greater Economic Disruption

Just as denser areas of urbanization have borne the brunt of Covid-19 fatalities, they have also absorbed a disproportionate share of lost economic activity. Overall the workplace visit loss in counties with transit legacy cities reaches 46.7 percent while those outside, with their lower urban densities and greater dispersion of jobs fell by 32.9percent. All economies have proven vulnerable to the pandemic, but certain areas, particularly those with the transit legacy cities, with the largest CBDs and most transit dependency, have suffered markedly worse.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Photo: Chicago Loop (downtown), by author.

America's Long Suffering Rail Commuters

Wendell Cox — Fri, 31 Jul 2020 20:29:01 -0400

The long, streaking commuter trains (suburban rail) carrying workers mostly into and out of downtown every day may give the impression of “rapid transit.” However, regardless of the top speeds they reach, the average suburban rail rider spends far more time traveling to work than those using other modes of getting to work (Figure 1). They spend far longer than the majority of commuters, who drive alone. Even in the New York combined statistical area (CSA), with the largest suburban rail network a majority drive to work (Figure 2).

Suburban rail travel times are extraordinarily long. The average one-way commute is 71 minutes, nearly 20 minutes longer than the average transit commute. Suburban rail comes closest to matching average transit times in Philadelphia, where its riders spend about 11 minutes longer traveling each way. Suburban rail trips are 28 minutes longer in Washington-Baltimore and 25 minutes longer in Los Angeles (Figure 3).

This is indicated by American Community Survey (ACS) commuting data for 2018. ACS asks for information on how people commute to work (Figure 4). The 2018 question (#31) was “How did this person usually get to work LAST WEEK?” with this clarification “If this person usually used more than one method of transportation during the trip, mark (X) the box of the one used for most of the distance. Question #31 asks: “How many minutes did it usually take this person to get from home to work LAST WEEK?”

This article reviews work trip travel times for the “railroad” mode in the CSA’s with the seven largest networks in the United States (Note). The larger labor markets that comprise CSA’s are used because the railroad networks are not confined to the core metropolitan areas. The largest suburban rail network is in New York, which carried 460,000 daily one-way commuters on three systems (Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad and New Jersey Transit). The smallest network, in Los Angeles carried 30,000 one-way commuters daily (Figure 5).

Comparing Suburban rail to All Transit Modes

The seven CSAs also the largest number of transit commuters, as well and the largest transit systems. They include the transit “legacy” cities of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco and Washington, as well as Los Angeles. These CSAs have the most comprehensive transit systems in the nation. Yet, the average one-way commute time is more than two-thirds greater than that of driving alone (51.0 minutes on transit and 30.2 minutes driving alone).

Comparing Suburban Rail to Driving Alone

Commuter rail riders have one-way trips that average 2.3 times that of those who drive alone in the seven CSA’s. Suburban rail commutes in Philadelphia compare best to driving alone, at just more than double (30 minutes more). Suburban rail riders have average trips 2.5 times as long as driving alone in New York, Washington-Baltimore and Los Angeles (Figure 6). Assuming travel to work and back home, the average suburban rail commuter in New York commutes for 90 more minutes than the average solo driver. The difference is even greater in Washington-Baltimore (94 minutes) and Los Angeles (96 minutes).

Most Long - Suffering Commuters

The longest suburban rail commutes, by county are shown below:

Harford County, Maryland (Washington-Baltimore CSA) report the longest suburban rail commutes, at 107.3 minutes. This is 3.4 times the average commute of Harford County residents driving alone.
Orange County, New York has the longest suburban rail commutes in the New York CSA, at 106.8 minutes. This is 3.3 times that of the average Orange County commuter who drives alone.
San Joaquin County, California suburban rail commuters spend an average of 106.1 minutes traveling to work, the longest in the San Francisco Bay CSA. This is 3.1 times that average commute time for San Joaquin County residents driving alone.
Kenosha County, Wisconsin suburban rail commuters travel the longest in the Chicago CSA, at 106.1 minutes. This is 3.7 times than average commute time for fellow county residents driving alone.
San Bernardino County, California suburban rail commuters travel the longest in the Los Angeles CSA, at 94.8 minutes. This is 3.1 times the average commute time for fellow residents driving alone.
Providence County, Rhode Island County suburban rail commuters travel the longest in the Boston-Providence CSA, at 86.2 minutes. This is 3.6 times than the average commute time for fellow residents driving alone.
Bucks County, Pennsylvania suburban rail commuters travel the longest in the Philadelphia CSA, at 84.4 minutes --- 2.8 times the 29.7 minutes of Bucks residents who drive alone.

Where Suburban Rail Reigns: New York

As Figure 5 (above) indicates, nearly one-half of the nation’s suburban rail ridership is in New York. The top five counties with the largest number of suburban rail commuters are in New York, and seven of the top 10 (Figure 7):

Nassau County, New York (located on New York’s Long Island Rail Road) has the largest number of suburban rail commuters, at 88,900 daily and has an average commute time of 72.4 minutes. This is 2.4 times the travel time of drive alone commuters. Suffolk County is also on the Long Island, with the fifth most suburban rail commuters, but the longest travel time among the strongest 10 counties, at 96.5 minutes. Queens County, ranked 9th, is also on the Long Island.
Westchester County, New York, is served by the Metro North Railroad and has the third highest number of suburban rail commuters, at 81,700 daily and a travel time of 68.3 minutes. Across the Connecticut border, Fairfield County ranks fourth in daily suburban rail commuters, with a travel time of 84.3 minutes.
Essex County, New Jersey, served by New Jersey Transit (NJT) ranks 7th, with a travel time of 64.6 minutes. Middlesex County, New Jersey also has NJT service and ranks 8th with a travel time of 79.5 minutes

Impact of Covid-19 on Suburban Rail

During the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a massive increase in remote working.

This is most evident in New York, where the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) reports weekday ridership down on the Long Island Rail Road 79% and on Metro-North Railroad 83% from typical levels.

Much has been written about the large increase in working at home during the pandemic and the likelihood that a portion of this increase could be retained after the health threat passes. A permanent increase seems likely among New York suburban rail commuters. Regardless of how they previously traveled, many other commuters around the country have found working at home preferable to the crowded trains and crowded highways that may have needlessly consumed so much of their time.

Note: The American Community Survey does not differentiate between “railroad” and “ferry boat” travel times. Most of these commuters are on suburban rail systems.

Photograph: Approaching the Hudson River Tunnel in New Jersey toward New York’s Penn Station (by author).

Dispersion in US Metros Increases Even Before COVID-19: New Census Estimates

Wendell Cox — Tue, 05 May 2020 20:29:01 -0400

The latest US Census Bureau metropolitan area population estimates (for 2019) were largely lost in the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet the new results, released a few weeks ago, indicate that people are moving to where social distancing is less challenging — the suburbs and exurbs, with their lower density and perhaps from a pandemic point of view, their lower exposure density — with less intense human interaction and hence lower infection risk associated with ground-oriented housing (detached and attached houses and townhouses), travel by car and generally less crowded conditions, such as in stores.

Moving to Lower Densities

The new data indicates that within the major metropolitan areas, domestic migration away from the core counties was 2.23 million from 2010 to 2019. In contrast, the suburban and exurban counties gained 1.94 million. The suburban and exurban counties attracted 4.2 million more moving residents than the core counties (Figure 1). The rate has been accelerating. In the first two years of the decade, the suburbs and exurbs had about a 175,000 domestic migration advantage over the core counties. In the last three years, the suburban advantage has widened to over 600,000 (Figure 2).

This is just another manifestation of the trends that have been underway since World War II. Most recently, since 2010, 92% of major metropolitan area growth was outside the functional urban cores (Figure 3). Employment dispersion continues, with more than 90% of new jobs being created outside the downtowns (central business districts) of the major metropolitan areas since 2010 (Figure 4).

Generally Declining Growth

Population growth has fallen off strongly among the major metropolitan areas. Eight of the largest 10 had slower growth from 2015 to 2019 than the first four years of the decade. Only Atlanta and Phoenix had larger growth rates in the later period (Figure 5).

Declining Megacities

The nation’s two megacities continued their decline. New York has lost nearly 120,000 residents since 2016. Domestic migration accounted for a loss of 196,000 New York metropolitan area residents in just the last year, 1.02% of its 2018 population. Second largest Los Angeles has lost more than 60,000 residents since 2017, while its net domestic migration loss was 122,000 in the last year. This is a loss of 0.92% of its 2018 population.

Wannabe megacity Chicago continues to slip away from the 10 million status, with a population stuck at less than 9.5 million. The metropolitan area has lost about 90,000 residents since 2014 and has slightly fewer residents than in 2010. If Chicago had continued to grow at its tepid 2000s rate, the 10 million figure might have been achieved by the mid 2020s. Now, that may never occur. But as grim as things may seem, Chicago’s net domestic migration was the lowest in five years, and less as a percent of its population (0.79%) than in New York or Los Angeles.

All three largest metropolitan areas lost overall population at a similar rate last year, with New York dropping 0.31%, Los Angeles 0.27% and Chicago 0.26%.

The “Five Million” Metros

Dallas-Fort Worth retained its fourth position, three other over-5 million metropolitan areas, Houston, Washington and Miami each moved up a place, as Philadelphia fell from 5th to 8th. Philadelphia had been ranked fourth from 1950 to 2000. There was a time when Philadelphia was the nation’s largest urban center, with the city and adjacent suburbs (Southwark and Northern Liberties) having a population greater than New York City in 1790 and 1800.

Phoenix: The Next 5 Million Metropolitan Area

The “star” of this year’s population estimates was Phoenix (photo above), which reached 4,948,000 and has probably already passed five million. Phoenix became the 10th largest metropolitan area, having displaced long time top 10 incumbent Boston. It also moved past San Francisco earlier in the decade. Phoenix grew 2.0% over the past year, a feat exceeded only by Austin (2.8%) and Raleigh (2.1%) among the nations 53 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population.

Phoenix added 399,000 net domestic migrants between 2010 and 2019, trailing only Dallas-Fort Worth (449,000). In the last year (2018-2019), Phoenix led the nation, with 71,000 net domestic migrants, easily outdistancing Dallas-Fort Worth (46,600).

Moving Away from the Largest Metropolitan Areas

Overall, domestic migration patterns have shifted away from the largest metropolitan areas. The metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population had net domestic migration of a minus 328,000 from 2010 to 2019. Metropolitan areas with from 500,000 to 1,000,000 gained 583,000. Metropolitan areas with 100,000 to 500,000 population gained 460,000. The balance of the nation, which includes smaller metropolitan areas as well as all areas outside metropolitan areas lost 716,000 (Figure 6).

After COVID-19?

The big question is how things will change in light of the COVID-19 epidemic and the lockdowns.

The metropolitan areas with the greatest pockets of urban density have a substantial challenge in controlling an epidemic that requires social distancing. The problem, as we have discussed before is not so much the population density at any macro level, but rather the personal level (See: Exposure Density and the Pandemic). Exposure density is intensified for individuals by crowded conditions (such as crowded subways, residences, elevators, shopping, events, etc.) far more than any theoretical area-wide population density. Combined with all this is the evidence that low-income citizens are more likely to fall victim to the epidemic than the rest of the population (see: Data Suggests Many New York City Neighborhoods Hardest Hit by COVID-19 Are Also Low-Income Areas).

The ability of commerce and public policy — companies, governments and people — to respond to the necessity of social distancing through internet meetings has been a revelation. Business meetings, not all, but most, can be conducted without any concern about social distancing. There could be substantial benefits to the extent that technology can virtualize the work place for millions of people.

Foremost could be the environmental gains as millions more eliminate the work trip (working at home, mostly telecommuting), along with shorter commutes made possible by lessened traffic congestion. Even before the epidemic, working at home had raced ahead of transit as a commute option in the United States. In 2018, working at home led transit in 44 of the 53 metropolitan areas with more than 1,000,000 population.

Not being tied to a physical commute every day could make it possible for households to move to places they would prefer more. This is not just the continuing movement of people away from the crowded urban cores to the suburbs and exurbs, but even beyond. The key, obviously, is that they be able to carve out an affluent standard of living out of the post-COVID economy.

Little of this seems to portend any sort of greater centralization. It seems likely that the dispersion that has been going on for decades in the United States (and around the world) will continue.

Photograph: The Central Avenue corridor (downtown) in Phoenix (by author).

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the "Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey" and author of "Demographia World Urban Areas" and "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life." He was appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. Speaker of the House of Representatives appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

Of Niche Markets and Broad Markets: Commuting in the US

Wendell Cox — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 21:29:58 -0400

The six transit legacy cities - mostly urban cores that grew largely before the advent of the automobile - increased their concentration of transit work trips to 57.9% of the national transit commuting, according to the 2018 American Community Survey. At the same time, working at home strengthened its position as the nation’s third leading mode of work access, with transit falling to fourth. The transit commuting market share dropped from 5.0% in 2017 to 4.9% in 2018. Carpooling, after at least three decades of decline, has seen an increase in this decade.

Concentration of Transit Commuting Destinations in Legacy Cities

Based on transit work trip destinations (as opposed to residences of commuters) the cities of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston and Washington increased their share of commuting by 4.8% (2.6% points) in just eight years (from 2010 to 2018). The legacy cities are home to the six largest downtown areas (central business districts) in the United States, the destination for most of their transit commuting.

This increased concentration occurred even as transit commuting has begun to trend downward, from the 2015, the peak ridership post-1960 year (Figure 1). The transit legacy cities accounted for 6.1% of the nation’s employment in 2018. Their 57.9 share of transit commuting is nearly 10 times their equivalent share of jobs. The more favorable performance of the legacy cities in this decade resulted in their garnering 79.7%% of the increased commuting, more than 13 times their share of jobs.

The intensity of the concentration is illustrated in Figure 2, which compares employment, transit commuting and transit commuting increase (2010 to 2018) shares for legacy cities and the balance of the nation. The work trip market share to the legacy cities is 47%. By comparison, in the rest of the nation, transit’s work trip share is a miniscule 2.1%. Only 19 of the nation’s 53 major metropolitan areas has a transit work trip share of 3.0% or more.

However, to get to jobs outside the legacy cities (in the same metropolitan areas), transit commuting is only 8.6% of the national total. Strikingly, in New York, nearly 51% percent of the jobs are outside the city of New York. Transit’s share to these jobs is only 4.4%, a fraction of the 58.0% who use transit to jobs in the city of New York (the urban core)(Figure 3). Large differences between transit commuting to downtown and the suburbs occurs in most major metropolitan areas, not just those with legacy cities.

New York continues to have by far the largest transit commute share, at 30.9% (Figure 4). The lowest transit commute shares are in Birmingham and Oklahoma City, at 0.6%. Transit work trip data is provided in the Table below by mode.

Working at Home: The Big Winner

The American Community Survey data reveals working at home continues to be the big winner among the most popular employment access modes. Between 2017 and 2018, working at home (which includes telecommuting) gained 258,000 workers nationally, rising from 8.00 to 8.25 million in total. This was a considerable accomplishment. Working at home increased disproportionately relative to driving alone. Having only 7% of the driving alone volume in 2017, working at home added more than 20% of the entire commuting increase over the last year.

Working at home strengthened its number three position, following driving alone and vehicle pools, and now exceeding transit by more than 600,000. In 44 of the 53 major metropolitan areas, working at home accounted for more employment access than transit. The nine exceptions, in which transit led working at home included the six metropolitan areas with “legacy cities” plus Seattle, Pittsburgh and Baltimore. Overall, working at home has increased 2.3 million since 2010. It now has a market share of 5.3%, up from 4.3% in 2010.

Raleigh again had the highest work at home market share, at 9.1%, followed by Austin, Denver, Portland and San Francisco. The great advantage of working at home is that it reduces traffic, and does so without public subsidy (Figure 5). The work at home market shares exceeded that of transit in all but one of the ten top metropolitan areas (San Francisco, with its legacy city). Meanwhile, among the other nine strongest work at home metropolitan areas, seven have built expensive rail systems. Each of these has cost from hundreds of millions to billions of tax dollars. Yet, working at home, which is virtually unsubsidized has attracted substantially greater use.

Working at home exhibits little of the concentration observed in transit. All 53 of the major metropolitan areas have work at home shares of 2.5% or more. By contrast, 28 major metropolitan areas have transit commuting shares below 2.5%. Memphis had the lowest work at home share. Second lowest Buffalo, at 3.5% had a work at home market share larger than the transit market shares in 39 major metropolitan areas.

Carpool Resurgence

Carpools increased 300,000 between 2017 and 2018 and more than 600,000 since 2010. This follows decades of decline. This, however, was not enough to keep the mode from falling to 9.0% of the market in 2018 from 9.7% in 2017. There were 19.1 million carpools in 1980, the first year carpool data was collected and only 13.9 million now. The high market share was in Salt Lake City, at 12.0% (Figure 6), while the lowest was in New York, at 6.3%.

Ride Hailing

The data show a huge increase in taxicab use, which is probably due to recently initiated ride hailing services like Uber and Lyft. Taxicab commuting has increased more than 150%, from 150,000 to 360,000. The impact may be even greater. “Other” means of commuting increased almost 300,000, for a 25% increase. This was greater than that of all other modes of employment access, except for work and home and taxicab. It is not hard to imagine some respondents ticking “other” if they did not associate these new services with “taxicab.”

Work Access: Niche Markets and Mass Markets

While transit used to serve the largest share of motorized urban trips (probably about 90 years ago, but I have found no data), it has become a “niche” market among commuters who have a choice (have a car).Transit is about downtown and the urban core, with much of the share of transit commuting being destinations in these areas. Mind you, these are important markets, but they are small in the overall context of employment and transit’s access to metropolitan area jobs is miniscule.

The other three largest modes, cars, car pools and working at home serve broad markets. They can reach virtually any job in the metropolitan area, or in the case of working at home, many jobs around the world. That’s why those three modes hold a near monopoly on commuting, and represent most of its growth. With them, you can get from here to there.

EMPLOYMENT ACCESS BY MEANS OF ACCESS
US Major Metroopolitan Areas: 2018
	Drive Alone	Car Pool	Transit	Taxi	Motor-Cycle	Bicycle	Walk	Other	Home
Atlanta, GA	77.3%	8.9%	3.0%	0.5%	0.1%	0.2%	1.3%	1.2%	7.6%
Austin, TX	76.9%	8.7%	1.9%	0.1%	0.2%	0.8%	1.9%	0.7%	8.7%
Baltimore, MD	77.0%	8.0%	6.0%	0.3%	0.0%	0.3%	2.4%	0.8%	5.3%
Birmingham, AL	84.8%	8.8%	0.6%	0.0%	0.1%	0.0%	0.9%	0.6%	4.2%
Boston, MA-NH	66.1%	7.0%	13.2%	0.3%	0.0%	1.1%	5.6%	1.0%	5.5%
Buffalo, NY	82.1%	6.8%	3.1%	0.2%	0.1%	0.4%	3.0%	0.8%	3.5%
Charlotte, NC-SC	79.2%	9.4%	1.5%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	1.4%	0.9%	7.3%
Chicago, IL-IN-WI	69.8%	8.0%	12.1%	0.3%	0.1%	0.7%	2.8%	0.9%	5.4%
Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN	81.6%	8.2%	1.7%	0.1%	0.0%	0.2%	2.2%	0.8%	5.1%
Cleveland, OH	81.6%	7.9%	2.7%	0.1%	0.0%	0.4%	1.9%	0.8%	4.6%
Columbus, OH	81.3%	8.2%	1.7%	0.1%	0.1%	0.3%	2.2%	0.7%	5.5%
Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	80.8%	9.5%	1.3%	0.1%	0.1%	0.1%	1.3%	0.9%	5.8%
Denver, CO	75.0%	8.2%	3.8%	0.2%	0.1%	0.9%	2.4%	0.8%	8.7%
Detroit, MI	83.2%	8.6%	1.3%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	1.4%	0.7%	4.3%
Grand Rapids, MI	82.0%	9.1%	1.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.4%	2.2%	0.5%	4.2%
Hartford, CT	81.2%	7.7%	2.6%	0.1%	0.0%	0.2%	1.8%	0.8%	5.7%
Houston, TX	81.0%	9.4%	2.0%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.9%	1.3%	4.9%
Indianapolis. IN	83.4%	8.0%	0.9%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	1.3%	1.0%	5.0%
Jacksonville, FL	80.3%	8.5%	0.9%	0.1%	0.2%	0.6%	1.6%	1.5%	6.4%
Kansas City, MO-KS	83.8%	7.8%	0.9%	0.2%	0.1%	0.2%	1.2%	0.7%	5.2%
Las Vegas, NV	78.7%	9.8%	3.3%	0.2%	0.3%	0.2%	1.4%	2.1%	4.1%
Los Angeles, CA	75.0%	9.5%	4.8%	0.3%	0.3%	0.6%	2.5%	1.1%	5.9%
Louisville, KY-IN	82.2%	8.5%	1.7%	0.0%	0.0%	0.3%	1.3%	1.0%	4.9%
Memphis, TN-MS-AR	86.1%	9.0%	0.7%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.9%	0.6%	2.5%
Miami, FL	77.7%	9.2%	3.1%	0.5%	0.2%	0.7%	1.4%	1.4%	5.7%
Milwaukee,WI	81.5%	7.5%	2.6%	0.2%	0.1%	0.5%	2.3%	0.3%	5.0%
Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	77.4%	8.1%	4.5%	0.2%	0.1%	0.8%	2.4%	0.6%	5.9%
Nashville, TN	80.9%	9.2%	0.8%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	1.5%	1.0%	6.2%
New Orleans. LA	78.6%	9.3%	2.6%	0.3%	0.1%	1.2%	2.5%	0.9%	4.5%
New York, NY-NJ-PA	50.3%	6.3%	30.9%	0.8%	0.0%	0.7%	5.5%	0.8%	4.7%
Oklahoma City, OK	82.9%	8.8%	0.6%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	2.1%	1.0%	4.2%
Orlando, FL	80.3%	10.4%	1.3%	0.3%	0.3%	0.3%	1.1%	0.9%	5.0%
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD	72.3%	7.2%	9.8%	0.3%	0.1%	0.6%	3.4%	0.8%	5.5%
Phoenix, AZ	75.8%	11.2%	1.8%	0.3%	0.3%	0.7%	1.3%	1.2%	7.4%
Pittsburgh, PA	76.6%	8.3%	5.6%	0.1%	0.1%	0.3%	3.4%	0.5%	5.1%
Portland, OR-WA	70.4%	8.8%	6.1%	0.2%	0.2%	2.0%	3.4%	0.7%	8.1%
Providence, RI-MA	81.3%	8.5%	2.4%	0.2%	0.0%	0.2%	3.0%	0.6%	3.8%
Raleigh, NC	79.0%	8.9%	0.9%	0.2%	0.1%	0.1%	1.3%	0.5%	9.1%
Richmond, VA	81.2%	8.7%	1.7%	0.3%	0.1%	0.7%	1.4%	0.9%	5.2%
Riverside-San Bernardino, CA	79.8%	10.9%	1.2%	0.1%	0.3%	0.2%	1.5%	1.0%	5.0%
Rochester, NY	80.9%	7.9%	2.2%	0.2%	0.2%	0.5%	3.0%	0.4%	4.8%
Sacramento, CA	76.6%	9.2%	2.2%	0.2%	0.3%	1.3%	1.7%	0.8%	7.9%
St. Louis,, MO-IL	83.6%	6.9%	2.1%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	1.8%	0.6%	4.6%
Salt Lake City, UT	74.5%	12.0%	3.2%	0.1%	0.2%	0.7%	2.2%	0.5%	6.7%
San Antonio, TX	79.2%	11.2%	1.8%	0.1%	0.1%	0.2%	1.8%	1.0%	4.6%
San Diego, CA	76.5%	8.8%	2.6%	0.2%	0.5%	0.4%	3.1%	1.2%	6.6%
San Francisco, CA	57.2%	9.6%	17.3%	0.7%	0.4%	1.9%	4.7%	1.2%	7.0%
San Jose, CA	75.3%	10.3%	4.0%	0.3%	0.3%	1.6%	2.2%	0.9%	5.0%
Seattle, WA	66.1%	10.0%	10.7%	0.3%	0.3%	1.1%	4.1%	0.7%	6.7%
Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL	78.9%	9.0%	1.3%	0.3%	0.2%	0.5%	1.4%	1.1%	7.3%
Tucson, AZ	76.8%	10.0%	2.1%	0.2%	0.4%	1.5%	2.1%	1.3%	5.5%
Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	81.2%	8.5%	1.4%	0.1%	0.1%	0.4%	2.8%	1.0%	4.4%
Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV	65.8%	9.2%	13.0%	0.5%	0.1%	0.9%	3.3%	1.0%	6.1%
UNITED STATES	76.3%	9.0%	4.9%	0.2%	0.1%	0.5%	2.6%	0.9%	5.3%
Derived from American Community Survey 2018.

Photograph: Interstate 5 in Orange County California, with elevated express lanes (by author)