Urban Issues

Even the Manhattan Institute Says Curb Your Car

Tim W. Ferguson — Thu, 13 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

If an early April panel discussion (virtual) of the Manhattan Institute on “Planning the Post-Covid City” was surprisingly progressive, maybe it was because this talk of revolution in the streets was about reallocating little more than parking spaces. Yet that much upheaval is basic, these panelists agreed, to renewal of New York’s pre-pandemic glory.

The reforming urbanists assembled by the conservative policy outfit contrasted their ambitions with attempts to alter New York’s schools, housing or labor force: These changes, they said, merely involve municipal pavement. Yet the aim is to reassign much of it to just about anything besides cars. And, to be sure, it’s no small skirmish to challenge the prerogatives of private-auto and SUV owners anywhere.

Covid gave this camp a big head start: New York City set aside 83 miles of “open streets,” which generally meant pedestrian walkways amid outdoor dining, entertainment and commerce. (With normality returning, this total has been shaved by 11.5 miles.) Bicycle and scooter paths now occupy many other miles–1,350 by 2019, even if most are unprotected from traffic. Clearly “alternative” means of street mobility have been in favor since March 2020, although this stems from viral fear of underground transit as much as desire for exercise.

Still, as Cornell Tech fellow Rohit Aggarwala said in the forum, it was with such adjustments that “we went on living without Midtown.” Indeed, many of New York’s residential neighborhoods have long since regained much of their vibrancy, in dramatic distinction from the office-commercial core of Manhattan. And Aggarwala wants to build on that, rather than succumb to a “knee-jerk return to normal” such as mostly followed the post-9/11 closures in lower Manhattan.

Aggarwala singled out community boards, formal advisory bodies to New York city government, as resistant to better urban streetscapes. These “older, whiter” boards, he said, are skewed toward opposing changes in traditional residential zones, such as bike lanes that displace street parking.

If that perspective, and those of fellow panelists Henry Grabar of Slate.com and Laura Fox of Citi Bike (Lyft), would surprise some Manhattan Institute backers, they haven’t been following the drift of its urban-transport advocacy. Nicole Gelinas, a mainstay of the institute’s policy staff, is also a city cycling enthusiast. Yet, older habitues might need trusted reassurance that the April event’s advocacy wasn’t right out of left field.

Grabar recently enthused about a report advocating, among other things, that one quarter of NYC’s streets be reassigned from motor-vehicle use. Cycling enthusiasts are hopeful that the Biden presidency will help fund up to 400 miles of protected paths around the city, which could also be used for other exertions.

Read the rest of this piece at timwferguson.com

Tim W. Ferguson, the former editor of Forbes’s Asia edition, writes about business, economics and society.

March 2021 Transit Ridership Down 59%

Randal OToole — Tue, 11 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

Public transit carried 33 percent fewer riders in March 2021 than in March 2020 and 59 percent fewer than in March 2019, according to data published yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. Since the pandemic started having an effect on transit in March 2020, we have to go back to 2019 to compare with pre-pandemic levels.

This is the first time since last March that transit ridership has exceeded 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Also for the first time, air travel exceeded 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels and Amtrak ridership exceeded 30 percent of pre-pandemic levels. March driving data won’t be available for a week or so.

Bus ridership is almost half of pre-pandemic levels while rail ridership is still only a third of March 2019. Transit systems that use mainly buses, such as those in Tampa, San Antonio, and Kansas City, have recovered the most while those that rely heavily on rail such as New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and San Francisco have recovered the least. This, of course, reflects the fact that many rail transit customers are much more likely to have jobs that allow them to work at home than bus riders.

Read the rest of this piece and view a detailed spreadsheet at The Antiplanner.

Randal O'Toole (rot@ti.org) is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute analyzing land-use and transportation policies and the author of American Nightmare: How Government Undermines the Dream of Homeownership.

Graph information: All forms of transport are recovering but some have recovered more than others. March driving data are approximate; actual numbers should be released in a week or so. (by the author)

The Geography of COVID-19

Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox — Mon, 10 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The ongoing pandemic is reshaping the geography of our planet, helping some areas and hurting others. In the West, the clear winners have been the sprawling suburbs and exurbs, while dense cores have been dealt a powerful blow. The pandemic also has accelerated class differences and inequality, with poor and working class people around the world paying the dearest price. These conclusions are based on data we have repeatedly updated. Despite some variations, our earlier conclusions hold up: the virus wreaked the most havoc in areas of high urban density. This first became evident in the alarming pre-lockdown fatalities that occurred in New York City and the suburban commuting shed from which many of the employees in the huge Manhattan business district are drawn. Similar patterns have been seen in Europe and Asia as well.

The problem is not density per se but rather the severe overcrowding associated with poverty in high density areas. Overcrowded physical proximity often includes insufficiently ventilated spaces such as crowded public transit, elevators, and employment locations, especially high-rise buildings, which often have windows that cannot be opened. Overcrowded bars, restaurants, and other retail establishments are also a part of the problem. Professor Shlomo Angel head of the New York University Urban Expansion Project at the Marron Institute and the NYU Stern Urbanization Project and principal author of A Planet of Cities and the Atlas of Urban Expansion explains:

It is important to increase density literacy among politicians, professionals, and activists to make it clear that the density that contributed to the pandemic, overcrowded multigenerational housing, mass events, crowded transit cars, or crowded bars and restaurants, is not the kind of density we need to increase to make cities more affordable and to combat climate change. The densification we need involves making room in cities, adding floor space so that more people can occupy the same area without overcrowding.

Mixed evidence on lockdowns

Overcrowding intensifies exposure density. Recognizing this, governments imposed lockdowns and social distancing measures intended to reduce crowding and viral transmission. But lockdowns can be effective in some situations and not in others. Social distancing and remote work can readily reduce the exposure density of overcrowded trains, workplaces, elevators, and retail establishments, especially in the densest urban cores. Restaurants and bars were forced to close, and as many employers switched to remote working, fatality rates dropped substantially.

But this approach has exacted a steep cost. In New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Toronto, suburban rail ridership declined by between 75 and 90 percent compared to the previous year. There has been a precipitous decline in the economies of the central business districts (CBDs) of these metropolitan areas, which have suffered economically more than most of their smaller counterparts. City Journal has reported that, in 2020, “New York City lost 500,000 private-sector jobs. Its office buildings are only 15 percent occupied. Ninety percent of the city’s restaurants failed to pay their December 2020 rent, and 5,000 have shut down altogether. Employment in the city’s arts and entertainment sector has plummeted 66 percent. And, perhaps most alarming: 300,000 New Yorkers from high-income neighborhoods have filed change-of-address forms with the Postal Service.” Rents are now the lowest in a decade.

Much of the employment activity central to modern cities—finance, marketing, technology, media, consulting—has been transferred to the “cloud model” of employment. Even in places like Hong Kong and Tokyo that have avoided the worst of the pandemic, there has been a significant reduction in CBD on-site work as remote work has increased. An ominous sign for the future: considerable evidence that productivity has improved or at least remained the same.

Nevertheless, social distancing and dispersion have proven successful in containing the spread of the virus. Our analysis of county fatality rate data shows that, in April 2020, the fatality rate in the New York combined statistical area (31 economically connected counties) was seven times the national rate. By July 2020, the CSA rate had fallen below the national rate. But the price was empty streets, sidewalks, office buildings, as well as bars and restaurants all essential to maintaining a dynamic city.

The future of cities

How many workers will return to the CBDs remains an open question, but it seems likely to be many fewer than before the pandemic. Even as we write, new lockdown measures are being implemented in Ontario, and it seems fair to ask when lockdowns will be sufficiently relaxed for urban cores to begin operating at their new normal. Downtowns have recovered far less quickly than suburban, exurban, and small towns. City centers in London, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne, Sydney, Milan, and elsewhere have suffered huge physical employment losses and increases in remote work.

Read the rest of this piece at Quillette.

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.

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.

Photo: Prayitnophotography via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.

America’s Post-Pandemic Geography

Joel Kotkin and Richard Florida — Sun, 09 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

Even as vaccination increases across the United States and an end to the tragedy of the Covid-19 pandemic seems in sight, the economic, fiscal, political, and geographic fallout from the virus cannot be overstated: a massive public health crisis that left more than half a million Americans dead, an economic catastrophe that caused record unemployment and small-business closures, and a seismic political event that surely helped tip the presidential election. The pandemic will pass, and the economy will revive, as it is already doing. But in geographic terms, today’s Covid-precipitated crises may well prove to be the most transformative event that America has experienced since the great migration to the suburbs after World War II. After hitting record lows, mobility is up as a result of the pandemic. Between 14 million and 23 million Americans say that they are likely to move as a result of their ability to work remotely, according to research by economist Adam Ozimek. These geographic shifts are even more critical because they point in many directions and represent less a fundamental break with the past and more an acceleration of changes already under way in how we live and work.

America’s economic geography has long been shaped by the interplay of pull and push forces. On the one hand, centrifugal forces pull some people out of cities: families seek more affordable space, backyards, and access to better schools. With the wider scope of choice that remote work affords, some are casting their nets wider and moving farther afield, not just to suburbs but also to other cities, smaller metro areas, and even rural communities. On the other hand, centripetal forces remain that push other groups and activities toward urban centers. College-educated young people in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties have accounted for roughly half the revival of close-in urban neighborhoods (those located near a metro area’s central business district) over the past decade, according to research by Joe Cortright of City Observatory. They are likely to do so, perhaps even more profoundly, in the decade ahead, propelled in part by falling urban real-estate prices. Superstar cities may regain some of their former creativity as artists, musicians, writers, and the like, many uprooted by the pandemic, can once again afford to live in them.

It’s hard to predict how this will play out in the long run, but the pandemic has placed a new burden on all communities. Big cities, Sunbelt boomtowns, small urban regions, and rural areas alike must develop effective strategies for recovery in a post-pandemic world.

The pandemic hit superstar cities like New York and London first and hardest. With their central business districts turned into ghost towns, big cities have suffered a blow from which they will need years to rebound. New York’s midtown and Wall Street still remain noticeably empty. Broadway theaters are still shuttered. San Francisco’s office district, home to many leading tech companies, stands similarly empty.

Dense cities suffered the most total fatalities largely because, as globally connected places, they were hit by the virus in its first, deadliest phase. Time and research have shown, however, that they are not uniquely vulnerable. By the fall of 2020, the second wave of infections and death had spread out across the country to smaller states and rural communities. While large urban centers and big states still have the highest overall death tolls, more sparsely populated places overtook them on a per-capita basis, with North Dakota logging the nation’s highest Covid death rate in the fall. The danger lies not in density per se, but in overcrowding: the number of people per square foot, as opposed to square mile. (See “Problem: Overcrowding,” New York City: Reborn, 2021.) A kind of “exposure density” thus seems key to the spread of the virus.

Yet superstar cities are not about to disintegrate. Cities are more resilient than in the past. The swift distribution of vaccines makes urban comebacks more likely, and far more rapid, than those of ancient cities rising after eruptions of the plague. London recovered from cholera, and New York added 2 million people in the wake of the Spanish flu. Berlin survived Hitler, World War II, and a half-century of partition. New York roared back after 9/11. Large global cities are incredibly resilient places. (See “The Enduring City,” New York City: Reborn, 2021.)

But part of the exodus from New York and San Francisco is rooted in factors that will outlast the virus and that were already in play earlier. Both cities lost people before the pandemic, largely because of their increasing unaffordability. The rate of growth in America’s biggest and most expensive cities began to decline as early as 2015. The pandemic has worsened the new urban crisis of rampant gentrification, high living costs, and class and racial division—all sharply dramatized amid the wave of protests and riots in the summer of 2020.

Read the rest of this piece at City Journal.

Richard Florida is a professor at the University of Toronto and a senior fellow at Heartland Forward. 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, a senior fellow at Heartland Forward, and Executive Director for Urban Reform Institute. Learn more at joelkotkin.com and follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin.

Photo: BlueRidgeKitties via Flickr, under CC 2.0 License.

Vuca Waymo

John Sanphillippo — Fri, 07 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

I’m prone to going down YouTube rabbit holes that take me to unexpected places. I recently eavesdropped on a Zoom conference where a woman in rural Idaho was strategizing on the global dairy trade. Turns out Mormon farmers are locked in a dog-eat-dog international competition over bulk milk commodities and specialty cheeses. New Zealand is their prime nemesis. Who knew?

She used a term I hadn’t heard before to describe the situation. VUCA. It’s a military acronym that’s been in circulation since the 1980s. Vulnerable, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. The bright clear lines are gone. The black and white is all gray. Standing still isn’t an option. But running is tricky if you bob and weave in the wrong directions. The viability of a dairy farm in small town America is oddly tied to events and policies on the other side of the planet - and they keep changing rapidly in unexpected ways.

You wouldn’t think a highly perishable product like milk would be exposed to global pressures. Isn’t milk produced and consumed more or less locally? Then I got a flashback to my time living in Hawaii. The highly productive and climactically varied agricultural land of the island chain could easily supply the small population with all its own food including milk. But Hawaii imports 90% of its food including 100% of its milk from 3,000 miles away.

Land and labor are expensive in Hawaii and the small family owned dairies that had existed all across the state in past decades were gradually consolidated in an attempt to achieve economies of scale. When farms are scattered and separated by water amalgamating operations has inherent limits. There’s only so much sharing of equipment and processing facilities that can be reached. And since there are only 1,400,000 people in the entire state the market is considered “too small” to support a home industry. Eventually corporate owners converted the territory to higher value uses and local milk production ended completely.

The milk that’s sold in shops in Hawaii is double pasteurized and imported by refrigerated ships from the mainland, typically from the port in Seattle. It’s at least two weeks old before it ever hits the shelf. If the milk is purchased on any of the outer islands it’s even older because it needs to make a second refrigerated barge voyage from the central port in Honolulu to the smaller ports on the periphery. A gallon (4 liters) of milk in Hawaii will generally cost north of $9. That same jug of milk in Idaho is closer to $2.29. I could go down another rabbit hole about the monopolies involved in the Hawaiian shipping industry and the Jones Act, but I’ll save that for another day.

Would anyone like to guess what the single largest Hawaiian crop is today? Back in the 1990s both sugar and pineapple production were shut down and moved to lower cost parts of the world - mostly in Latin America. Today seed corn is the big cash crop - twice as large as the next two crops (coffee and Macadamia nuts) combined. All that corn planted in Iowa and Nebraska each spring is grown in Hawaii by a German multinational chemical company and transported across an ocean and a continent to ensure a successful harvest in the fall. It makes total sense from a corporate accounting perspective. But like milk production the whole system seems… fragile.

Read the rest of this piece on Granola Shotgun.

Johnny Sanphillippo is an amateur architecture buff with a passionate interest in where and how we all live and occupy the landscape, from small rural towns to skyscrapers and everything in between. He travels often, conducts interviews with people of interest, and gathers photos and video of places worth talking about (which he often shares on Strong Towns). Johnny writes for Strong Towns, and his blog, Granola Shotgun.

America's Dispersing Metros: The 2020 Population Estimates

Wendell Cox — Thu, 06 May 2021 20:28:58 -0400

The big story among the nation’s major metropolitan areas (the now 51 of 55 over one million with more than one county) over the past decade has been the persistence of urban core out-migration and suburban in-migration.

The Nearly 5,000,000 Suburban Net Domestic Migration Advantage

Over the past 10 years, the net domestic migration (people movement from one county to another) into suburban counties has exceeded that of urban core counties by 4.7 million residents. The core counties have lost 2.7 million net domestic migrants, while the suburban counties have gained 2.0 million. Contrary to popular myth, there is no data to show that net domestic migration to the core counties has ever been greater than to the suburban counties in this century. As this decade has evolved, the suburban domestic migration gap has expanded to an average of nearly 700,000 in the last four years, compared to the first two years, when the gap was less than 200,000 (Figure).

The suburban gains are evident even in the fastest growing major metropolitan areas.

In Dallas-Fort Worth, core Dallas County lost 85,000 net domestic migrants over the past decade, while the suburban counties gained 585,000.

In Houston, core Harris County lost 82,000 net domestic migrants over the past decade, while the suburban counties gained 362,000.

Nashville’s core Davidson County lost 8,000 net domestic migrants, while suburban counties gained 183,000.

Even in fastest growing major metro Austin, two-thirds of the net domestic migration was to suburban counties, (234,000) rather than to core Travis County (113,000), which is home to more than 55% of the population.

In fast growing Charlotte, core Mecklenburg County — 42% of the metro — gained 72,000 net domestic migrants, while the suburbs added 186,000.

In Seattle, core King County, with 55% of the current population, gained 47,000 net domestic migrants, while the suburban counties gained 100,000.

In Portland, core Multnomah County, with one-third of the population, gained 20,000 net domestic migrants, while the suburban counties gained 108,000.

Even where there were large overall losses, suburban counties did better generally than core counties. In New York, the five-county core city of New York lost 1,035,000 net domestic migrants, while in the suburban counties, with nearly 60 percent of the population spread over three states, the loss was 605,000.

In Los Angeles, the core county and largest county in the nation, Los Angeles lost 745,000 net domestic migrants, while the adjacent suburban county (Orange) lost 105,000. This is despite the fact that Orange County is 30% as large as Los Angeles County.

In Chicago, core Cook County lost 494,000 net domestic migrants, while suburban counties lost 214,000, considerably less than their 45% population share.

Population Highlights: Metros Over 5,000,000

Dallas-Fort Worth gained the highest percentage, at 20.9% and most new residents, at 1.3 million residents, to reach 7.7 million. In the process, fourth-ranked Dallas-Fort Worth reduced the lead of third ranked Chicago from 3.0 million 1.7 million.

Houston had the second largest gain, at 1.2 million, with a 20.8% increase, despite a drop in growth during the oil market decline. Houston remains the fifth largest metro.

Phoenix passed the 5,000,000 mark, having grown 20.7% from the 2010 census to 2020 and added 900,000 residents. Phoenix ranks 10th, having passed Boston, San Francisco, Riverside-San Bernardino and Detroit during the decade.

Chicago was the only over 5,000,000 metro to have suffered a loss during the decade (54,000). But it seems now to have some company. All three largest metros lost during 2019-20. New York and Los Angeles declined by 0.6%, while Chicago lost 0.5%. Chicago, however, which appeared likely to reach megacity status (10 million) within a decade or so in 2010, may never get there, barring a further geographic expansion of the metropolitan area by adding additional counties.

Population Highlights: Metros From 1,000,000 to 5,000,000

The strongest growth among the 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 metros was in Austin, which gained 33.7%, also the largest percentage gain among the 55 metros over 1,900,000. There was also strong growth in Raleigh (25.6%), Orlando (23.7%), San Antonio (20.6%), Charlotte (19.6%), Nashville (19.1%), Jacksonville (18.0%).

Both San Francisco Bay Area major metros lost population over the past year, San Francisco, lost 0.6% and San Jose at 0.7%. In a New York Times analysis, Jed Kolko noted that San Jose had the third largest annual percentage loss in population among the metros with more than 500,000 population, with San Francisco having the fifth largest loss. After a comparatively strong rate of population growth in the early decade, San Francisco narrowly slipped behind much slower growing Los Angeles in the last year (minus 0.57% compared to minus 0.55%). By contrast, San Francisco grew 8.3% since 2010, while San Jose grew 7.3% respectively. Frequent population losers Pittsburgh (minus 0.4%) and Cleveland (minus 0.3%) suffered smaller 2019-2020 losses than the Bay Area metros.

Two metropolitan areas were added to the over 1,000,000 ranks in 2020, including Tulsa, which becomes Oklahoma’s second major metropolitan area and Fresno, which becomes California’s seventh and its third in the interior.

Honolulu, which seemed likely to reach 1,000,000, after creeping up to 993,000 in 2016, has since fallen back to 964,000. Major status could well elude the world’s largest mid-Pacific metro, and unlike Chicago, there is no prospect for adding additional counties, since Honolulu County occupies all of the island of Oahu.

Population Highlights: Metros From 500,000 to 1,000,000

Myrtle Beach, SC was the fastest growing metropolitan area between 500,000 and 1,000,000 population over the decade. At 36.6%, Myrtle Beach expanded fastest among the 111 metropolitan areas with more than 500,000 population.

There was also strong growth in Florida, with Cape Coral, gaining 27.8% and Lakeland (23.7%), sandwiched between Orlando and Tampa-St. Petersburg and now a part of the Orlando combined statistical area (CSA). Sarasota also gained 21.7%.

Mountain state metros also grew strongly. Provo, a part of the Salt Lake City CSA, gained 25.9%, while Boise slipped over 750,000, growing 24.9%.

Fayetteville, AR (549,000), home to the University of Arkansas, as well as behemoths Walmart, Tyson Foods and J.B. Hunt gained 24.7%, which must not be confused with virtually the same population Fayetteville, NC (529,000), which is also growing faster than average, at 10% for the decade.

Charleston, SC gained 23.3%.

America's Dispersing Metros

In his New York Times piece, Kolko notes that: “State decennial counts have diverged from previously published state estimates, illustrating limitations of estimates, but also raising concerns about the decennial count.”

But even when the final metropolitan area figures are in, the overall story is likely to be little changed. “The latest population estimates show that, even before the heightened dispersion that appears to have occurred during the pandemic, the suburban dispersion that really began about 1920, and has been heightened since 1945 continues apace and, contrary to conventional wisdom of the past decade, seem to have plenty of room to grow.

Population and Domestic migration results are summarized in the table below.

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.

Photo: Bank of America Corporate Center in Charlotte, NC-SC, one of the nation’s faster growing metropolitan areas (by author).

Back to the article

US Metropolitan Areas Over 500,000 Population

2020 Census Bureau Population Estimates

With Core v. Suburban County Net Domestic Migration for 55 Metros over 1,000,000

		Population (000s)			Net Domestic Migration (000s)
	Metro	2020	2010-20	2019-20	Total	Core	Suburban
1	New York, NY-NJ-PA	19.124	1.2%	-0.56%	(1.640)	(1.035)	(0.065)
2	Los Angeles, CA	13.110	2.2%	-0.55%	(0.850)	(0.745)	(0.018)
3	Chicago, IL-IN-WI	9.407	-0.6%	-0.50%	(0.708)	(0.494)	(0.024)
4	Dallas-Fort Worth, TX	7.694	20.9%	1.58%	0.501	(0.085)	0.085
5	Houston, TX	7.154	20.8%	1.29%	0.280	(0.082)	0.046
6	Washington, DC-VA-MD-WV	6.325	11.9%	0.43%	(0.165)	0.025	(0.030)
7	Miami, FL	6.173	10.9%	0.13%	(0.238)	(0.320)	(0.006)
8	Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD	6.108	2.4%	0.05%	(0.179)	(0.105)	0.003
9	Atlanta, GA	6.088	15.2%	1.00%	0.268	0.054	0.018
10	Phoenix, AZ	5.060	20.7%	2.14%	0.481	0.405	0.018
11	Boston, MA-NH	4.878	7.2%	0.04%	(0.130)	(0.062)	(0.013)
12	San Francisco, CA	4.697	8.3%	-0.57%	(0.085)	(0.024)	(0.034)
13	Riverside-San Bernardino, CA	4.678	10.7%	0.77%	0.117	(0.026)	0.016
14	Detroit, MI	4.304	0.2%	-0.35%	(0.184)	(0.165)	(0.009)
15	Seattle, WA	4.019	16.8%	1.03%	0.147	0.047	0.006
16	Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI	3.657	9.7%	0.48%	0.008	(0.011)	0.001
17	San Diego, CA	3.332	7.7%	0.06%	(0.081)	Single County
18	Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL	3.244	16.5%	1.37%	0.332	0.116	0.030
19	Denver, CO	2.991	17.6%	0.89%	0.204	0.065	0.006
20	St. Louis,, MO-IL	2.805	0.6%	-0.01%	(0.089)	(0.044)	(0.001)
21	Baltimore, MD	2.800	3.3%	-0.13%	(0.069)	(0.071)	(0.002)
22	Charlotte, NC-SC	2.684	19.6%	1.67%	0.258	0.072	0.026
23	Orlando, FL	2.639	23.7%	1.19%	0.195	0.046	0.017
24	San Antonio, TX	2.591	20.9%	1.59%	0.235	0.120	0.015
25	Portland, OR-WA	2.510	12.8%	0.71%	0.129	0.020	0.010
26	Sacramento, CA	2.375	10.5%	0.47%	0.071	0.018	0.003
27	Las Vegas, NV	2.316	18.7%	1.76%	0.218	Single County
28	Pittsburgh, PA	2.309	-2.0%	-0.37%	(0.036)	(0.032)	0.000
29	Austin, TX	2.295	33.7%	3.02%	0.337	0.113	0.034
30	Cincinnati, OH-KY-IN	2.233	4.5%	0.34%	(0.019)	(0.032)	0.004
31	Kansas City, MO-KS	2.173	8.2%	0.54%	0.027	(0.007)	0.003
32	Columbus, OH	2.139	12.5%	0.63%	0.053	0.010	0.006
33	Indianapolis. IN	2.091	10.7%	0.85%	0.051	(0.035)	0.012
34	Cleveland, OH	2.044	-1.6%	-0.25%	(0.082)	(0.088)	0.002
35	San Jose, CA	1.971	7.3%	-0.71%	(0.153)	(0.158)	0.001
36	Nashville, TN	1.961	19.1%	1.44%	0.176	(0.008)	0.022
37	Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA-NC	1.780	3.8%	0.35%	(0.061)	(0.025)	0.001
38	Providence, RI-MA	1.624	1.4%	0.04%	(0.039)	(0.037)	0.002
39	Jacksonville, FL	1.588	18.0%	1.67%	0.146	0.022	0.019
40	Milwaukee,WI	1.578	1.4%	0.01%	(0.068)	(0.079)	0.002
41	Oklahoma City, OK	1.425	13.8%	1.09%	0.074	0.016	0.008
42	Raleigh, NC	1.420	25.6%	2.01%	0.161	0.116	0.008
43	Memphis, TN-MS-AR	1.349	2.5%	0.17%	(0.050)	(0.059)	0.003
44	Richmond, VA	1.303	9.8%	0.73%	0.043	0.010	0.005
45	New Orleans. LA	1.272	6.9%	-0.14%	0.006	0.019	(0.003)
46	Louisville, KY-IN	1.269	5.5%	0.22%	0.011	(0.015)	0.003
47	Salt Lake City, UT	1.240	14.0%	0.76%	0.004	(0.006)	0.002
48	Hartford, CT	1.201	-0.9%	-0.27%	(0.074)	(0.062)	(0.001)
49	Buffalo, NY	1.126	-0.9%	-0.24%	(0.033)	(0.026)	(0.001)
50	Birmingham, AL	1.092	2.9%	0.09%	(0.005)	(0.024)	0.004
51	Grand Rapids, MI	1.081	8.8%	0.44%	0.011	0.001	0.001
52	Rochester, NY	1.067	-1.1%	-0.29%	(0.050)	(0.039)	(0.001)
53	Tucson, AZ	1.061	8.3%	1.14%	0.035	Single County
54	Tulsa, OK	1.006	7.3%	0.71%	0.016	0.005	0.002
55	Fresno, CA	1.001	7.6%	0.31%	(0.024)	Single County
56	Honolulu, HI	0.964	1.1%	-0.99%	(0.089)
57	Omaha, NE-IA	0.954	10.3%	0.58%	0.006
58	Worcester, MA-CT	0.946	3.2%	-0.05%	(0.026)
59	Bridgeport-Stamford, CT	0.942	2.8%	-0.21%	(0.058)
60	Greenville, SC	0.933	13.2%	1.21%	0.070
61	Albuquerque, NM	0.924	4.1%	0.52%	(0.006)
62	Bakersfield, CA	0.901	7.4%	0.27%	(0.023)
63	Albany, NY	0.879	0.9%	-0.16%	(0.019)
64	Knoxville, TN	0.878	7.7%	1.03%	0.055
65	McAllen, TX	0.875	13.0%	0.92%	(0.025)
66	Baton Rouge, LA	0.859	4.0%	0.14%	(0.020)
67	Sarasota, FL	0.855	21.7%	1.99%	0.163
68	New Haven CT	0.852	-1.2%	-0.22%	(0.055)
69	Columbia, SC	0.847	10.4%	0.83%	0.037
70	Allentown, PA-NJ	0.846	3.1%	0.24%	(0.005)
71	El Paso, TX	0.846	5.2%	0.45%	(0.056)
72	Oxnard, CA	0.841	2.2%	-0.33%	(0.031)
73	Charleston, SC	0.820	23.3%	1.82%	0.103
74	Dayton, OH	0.809	1.2%	0.09%	(0.015)
75	Cape Coral, FL	0.791	27.8%	2.40%	0.143
76	Greensboro, NC	0.776	7.2%	0.50%	0.020
77	Boise, ID	0.770	24.9%	2.71%	0.107
78	Stockton, CA	0.768	12.1%	0.84%	0.025
79	Colorado Springs, CO	0.754	16.8%	0.87%	0.042
80	Little Rock, AR	0.747	6.7%	0.47%	0.007
81	Lakeland, FL	0.745	23.7%	2.70%	0.108
82	Des Moines, IA	0.708	16.7%	1.07%	0.042
83	Akron, OH	0.701	-0.3%	-0.25%	(0.018)
84	Springfield, MA	0.696	0.4%	-0.28%	(0.034)
85	Ogden, UT	0.691	15.8%	1.22%	0.021
86	Daytona Beach, FL	0.680	15.2%	1.55%	0.101
87	Winston-Salem, NC	0.680	6.1%	0.51%	0.024
88	Poughkeepsie, NY	0.679	1.2%	-0.05%	(0.024)
89	Madison, WI	0.670	10.7%	0.72%	0.017
90	Provo, UT	0.663	25.9%	2.39%	0.029
91	Durham, NC	0.653	15.7%	1.08%	0.038
92	Syracuse, NY	0.646	-2.5%	-0.41%	(0.043)
93	Wichita, KS	0.644	3.3%	0.47%	(0.020)
94	Toledo, OH	0.642	-1.5%	-0.18%	(0.029)
95	Augusta, GA-SC	0.614	8.7%	0.67%	0.021
96	Melbourne, FL	0.608	12.0%	1.24%	0.073
97	Jackson, MS	0.589	0.3%	-1.03%	(0.026)
98	Harrisburg, PA	0.582	5.9%	0.70%	0.005
99	Spokane, WA	0.575	11.6%	1.15%	0.039
100	Chattanooga, TN-GA	0.570	7.9%	0.84%	0.030
101	Scranton, PA	0.553	-2.0%	-0.27%	(0.012)
102	Modesto, CA	0.550	6.9%	0.06%	(0.003)
103	Fayetteville, AR	0.549	24.7%	2.41%	0.059
104	Lansing, MI	0.548	2.5%	-0.18%	(0.020)
105	Lancaster, PA	0.546	5.1%	0.14%	(0.006)
106	Portland, ME	0.543	5.7%	0.58%	0.021
107	Youngstown, OH-PA	0.531	-6.1%	-0.65%	(0.022)
108	Fayetteville, NC	0.529	10.0%	0.26%	(0.023)
109	Lexington, KY	0.520	10.2%	0.52%	0.012
110	Myrtle Beach, SC	0.514	36.6%	3.43%	0.137
111	Pensacola, FL	0.512	13.9%	1.50%	0.044
Net domestic migration data is for 2010-2010.
Derived from US Census Bureau estimates

Could COVID Exodus Speed the Heartland Revival?

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 27 Apr 2021 20:28:58 -0400

Over the past two decades America’s largest urban areas enjoyed a heady renaissance, driven in large part by the in-migration of immigrants, minorities and young people. But even as a big-city dominated press corps continued to report on gentrification and displacement, those trends began to reverse themselves in recent years as all three of those populations started heading in ever larger numbers to suburbs, sprawling sunbelt boomtowns and smaller cities and out of the biggest ones.

That shift preceded the COVID pandemic, but has rapidly accelerated with the expansion of remote work, which has undermined the economic basis for high-end urban and post-industrial economies. Meanwhile, the severe lockdowns Democratic governors and mayors favored devastated the service and small business economies that had provided sustenance to immigrant and minority entrepreneurs and workers.

The same “canaries in the coal mine” that spurred America’s urban renaissance have been leaving its big cities in growing numbers since 2014, notes demographer Wendell Cox. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago have all begun to lose population while people have flocked to new employment hubs like Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, Columbus and Nashville that have led the way in terms of both overall new jobs and high-end business and professional service jobs.

Nowhere is this shift more evident than with immigrants. The share of the foreign born settling in big coastal “gateways” has plunged from 44 percent in 2010 to barely 35 percent in 2019. Foreign-born populations, notes Cox in research for the think tank Heartland Forward, stagnated or even declined in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago as they surged in Houston (over 25 percent growth), Dallas-Ft Worth (30 percent) Charlotte (nearly 40 percent) and Nashville (a remarkable 44 percent).

Houston, in fact, is now the most diverse major metropolitan area in the country. In 1960, Harris County, which includes Houston and many of its suburbs, was 70 percent white, non-Hispanic and 20 percent African American. Today, the county's total population is 31 percent white and non-Hispanic, 42 percent Hispanic, 19 percent Black and 8 percent Asian. The share of foreign-born Houstonians now approaches one-fourth of the population—almost twice the average for the nation’s 50 most populous metros.

More surprising still has been the equally rapid move of immigrants to smaller cities such as Fayetteville, Ark., Knoxville, Tenn,; Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Springfield, Mo., and Fargo, N.D. The fastest growth in foreign-born populations has been in areas with traditionally low immigrant concentrations. Where the foreign-born population grew by 10 percent nationally in the last decades, in states like Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina and the Dakotas it has expanded by 30 percent.

Racial minorities, too, are heading increasingly to the sunbelt boom towns, the south and to smaller cities. The surges in Latino, Asian and African American growth are not in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, or the Bay Area, according to an analysis by Wendell Cox for the Urban Reform Institute, but in Atlanta, Boise, Salt Lake City, Phoenix and Las Vegas.

Again, economics is a key factor. Middle-class job creation has been generally stronger in these communities and, due to less regulation and lower taxes, costs are lower. African-American real incomes in Atlanta are more than $60,000, compared to $36,000 in San Francisco and $37,000 in Los Angeles. The median income for Latinos in Virginia Beach-Norfolk is $69,000, compared to $43,000 in Los Angeles, $47,000 in San Francisco and $40,000 in New York City. The highest Asian median household incomes are in Raleigh, Jackson, Fayetteville (AR-MO) and Austin.

Read the rest of this piece at Daily Beast.

Photo: Brian Stansberry via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.

Telework: Huge Greenhouse Gas Reductions Per Statistics Canada

Wendell Cox — Mon, 26 Apr 2021 20:28:58 -0400

Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced as much as 8.6 megatonnes (metric tons) if “all potential teleworkers would work from home most of the time,” instead of physically commuting (traveling to and from work). The analysis was performed by Statistics Canada, the national statistics and census office. As the April 22, 2021 Statistics Canada announcement indicates, “A transition to telework might lead to a non-negligible reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.” In other words, telework could result in substantial greenhouse gas emission reductions.

According to Statistics Canada, “This represents 6.0% of the direct GHG emissions from Canadian households in 2015 and 11.0% of their emissions attributable to transportation that year.”

The Potential for Telework

Before the pandemic, it is estimated that 43% of Canadian workers had jobs that could be performed at home (a worker holding “a job that could plausibly be done from home”). Before the pandemic seven percent worked at home, but there remains a 36 percentage point “unused” potential.

However, the potential is much greater in the larger census metropolitan areas (CMAs) because the office jobs concentrated there lend themselves best to telework. For example, the overall potential is 55% in the Ottawa-Gatineau CMA, where the national capital is located, compared to the pre-pandemic estimate of six percent. The overall potential is and 51% in Toronto, the nation’s financial center, compared to the pre-pandemic level of seven percent.

The overall potential for telework also exceeds 45% in the Montréal, Quebec, Calgary, Halifax, Hamilton, Vancouver and Victoria CMAs. Among the top 20 CMAs, only Saskatoon, Kelowna, St. Catharines-Niagara and Windsor have an overall potential less than 40%. The lowest potential is in the automobile manufacturing center of Windsor, across the river from Detroit. Manufacturing has comparatively little potential for telework (Figure 1).

Obviously, converting such a large share of commuters to telework would reduce traffic and traffic congestion substantially.

Commuter Tine Savings

But it’s not just emissions but also quality of life that improves. Statistics Canada, which collects journey to work in its national censuses every five years, estimates the average time daily (both ways) that new teleworkers would save by working at home rather than physically commuting to work at 55.3 minutes.

The largest reductions would be in the Oshawa CMA, located just outside the Toronto CMA and the Toronto CMA, at 75.7 minutes and 72.3 minutes daily. These workers would spend more than six hours less weekly in traffic commuting to work. Workers in Montréal, Halifax and Vancouver would spend at least an hour in their daily commutes by teleworking. Workers in Calgary, Edmonton and Hamilton (like Oshawa, adjacent to the Toronto CMA) would gain at least 50 minutes daily by teleworking.

In five CMAs, the gain would be less than 40 minutes daily, including Sherbrooke, Saskatoon, Windsor, Kelowna and Regina, which would have the smallest gain at 35.3 minutes (Figure 2).

Former users of light rail and commuter rail would save the most time by teleworking rather than traveling to work, at 111.8 minutes daily --- nearly two hours. The smallest reduction in travel time would be among those who walk, at 28.5 minutes. Commuters using bicycles, motorcycles, scooters and mopeds would save about 45 minutes daily. Bus riders would save an average of 87 minutes daily, while subway and elevated riders would save 93 minutes daily. Light rail and commuter rail passengers would save nearly two hours (Figure 3). These time savings would provide opportunities for greater leisure and other activities more valued than traveling from here to there.

Less Transit Commuting

One result of eliminating the work trip and its attendant greenhouse gas emissions would be to reduce transit ridership, especially to the largest central business districts (downtowns). Nationally, Statistics Canada estimates that full conversion to telework, where feasible would reduce transit commuting by 51.8%.

Transit commuting would drop the most in Ottawa-Gatineau, at 61.8%. A drop of 61.3% was estimated for the Oshawa CMA. In the Toronto and Montréal CMAs, with the two largest central business districts in the nation, the reduction would be approximately 55%, while greater than 50% reductions would be experienced in the Quebec and Calgary CMAs. Vancouver, Halifax, and Winnipeg would have transit commuting reductions of more than 45%.

These stronger potential losses reflect the reality in Canada --- that transit is about downtown (also called the central business district). In larger metropolitan areas, especially those that developed strong CBDs before World War II, transit carries a much larger share of commuting to downtown work locations. This can represent 50% or more of total transit commuting in the metropolitan area). The office jobs that are more concentrated in the CBDs, with their higher transit commuting share, can be more readily shifted to remote work. This contributes to the higher transit commuting loss predicted.

The smallest transit commuting reductions would be in Windsor, at 25.8% and Kelowna, at 23.8%. This is likely attributable to their smaller than average share of jobs that can be performed remotely (Figure 4).

The Potential for Reducing GHG Emissions and Related Benefits

As would be expected from such an assessment, Stats Canada suggests a number of caveats, but concludes:

“Nevertheless, the reductions in GHG emissions documented in this study provide a first Canadian estimate of the direct potential environmental gains associated with a transition to full telework capacity.

“Because there are several inherent limitations to the calculations of these figures, these findings are best interpreted as providing a useful starting point for quantifying the impacts of transitioning to a remote economy, rather than providing final and uncertainty-free estimates of these impacts.”

Nationally, it is estimated that that travel by automobile to and from work would be reduced by 35 million kilometers annually (22 million miles). This would reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions by from 7.3 to 9.9 megatonnes, with a midpoint of 8.6 megatonnes, which Statistics Canada uses as its principal estimate.

In this effort, Statistics Canada has provided ground-breaking analysis that shows the environmental potential of telework for the whole nation. But there are additional advantages. Greater telework seems likely to improve worker productivity. Workers pay less in fuel and maintenance costs for vehicles. They have more time to do things that they value more than unnecessarily traveling between a residence and a separate work location.

The inevitable reduction in traffic volumes and traffic congestion of increased telework seems likely to lead to improved economic performance across the nation. It’s a great opportunity if Canada, as well as other countries, seize upon it.

A Statistics Canada infographic summarizes the results of the analysis.

Photograph: Centre Block, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa (by author).

The Cleveland Joke

Richey Piiparinen — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 20:28:58 -0400

I grew up on a Rust Belt street in a Rust Belt city: Colgate Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. The street had an alley. It had working-class kids born to working-class parents. Life on the street wasn’t idyllic. But that’s not how life is, particularly in Cleveland. The city can be exceptional in its realism. “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans,” said playwright Tennessee Williams. “Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

I remember my neighbor’s house, green with aluminum siding. The Mills family lived there. Mr. Mills, a Kenny Rogers lookalike, came up from West Virginia for a job in the mills. But by the mid-1980s the family left, moving to the bungalowed-suburb of Middleburgh Hts. Their American Dream was Cleveland’s American nightmare. By 1990, the city’s population declined by nearly 40% from its peak. The loss was due to folks like the Mills leaving, coupled with a growing absence of people moving in.

The lack of people arriving couldn’t be blamed on an unaccustomedness with Cleveland. Throughout its history, the city never lacked for press, both the shaming kind and the lauding kind. But it was the shame that stuck. And it’s the shame that persists.

Cleveland’s shiniest badge of dishonor came from a 1969 piece in Time magazine called “America’s Sewage System and the Price of Optimism”. “Almost every great city has a river,” it began. “The poetic notion is that flowing water brings commerce, delights the eye, and cools the summer heat. But there is a more prosaic reason for the close affinity of cities and rivers. They serve as convenient, free sewers.”

The story would go on to highlight a small fire a few months prior on Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River. “[The Cuyahoga] oozes rather than flows” the piece read. A photo was shown of firefighters using water to put out water on fire. And while the picture Time used was not even from the fire in 1969 — the one shown was from a fire on the Cuyahoga back in 1952 — it was the optics that mattered, the visual conveying that Cleveland was a place that commits unholy acts...

Read the rest of this piece at RicheyPiiparinen.Medium.com.

Richey Piiparinen studies the life of Rust Belt cities at Cleveland State. Co-Founder, Rust Belt Analytica. Director, “Life After Rust”. Husband, father, Clevelander.

Florida Downtown Commutes Fall the Least from COVID, Recover the Most

Wendell Cox — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 20:28:58 -0400

Mass transit may have taken the biggest hit from Covid-19, declining by 55% in the New York urban area, 43% in Los Angeles and 57% in Chicago, but car commutes also suffered. The latest INRIX Global Traffic Scorecard finds that US vehicle traffic to downtowns (central business districts) also declined by a substantial 44% in the pandemic year of 2020. According to Bob Pishue, an INRIX traffic analyst: “COVID-19 has completely transformed when, where and how people move. Government restrictions and the continued spread of the virus led to shifts in travel behavior seemingly overnight,” adding that “Morning commutes in cities across the world went without delay as people reduced auto and transit travel to offices, schools, shopping centers and other public spaces.”

There has been a good side to this reduction, which led to a “reduction in congestion has resulted in quicker commutes for essential workers, more reliable deliveries and streamlined freight movement, all of which are vital to the economy, ”Pishue further reported that “We expect downtown trips will continue to lag suburban and rural travel through 2021.”

Downtown Commuting Losses

INRIX provided downtown data for 25 US urban areas, and the one place where downtowns did best was in Florida. The sunshine state’s downtown economies held up the best. The smallest drop in downtown commuting from February 2020 to February 2021 was in Tampa-St. Petersburg, where travel to downtown Tampa declined 16%. Downtown travel declined 18% in Miami, 23% in Orlando, 26% in San Diego and 27% in Atlanta. By comparison, the average vehicle trip loss for the 25 downtowns was considerably larger, at 43% (Figure 1).

Portland, Oregon suffered the largest loss over the same period of time, at 66%. Portland was closely followed by San Francisco, with a 64% loss. The Washington (DC-VA-MD) urban area had a loss of 60%, followed by Detroit at 59% and Boston at 56% (Figure 2).

Downtowns in the nation’s three largest metropolitan areas also suffered significant losses in vehicle trips (Figure 3).

The largest downtown, in New York had a loss of 48 percent, worse than the 25 metro average of 43%. This loss was considerably less than many others, such as the Florida downtowns noted above. However, vehicle trips are not nearly so important in New York, where more than 75% of downtown commuting is by transit, rather than by car. The transit losses have been more severe, especially on the long distance commuter rail lines, which continue to operate at more than 75% losses, while the subway does little better at more than a 60% loss, as of April 16. The New York metro has the highest percentage of its employment in downtown (among the major metropolitan areas), at 20.2 percent.

The second largest downtown, in Chicago, also lost 48 percent of its vehicle trips. Downtown Chicago’s transit market share is also strong, at 46% (better than any other major CBD outside New York, San Francisco, Boston and Washington). Like New York, Chicago’s commuter rail ridership fell even further, more than 90 percent. Chicago has one of the largest downtown employment shares among the major metros, at 12.5%.

The Los Angeles metro, which trails only New York in population has a small downtown area for its size and lost a smaller 34% of its vehicle trips. Comprising only 2.6% of employment, downtown Los Angeles has a metropolitan employment share that is about one-eighth that of New York and one-fifth that of Chicago (Figures 4 & 5). Downtown Los Angeles has far less transit commuting than in the other two largest metros, with a rate of 23%. This is more than two thirds below New York and about one-half that of Chicago.

Downtown Commuting Recoveries

As economies have begun to open up, the three urban areas in which downtown oriented traffic had the least loss over the past year also had the largest recovery in traffic from April 2020 to February 2021.

Tampa-St. Petersburg recovered 79% of its downtown traffic from April to February. Miami recovered 76%, while Orlando experienced a 68% recovery. Atlanta recovered 67% of its traffic. St. Louis had the fifth best recovery, at 63% (Figure 6).

The smallest recovery was in Portland, which also had the largest decline (above) up only 14% from April to February, far worse than the other 24 metropolitan areas. More than automobile traffic has declined. Oregon’s largest newspaper, The Oregonian, reported an 80 percent drop in downtown holiday foot traffic over the holiday season compared to last year, which it attributed to the effect of remote work and protests.

San Francisco and Washington had the second and third worst recovery at 26% and 28% respectively. These two urban areas also had the second and third largest traffic volume over the past year (Figure 7).

The Challenge for Downtowns

INRIX summarized the challenges for downtown:

“Downtown areas experienced large decreases in trips throughout the day, as working from home, restaurant, entertainment, fitness and other brick-and-mortar closures, along with limits on gatherings, had an outsized effect in the densest parts of each region.”

Recoveries are likely to take longer in the downtown areas:

“Downtowns, the hardest hit areas by the pandemic due to the densification of people, employment, office buildings, restaurants and entertainment, are projected to be last to recover during the re-emergence period, lagging suburban and rural travel throughout 2021.”

This is not just a US phenomenon. INRIX noted similar international trends in the first two months of 2021 (Figures 8 & 9). A just released article in The Pulse notes similar trends in Australia’s downtowns provides a broad analysis of broader economic impacts.

To be sure, downtowns everywhere will recover from their nadir. But the much of the exodus of work away from the densest employment centers, the largest downtowns, seems likely to continue to some extent for the foreseeable future.

Photo: Downtown Tampa, Greatest sustained employment during the pandemic and the greatest recovery via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.