Urban Issues

How Managerial Aesthetics Explain Why Cities Can't Authentically Market Themselves

Aaron M. Renn — Thu, 18 Aug 2022 20:28:58 -0400

Have you ever noticed that there’s nothing more generic than a “local” coffee shop? As Orianna Schwindt wrote for New York magazine about the unbearable sameness of cities:

I was in a non-chain coffee shop in Columbia, South Carolina. I was on a mission to the cities and towns closest to the geographic center of each state, and this was only stop No. 6 of 50, but I remembered seeing the same lights in coffee shops in Bend and Portland in Oregon, and innumerable others I had frequented while living in New York and the Chicago area.

This one small observation opened up the floodgates. I noticed the same kind of person was behind the counter: young and tattooed and bespectacled. The same kind of patrons: young and tattooed and bespectacled, clacking away on MacBooks. The WiFi passwords were all some cutesy variation on “coffee culture”: !Java!, TheGreatBambeano, that sort of thing. I couldn’t stop noticing. I’d go on to see the same in Colorado Springs, in Fresno, in Indianapolis, in Oklahoma City, in Nashville.

And it wasn’t just the coffee shops — bars, restaurants, even the architecture of all the new housing going up in these cities looked and felt eerily familiar.

Despite the obsession with “local” today, it seems every city is trying its hardest to make itself as generically hipster as humanly possible.

This is also how they sell themselves. Every city marketing video is basically the same. This is an older one from Lincoln, Nebraska that is a particularly clear version of this.

Frankly all of them are some variation on this same theme. The newer ones are only different in that they now tend to show two to three times as much diversity as actually exists in these places. They are almost all extremely cringe.

Why is this? Why can’t cities actually emphasize their uniqueness? Why is that that while they boast about how unique they are, their presentation is invariably generic?

I’ve had a number of theories over the year. One is a sense of shame and lack of self-confidence, that is, cultural cringe. Another one is the effect where those who are on the outside hoping to get into the cool kids club always try harder to do what the cool kids are doing. Still another is that locals have a lot of emotional associations with scenes of their own city, and so can’t appreciate how an outsider lacking any personal connection will view it.

These probably all play a role. But Benjamin Mabry’s essay on managerial aesthetics opens another window on to this.

The aesthetics of the local coffee shop or microbrewery, ones are so standard issue that they might as well be a franchise, are managerial aesthetics. It is “local” detached from any genuinely local self-presentation and co-opted into just another cosmopolitan brand.

Read the rest of this piece on Aaron Renn Substack.

Aaron M. Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst, consultant, speaker and writer on a mission to help America's cities and people thrive and find real success in the 21st century. He focuses on urban, economic development and infrastructure policy in the greater American Midwest. He also regularly contributes to and is cited by national and global media outlets, and his work has appeared in many publications, including the The Guardian, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Photo: Kelly via Pexels.

Homeowner’s Greatest Property Right is Single-Family Zoning

Douglas Newby — Wed, 17 Aug 2022 20:28:59 -0400

Some Confuse a Homeowner’s Greatest Property Right With How Many Uses the Homeowner can Utilize for Their Home

A homeowner’s greatest property right is not how many uses a homeowner can use their home, but neighborhood protection from uses not beneficial to single-family homes.

Dallas is Losing Homeowners

The city of Dallas is losing homeowners while this critical population moves further away. The health of Dallas is at risk as the number of homeowners in the city is declining and city becoming, like many elsewhere, essentially one of renters.

Short-Term Rentals (STRs), Neighborhood Apartments, Transience, and Instability Drive Homeowners Out of Dallas

It is both common sense and statistically true that homeowners prefer to live next door to other homeowners. This was first brought to my attention doing research for my Master’s Thesis, Economic Proposals to Promote Reverse Migration and to Revitalize an Inner City Neighborhood, in 1976 by Walter B. Bruggeman, in The Journal of Economics and Business, Volume 27, II, Page 41. Since then, as a residential real estate broker, I have heard hundreds of times homebuyers tell me they do not want to live next to an apartment house or complex, and renters say, they prefer to live in an apartment that is next to a homeowner rather than an apartment complex. If you want to rid the city of them, I insert density, transience, and short-term rentals. Any time a short-term rental goes in next door or on the block, there is a greater chance the homeowner will sell their home and move away from Dallas to safer, more stable communities. When a homeowner moves out, there’s a good chance they will sell to a short-term rental investor who will rent most likely to a short-term tenant. At the end of the day, as a result of STRs, there will still be fewer homeowners in Dallas. Dallas should be protecting and nurturing homeowners and homeowner’s greatest property right, not threatening them and ultimately destroying single-family Dallas neighborhoods with short-term rentals.

Dallas is Losing Population

Dallas is the strongest city in the country and the population in the Dallas region is booming, but the city of Dallas is losing population. In the Wall Street Journal article How Can Big Cities Get Us to Live There (Again)?, Justin Lahart cites the Brookings Institution’s census data that shows 42 of 48 core urban counties, including Dallas, lost population from July 2020 to July 2021.

Why Are People Leaving Dallas?

People are leaving the city of Dallas not because they do not like the world-renowned museums, Nasher Sculpture Center, celebrated restaurants or the fabulous people that live here. People leave Dallas for cities, suburbs, and towns that have neighborhoods that are more stable, safer, greener and more homeowner friendly.

“Between 2010 and 2020, the suburbs and exurbs of the major metropolitan areas gained two million net domestic migrants, while the urban core counties lost 2.7 million people.” Dallas needs to offer more of the single-family home appeal of suburbs, not less.

Renters also Prefer to Live Next Door to Single-Family Homes

Homeowners aren’t the only residents desiring to live next to homeowners. Renters also want to live next to homeowners. Every time a neighborhood is disrupted by another apartment or short-term rental, the attractiveness and quality of life of the entire area go down.

Single-Family Home Neighborhoods Add to Overall Quality of Life in Dallas

People love walking by and admiring the architecturally significant and historically significant home that architect John Allen Boyle designed in Highland Park.

One of most attractive single-family neighborhoods in the U.S. is Highland Park. Highland Park is known for protecting homeowner’s greatest property right – single-family zoning. Highland Park draws people, both homeowners and renters, from nearby Dallas neighborhoods to walk, run or ride their bikes through the tree-lined streets, enjoying the beautiful views of the architecturally significant homes and gorgeous parks.

Since Highland Park does not have any short term rentals, one can often ride their bike down the street without seeing any cars parked on the curb.

Dallas Single-Family Home Neighborhoods are a Magnet for Attracting People to Stay in Dallas or Move to Dallas

Whenever I have a friend or client that is visiting Dallas and I am giving them a wide overview of —Dallas neighborhoods, from estate homes in Preston Hollow to architecturally significant homes in Greenway Parks, they always remark to me how clean the city is. I explain the reason for this is that Dallas still has so many close-in neighborhoods in all price ranges that are zoned single-family. The city of Dallas should do everything possible to nurture these single-family home neighborhoods and not disrupt them.

Why Would Anyone Want Apartments or Short-Term Rentals in a Single-Family Home Neighborhood?

Knowing the importance of single-family home neighborhoods to Dallas, why would anyone want to threaten these neighborhoods with short-term rentals, apartments or rooming houses? The answer is simple. Those proposing short-term rentals in residential neighborhoods are motivated by ideology or short-term profits, rather than the long-term health of the neighborhood.

Here are four types of supporters of additional apartments and short-term rentals.

Short-Term Rental Investors

Short-term rental investors also know that renters prefer renting in a single-family home neighborhood. The short-term rental property owners want to economically benefit from the lovely, safe homeowner neighborhoods that allow them to get a huge rent premium for their short-term rentals.

Short-Term Rental Owners Realize They have a Depleting Asset

Short-term rental owners realize that an STR investment is like investing in an oil well that is a gusher — spewing money at first, but eventually depleted. If a single-family home neighborhood like Northern Hills are filled with short-term rentals, the desirability of the neighborhood decreases, as do the rents, because homeowners and renters prefer to live next to single-family homes, not STRs.

Further, short-term renters are harder on properties than homeowners; Short-term renters are more likely to flush a diaper down a toilet, not drip the faucets during a hard freeze causing the pipes to break and massive water damage, not rushing back to close windows during a sudden rainstorm, wearing bicycle cleats on hardwood floors or scraping floors when moving around furniture, because short-term renters have no ownership interest or even the interest of a long-term tenant; as a result short-term rental houses deteriorate faster than single-family homes. Once the neighborhood or the house deteriorates past a certain point, the short-term rental owner can sell their property to a lower rent operator or tear down the house and sell to someone that will build a new rooming house, permitted as a single-family home, but with 10 rooms better suited for short-term rentals. Having received an ample return on their money in a few years, the short-term rental investor can just move on. They have no interest in the future of the neighborhood.
Density and Rental Advocates Generally Oppose Homeownership

Adding density whether it is a new apartment complex, ADU, or a short term rental, never improves a neighborhood.

Density and rental house advocates generally oppose homeownership. Sure, this group generally owns homes themselves, as do their friends; however, density advocates prefer Dallas to be a city of renters. Fifty years ago, nationally acclaimed Dallas urban planners and even preservationists were touting “mixed-use zoning” over single-family zoning. Then, 15 years ago, international designers were brought to Dallas to join Dallas planners advocating “gentle density,” adding apartments to single-family homes. Five years ago, ADUs (Additional Dwelling Units) were the rage with planners and housing officials. Now, the anti-homeownership group is calling for more density and elimination of single-family homes “equitable zoning” and “affordable housing.” Equitable zoning is really just another name for multiple dwelling units built on a single-family lot. In California, Oregon and Minneapolis, they still call it single-family zoning, but they allow four separate dwellings on small city lots.

The Anti-Homeownership Pro-Density Group Likes Short-Term Rentals

The anti-homeownership group likes short-term rentals because homeowners are replaced with absentee owners who carve up the homes into apartments for short-term rentals. This pro-density group thinks homeownership is wasteful, inequitable and does not conform to their view of city planning and the future of cities.
Fixed-Rail Mass Transportation Advocates Oppose Single-Family Homes

It has long been known that urban fixed-rail mass transportation can only be successful if the neighborhood has enough density. As a result, the fixed-rail advocates want to eliminate single-family zoning and replace homes with apartments and short-term rentals so more people will use a fixed-rail mode of transportation.

19th Century Technology of Fixed-Rail in Dallas Cannot be Saved by More Apartments

Building more apartments in modern cities to support the 19th century technology of fixed-rail trains makes as much sense as it does to build more apartments to support more fixed-line telephone booths on every corner. People in the 21st century do not want to go to a fixed location telephone booth to make a call. People do not want to go to a fixed location, at a fixed time, to travel to a fixed destination. People in this century value freedom and flexibility. Uber, autonomous vehicles, and a host of other innovations make urban fixed rail in a modern city look silly and the mobility it offers anemic. By the way, everyone I have spoken to at North Texas Council Government, the Dallas City Council, or a DART Board Member, have been reluctant to tell me what is the cost per passenger mile for DART ridership. Wendell Cox, the Principal of Demographia, located in St. Louis MO-IL metropolitan area, calculates from DART documents that the DART cost per passenger mile in 2021 is $5.75. This is almost ten times more expensive than the $0.55 to $0.83 cost per average car vehicle mile. The cost per passenger mile in a car is even less than vehicle mile since many vehicles have more than one passenger. DART ridership has been further reduced in the last two months of 2022, which will indicate a trend of further increases in the cost per DART passenger mile. It is no wonder when the cost per passenger mile for mass transit in Dallas is so high, those involved with DART have been reluctant to share this figure.

Fixed-Rail Mass Transit Ridership is Down 60% - Rail Riding Into Oblivion

Randal O’Toole, a transportation analyst, in his article Transit’s Existential Crisis, published both in NewGeography.com and The Antiplanner, cited statistics that support the idea that it is time to end public funding for fixed-rail in Dallas and other cities. He brought up that New York transit ridership is down 60% from pre-pandemic levels. Further, he discusses a November 2020 report from McKinsey & Co. suggesting that transit ridership would recover to as high as 92% of pre-pandemic levels by 2025, but now they have revised that number downward to 70%, and that is looking too optimistic, as ridership has been flat or declining since February. New York has always been the poster city for how fixed-rail mass transit works. It is now not working in New York and other less dense cities across the country. Many still argue that regardless of the cost, mass transit is an environmentally friendlier way to travel. Even this idea is a hopeful myth. Randal O’Toole also points out that New York transit is thought to produce far more greenhouse gases per passenger mile than many private automobiles. He asks the question I do: “Why should we continue to fund transit when ridership is down by 60% from pre-pandemic levels?”
Subsidized Apartment Developers Oppose Single-Family Zoning

Developers want as many opportunities as possible to receive government money to build apartments. These developers get their tax credits, subsidies and profits on the front-end of their investments. Developers play on the trending “affordable housing” and “equitable zoning” mantra so they can continue to be subsidized to build “low and mixed-income” apartments. Few stable neighborhoods, black or white, rich or poor, wants low or mixed-income apartments in their neighborhood. The subsidized developers usually abandon their projects after several years once the developer has obtained a profit and their projects have fallen into disrepair. That’s why retired city planner and architect Darryl Baker has sued the city for dumping low-income and mixed-income apartments in Southern Dallas City Council District 3 where the neighborhood desires quality single-family homes to be built.

Adding Density to Single-Family Neighborhoods Has an Ugly Racist Past

Now the city of Dallas is dumping low and mixed-income apartments into Southern Dallas neighborhoods, when Southern Dallas homeowners want a homeowner’s greatest property right – single-family zoning. Author Howard Husock, in his book, The Poor Side of Town and Why We Need It, describes how early white leadership of cities and towns protected white neighborhoods with single-family zoning but allowed apartments and other harmful uses in black single-family home neighborhoods. The hidden truth is that redlining was as much as the neighborhood having apartment zoning and bad uses than the skin color of residents. The added density and bad uses also caused these neighborhoods to deteriorate more, just like the density and bad uses made expensive white neighborhoods, like Munger Place in Old East Dallas, deteriorate and end up redlined. Whether density was added in other cities in the 1800s, or when the Dallas City Council under Mayor Wallace Savage in 1950 blanket-zoned Old East Dallas multi-family, the results were the same. Adding density destroys neighborhoods.

Single-Family Zoning Saves Neighborhoods

Dallas Mayor (1976-1981) Robert Folsom, who campaigned on property rights, recognized that this 1950 multi-family zoning mistake in Old East Dallas could only be corrected by returning this deteriorated neighborhood back to single-family zoning. He positively responded to the super-majority of the 2,000 property owners in a 100-block area petitioning to have the entire area rezoned single-family. Once the zoning was changed to single family, FNMA made their first inner city loans in the country here, and there has since been a billion dollars’ worth of single-family home renovation in this 100-block area.

Is Dallas Still a Property Rights City?

Dallas has a long history as a city that values and protects property rights. This is the reason the city leadership passed the single-family zoning in Old East Dallas over the objection of the planning department and the non-homeowning Mayor Pro Tem, who were promoting density. The mayor and the city council responded to the desires of the property owners. Will the current mayor and city council respond to the desires of the 500,000 homeowners who desire to keep their neighborhoods zoned single-family without the intrusion of short-term rentals?

Does any Dallas Neighborhood have a Super-Majority of Homeowners Requesting STRs to be Allowed in Their Neighborhood?

If City Council desires to allow STRs in a residential neighborhood, then the Council should, at the very least, require a super-majority of the property owners in that neighborhood to make a written petition request for their neighborhood to be rezoned STR. If 45 years ago we could obtain written mailed-in petition requests from 70% of the property owners to change the zoning back to single-family from multi-family zoning, then STR advocates should meet the same high bar. They should be required to get 70% of the property owners in a neighborhood to request their preference to live in a neighborhood of STRs instead of single-family homes.

Single-Family Zoning, Homeowner’s Greatest Property Right, Has Been the Secret Sauce of Dallas Success

Dallas neighborhoods are clean and green because they are predominately zoned for single-family homes. Protecting our single-family home zoning in Dallas will be out of step with the rest of the country, but right in step with our past and future Dallas success.

In 1905 Munger Place was created on the foundation of single-family zoning and the requirement that every home was architect designed. The disastrous effect of the multi-family rezoning in the 1950’s was reversed in the 1970’s with rezoning the neighborhood back to single-family. The future of Dallas neighborhoods is still single-family zoning.

Douglas Newby is a national award-wining real estate broker who writes about real estate, cities, architecture and Organic Urbansim. He gave the TEDx Talk Homes That Make Us Happy. You can read more about him and his work on his website Architecturally SignificantHomes: DougNewby.com and on his blog DouglasNewby.com.

Lead photo: A homeowner’s greatest property right is the certainty of having a single-family home next door. Single-family zoning is the most important property right, as it protects homeowners from bad uses next door or in the neighborhood. In the 1970’s, this block was 100% short term rentals which made it classified by the city as the worst neighborhood in Dallas. Single-family rezoning reversed the trend of destruction., by author.

Irvine: A National Role Model

Joel Kotkin — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 20:28:58 -0400

Irvine provides a solution for transportation, energy and diversity issues bedeviling the country. The master-planned city represents the modern version of a 19th-century garden city – a largely self-contained and environmentally sustainable community.

Critically, Irvine is not an outlier, but a role model for other communities – from The Woodlands outside Houston to New Albany in central Ohio – that are creating a new and more sustainable reality for households and families. Indeed, in discussions with other developers and planners in my research, Irvine is repeatedly cited as an example of the kind of community they want to create.

The pandemic made such communities, and suburbs in general, more attractive, according to Pew Research Center. Indeed, in the first half of 2021, home sales in the nation’s 50 largest planned communities exceeded expectations, with growth expected to exceed 35%. Robert Schottenstein, CEO of Columbus-based M/I Homes, Inc., a builder with 15 projects in the Midwest, Southeast and Texas, explains, “This is a flight to safety and security. The millennials are getting older, and they are transitioning as they start families.”

A sustainable, ‘post-suburban’ future

Clearly, what happens here does not just affect its locality. Irvine epitomizes a historical shift from the suburban “bedroom” model of the 1950s – seen in communities like Lakewood in the Los Angeles metro area and the Levittowns in Pennsylvania and on Long Island that provided inexpensive housing for workers in nearby plants and downtowns.

In the 1960s and 1970s, new developments, of which Irvine was an exemplar, began to create more balanced, self-sufficient communities, with lots of nearby employment and cultural and retail centers. These include Valencia in north L.A. County, The Woodlands in Texas, Reston in Virginia, and Columbia in Maryland (though none enjoy Irvine’s proximity to the Pacific Ocean). These communities were evaluated by Harvard urban planning professor Ann Forsyth, who noted that they fulfilled most of today’s New Urbanists’ underlying aim – and did so on a grand scale (italics ours), exhibiting “cutting-edge planning and design strategies.”

Today, this model is spreading rapidly. In Houston alone, new communities such as Cinco Ranch Bridgeland, Sienna Plantation and Sugar Land – along the Grand Parkway, which connects the metropolitan area with a major jobs center – represent the cutting edge of American urbanism in the 21st century.

A greater environmental consciousness

Much of this is taking place on the urban fringe: 43 of the 50 highest-growth counties in combined statistical areas (CSAs) of more than 500,000 residents are almost without exception far from the historical downtowns. With ample park space, room for remote work and considerable amenities, places like Irvine and its increasing imitators fit well with a greater consciousness about the environment.

New developments tend to use innovative materials and sophisticated systems for controlling energy and water use, which could make these new communities even more environmentally sustainable. And with their ample open space, these areas are ideal for enhancing biodiversity through thriving populations of insects, birds and mammals.

The big challenge facing us today is not, as some urbanists have suggested, eliminating such communities. Instead, the challenge is how to employ the lessons of Irvine and apply them across the breadth of the country, even if, to natives, the original model will likely always be the best.

This piece first appeared at Irvine Standard.

Joel Kotkin is the author of The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class. He is the Roger Hobbs 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.

The Importance of Fare Enforcement

Randal OToole — Mon, 15 Aug 2022 20:28:59 -0400

According to the New York City police department, subway crime is up 53 percent so far in 2022 compared with 2021. Since ridership grew by 64 percent in that time period, that means that crime rates per rider have actually fallen, but that doesn’t reassure many people.

Nationwide, Federal Transit Administration data show that, through the end of March 2022, transit crime (not counting suicide) is 44.4 percent more than the same period in 2021. This is almost exactly the same as the increase in ridership, which was 44.9 percent. Former riders who are reluctant to return to transit may be justified in not doing so.

Many crimes are directed at transit workers. Assaults on New York City transit operators happen an average of once per day. More than three out of four transit workers say they are afraid to come to work. Transit unions recently sent a letter to Pete Buttigieg and FTA administrator Nuria Fernandez asking them to take more actions to increase transit security, though the real actions must be taken by transit agencies.

BART rider Darrell Owens has a proposal to reduce crime: Decriminalize fare enforcement. BART, he says, spends $2.6 million a year on fare enforcement that results in the collection of less than $30,000 in fares. Sounds like a pretty poor benefit-cost ratio.

The purpose of fare enforcement, however, is not to collect more fares than the cost of enforcement. It is to send a message to potential criminals that they are likely to get caught. If they can’t get away with minor crimes such as evading fares, they will be less likely to try to get away with major crimes such as assaults, robberies, and attempted murder.

This is known as the broken windows theory (which name comes from the notion that a building with broken windows is more likely to be broken into than one that is well maintained). While the theory is controversial, there is clear evidence that lack of fare enforcement is correlated with transit crime. As I demonstrated in March, the highest rates of transit crime are associated with light rail, which has the least fare enforcement of any transit mode. The only other mode of transit that comes close is trolley buses, and that is solely due to high crime rates on San Francisco trolley buses — which, like light rail, has minimal fare enforcement. Unlike most other buses, the drivers of San Francisco trolley buses don’t check for fare payments as people board.

Owens worries that fare enforcement can quickly turn into police brutality. But police actions aren’t necessarily the best way to enforce fares. Instead, turnstiles in subway stations should be replace with gates that can’t be crossed without paying a fare. Fences and gates should also be placed around light-rail stations and stops. Once people pass through these gates, they should feel as safe as they do at home or anywhere else. Fare enforcement on buses should be done by the drivers, as has been done for decades except recently in San Francisco and a few other cities.

People should also be protected from falling or being pushed onto tracks by screens between the platforms and the tracks. Doors in the barriers would open only when a train is in the station. This is the way most airport rail systems work as well as many rail systems in other countries.

Such barriers and screens will cost money. Despite the infrastructure bill, rail transit still has a huge backlog of maintenance and repair projects, many of which won’t be fixed with money in that bill. All of which raises the question: is rail transit worth it? Outside of New York City, the answer is mostly no. Even in New York City, the value of rail transit is becoming questionable as more people work at home and the job density of Manhattan seems to have permanently declined.

This piece first appeared at The Antiplanner.

Randal O'Toole, the Antiplanner, is a policy analyst with nearly 50 years of experience reviewing transportation and land-use plans and the author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future.

Photo: MassDOT, via Flickr under Public Domain. In 2009, MBTA could say that crime had reached a 30-year low. Yet FTA data show that, by 2021, the MBTA suffered almost 19 times as many “security events” as in 2009: 94 vs. 5.

Why Cities Are Important to the Church's Mission

Aaron M. Renn — Fri, 12 Aug 2022 20:28:59 -0400

Cities are important for the church’s mission because, increasingly, that’s where the people are. Until very recently, humanity lived almost exclusively in villages or rural environments. As recently as 1910, only 10 percent of the world’s population lived in cities. Today it’s over 50 percent urban, and that number may rise to 75 percent by midcentury. Paul Romer describes this radical change as human beings going from living in packs like wolves to living more like ants or termites.

The shift is primarily happening in the developing world. Africa is now urbanizing faster than any other continent. According to the UN, half of global population growth by 2050, about 1.2 billion people, will be in Africa. By 2050, 21 percent of the world’s population will live in African cities. China and India have also been urbanizing. Over 1 billion people around the world now live in urban slums, more than the combined population of the United States and Europe. As missiologist Ray Bakke said, “It’s no longer a grass thatch roof from a jungle. [Cities are] the new mission field of the future on all six continents.”

The Great Commission pushes us to reach every people group and location on the planet, but the sheer weight of demographics argues for a more urban mission field today. For every 100 million new urban residents, we need to launch 10,000 new urban churches just to hit a ratio of one church for every 10,000 people. This means we’ll need to start tens of thousands of new urban churches in the coming decades.

But What About America?

Urbanization looks different when we’re studying the United States. If you follow the Census Bureau’s classification, our country has long been filled with city dwellers—reaching 50 percent urban in 1920 and sitting at around 80 percent urban today. But the “80 percent urban” figure is misleading as the bureau says that any place with 2,500 or more residents is urban. Someone living in John Mellencamp’s “small town” home of Seymour, Indiana, is now technically a city dweller.

Also, when most hear the word “urban,” they think of higher-density areas with multifamily housing and mixed-use developments. They think of walkable streets laid out on a grid-like street plan that are accessible by transit. This description doesn’t characterize the places where most Americans live. The combined 2020 population of the traditionally urban cities of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Boston, Seattle, Washington, Baltimore, and Miami is only about 20 million. If you add in urban districts in cities like Indianapolis (where I live) and even college towns, America’s urban population climbs to between 30 and 40 million, only about 10 to 15 percent of the country. Most Americans live in the suburbs, which grew up in a sprawling pattern because of the automobile.

Read the rest of this piece on The Gospel Coalition.

Migratory Millennials - Marching from the Metropolis

Rob Burgess — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 20:28:59 -0400

As stories of new migration patterns and movement across Australia’s cities and regions abound, updated population data shows that what initially appeared to be a pandemic-induced blip is instead the beginning of a reversal of a long-term trend. Emergent patterns of internal migration, together with the rise, and living preferences of the Millennial cohort, now present a genuine opportunity to address the seemingly unsolvable housing dilemma that has burdened the nation for two decades.

By 2019, the concentration of people in Sydney and Melbourne reached a level never seen in the nation’s history. With 40% of all Australians living in one of our two largest cities, the effects of this unique phenomenon were many, including, of course, the impact on house prices, with both cities consistently appearing near the top of the world’s most expensive housing surveys. The onset of the pandemic, however, saw the established patterns of population growth that shaped Australian cities in recent years, especially Sydney and Melbourne, come to a grinding halt.

Confronted with ongoing uncertainty regarding overseas migration and the expectation that it will continue to lose more people interstate than what it will gain, Melbourne remains in the throes of a demand shock, as it grapples with a downward shift in the dynamics that underpinned its rapid rate of growth over the last 15 years.

Nonetheless, new patterns of population continue to emerge.

Though a direct challenge to the beneficiaries of recent growth patterns, emerging population trends have the potential to deliver significant social and economic gains, if managed proactively. Understanding the characteristics of those who are moving, how old they are, where they are going, and the type of dwellings they are seeking is the basis for ensuring these gains are delivered.

Having already accounted for the variety of covid-inspired population shifts of the last two years, just released population estimates have again been revised upwards for each of Melbourne’s Growth Areas, its peri-urban locations (excluding the Shire of Macedon Ranges), and the State’s regions. Add to this the unprecedented number of approvals for detached dwellings in Victoria in 2021 (48,000), despite significant population loss, the living preferences of a growing number of people suddenly look vastly different from those of the recent past.

Conversely, population estimates in all metropolitan local government areas have again, been adjusted downwards, dispelling the assumption of continued, consistent growth otherwise applied to justify housing policy frameworks, service planning, and infrastructure investment.

Combined with the take up of technology, including online retail, telehealth, and remote work, this new reality has been foisted upon the agencies responsible for planning for and providing the necessary social and physical infrastructure for our communities. At the very least, the growth assumptions relied upon by these agencies should be reviewed as a matter of priority.

Recent covid-inspired relocations aside, emergent population trends signal the arrival of a new chapter in the nation’s ongoing demographic story, with the headline being the staggering growth in the number of 35-44-year-olds.
As the age group in which family formation is greatest, and with a strong preference for detached dwellings, it is the 35-44-year-old cohort that will generate the greatest demand for housing in coming years.

Comprising the Millennial generation, where, how, and in what, the 35-44-year-old cohort will choose to live, is a defining question for contemporary Australian society. Few, if any social surveys will reveal as much about the direction of the nation, as the collective choices of the Millennial cohort in deciding whether to remain propertyless, lifelong renters, or pursue the great Australian dream, increasingly, somewhere in the regions. Representing the highest proportion of regional movers in the 12 months to March, for many Millennials, the dream remains well and truly alive.

In an already highly concentrated nation, the vast majority of Victoria’s population – heading towards 80% - resides within the boundary of metropolitan Melbourne. Whatever benefits this unique spatial phenomenon is deemed to deliver, improving deteriorating affordability, has not been one of them.

Multiple parliamentary inquiries, various Federal and state government incentives, monetary policy, and strategic planning frameworks have all failed to solve the affordability problem. An accident of the pandemic, together with a structural-demographic shift has however presented a genuine opportunity in which practical improvement to the housing quandary can be achieved.

The continued convergence of health, demographic and economic factors will see non-metropolitan locations become increasingly attractive places to live, particularly for the family-forming Millennial cohort. A coherent, tailored policy response that closely monitors key demand drivers with the express purpose to ensure the delivery of the requisite supply of housing in the many, increasingly popular sub-markets across the state, is crucial to enabling this.

Criticised for their prolonged adolescence, breakfast selections, and all-around lifestyle choices, younger Australians maintain an overriding aspiration for home ownership. If in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the new reality presents a genuine opportunity to practically address the calamitous state of housing affordability, then surely, we are obliged to facilitate it.

Rob Burgess is a town planner with over 25 years of experience, having worked in both the public and private sectors. Applying evidence-based insights, Rob’s expertise lies at the intersection of population dynamics, town planning, and property markets. He is regularly engaged to undertake market research, provide strategic advice to clients, and sharing his thoughts on current and future trends. Rob is a Principal with Quantify Strategic Insights.

Transit's Existential Crisis

Randal OToole — Mon, 08 Aug 2022 20:28:59 -0400

In November 2020, a report from McKinsey & Co. to the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority predicted that transit ridership would recover to as high as 92 percent of pre-pandemic levels by 2025. Now McKinsey has revised that number downward to as low as 70 percent. Even that is probably optimistic considering that recent data indicate that New York subway ridership has been flat at least since February 2022, and has even declined somewhat since June.

More than in most cities, transit in New York depends on fare revenues. Before the pandemic, fares covered more than half the operating costs of New York City transit but only about a quarter of the costs elsewhere. A decline in ridership hits the city’s transit budget harder than almost anywhere else, so it’s no surprise that both national and local media are focused on the “fiscal cliff” that MTA is likely to hurdle over when it runs out of federal COVID relief funds, probably in 2024.

As the New York state comptroller noted in a recent publication, this is more than just a question of increased subsidies vs. reduced service. Instead, it is truly an existential issue for transit agencies nationwide.

Although transit agencies all over the country are quietly lobbying for tax increases to fund them despite low ridership, they are getting push back. The governor of Arizona vetoed such a tax increase for Phoenix transit early this month. The Central Ohio Transit Authority had proposed a ballot measure to increase taxes to support Columbus transit, but dropped it from the ballot when it was clear there was no support.

Meanwhile, transit crime is up 53 percent. Due to driver shortages and poor maintenance, transit has become increasingly unreliable. Having shut down the nuclear power plant that once provided much of New York City’s electricity, New York transit will probably be producing far more greenhouse gases per passenger-mile than many private automobiles, which was already true for almost all other transit agencies.

Given these and other factors, why would anyone want to ride transit? About the only answer many transit agencies have to this question is, “Let’s make it free!” Of course, that will require even more subsidies.

Instead of asking, “How do we fund transit when ridership is down by 60 percent from pre-pandemic levels?” voters and politicians need to ask, “Why should we continue to fund transit when ridership is down by 60 percent from pre-pandemic levels?” There is no good answer to this question.

This piece first appeared at The Antiplanner.

Chart image: In McKinsey’s study, scenario S1 assumes people will steadily return to working in offices while the much more likely S2 assumes many will continue to work at home at least three days a week. Neither is good news for New York City transit but S2 is particularly bad, especially since even it is probably optimistic.

Why Suburbia Will Decide the Future

Joel Kotkin — Sun, 07 Aug 2022 20:28:59 -0400

Welcome to the future of American politics. The US population is changing in major ways that will likely alter the balance in politics and economics to the advantage of Republican-leaning red states, as well as suburbs and exurbs across the country.

Recent census numbers spell out several critical shifts in the US population. These were evident before the pandemic but they have also been accelerated by it. Some regions are clearly ascendant, and others are fading. As the population shifts towards states in the south and the intermountain west, the political order will follow, as these places are set to gain more congressional seats and electoral-college votes for presidential elections.

The biggest population losses over the past year took place in three key states: New York, California and Illinois. Meanwhile, Florida, Texas, Arizona and South Carolina had the greatest gains. Virtually all the states with the highest economic growth, the fastest job growth and the highest fertility rates tend to lean to the GOP. These also tend to be more culturally conservative states.

The other major shift transcends state boundaries: America is becoming increasingly suburbanised. Suburbs account for about 90 per cent of all growth in the US’s metropolitan areas since 2010. Between 2010 and 2020, the suburbs and exurbs of the major metropolitan areas gained two million net domestic migrants, while the urban core counties lost 2.7million people.

We have seen an accelerated and marked decline in urban-core populations over the past two years, driven by the rise of online work, rising crime and worsening public health. There has also been a shift, particularly since the pandemic, to less congested, less regulated and less taxed places. Surprisingly, this even includes rural areas. The same goes for businesses, where investment in corporate real estate is moving away from dense urban areas.

These shifts in population are continuing rewrite the political map. In 1960, New York accounted for 45 electoral votes while Texas had 24 and Florida 10. In 2024, New York will be down to just 28, while Texas will get 40 and Florida will get 30. California, the one great blue-tilted megastate, still leads all other states with 54 votes in 2024, but this is down by one vote since 2020, due to below-average population growth.

The other big winners will be the suburbs, home to at least 40 per cent of all House seats. The political future will be particularly determined by the faster-growing suburbs of cities like Dallas, Houston, Austin, Phoenix, Nashville, Orlando and Tampa. But the suburban trend applies to blue states as well, with suburban growth easily outstripping the core urban counties in places like Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, New York and Washington, DC.

Most analysts agree that whichever party appeals most to suburban and exurban voters will be in the driving seat. For now, these demographic trends seem likely to help the GOP more than the Democrats.

Yet things are far from certain. Both the suburbs and red states are rapidly diversifying. And they are attracting more millennials, who are generally seen as holding more socially progressive views. The fact that the millennial generation is the largest in American history has led some analysts to prematurely proclaim that ‘progressives control the future’. You could see signs of this in the strong vote this week against abortion restrictions in Kansas. This was largely propelled by voters in Johnson County, a popular place for young families located across the river from the core of Kansas City, Missouri.

These results suggest suburban politics are fundamentally competitive. In 2018, the last Midterm elections, Democrats performed far better in the suburbs than in 2014, benefitting from a widespread disgust among suburbanites with Donald Trump’s behaviour and the increasing stridency of some of his supporters. In 2020, the so-called Democratic flip zone moved further out towards the exurbs. Joe Biden was able to win not just the big city cores, which are reliably Democratic, but also the suburbs. By one analysis, Biden won 51 per cent of the suburban vote, up from the 47 per cent that Hillary Clinton won four years earlier.

Read the rest of this piece at Spiked.

Photo credit: Chandler News via Wikimedia under CC 4.0 License.

Learning From Las Vegas: Liberace's Strip Mall

John Sanphillippo — Fri, 29 Jul 2022 20:28:58 -0400

For readers too young to have any memory of Liberace, in the 1950s and 60s he was one of the highest paid entertainers in the world. He had his own television show that rivaled “I Love Lucy” and he performed live at Carnegie Hall in New York and the London Palladium. He’s often dismissed as someone who appealed to women of a certain age and men of a certain persuasion. But whenever I see a rapper wearing heavy gold chains, diamond studs, garish watches, oversized rings, and extravagant furs stepping out of a ridiculously expensive car…. I see more than a little Liberace going on.

This was one of his many homes. If you’ve ever flown into Las Vegas International Airport you pretty much glided right over the roof. It’s super close to the main runway. My first impression? It looks like an Italian restaurant in New Jersey.

I recently saw the former home of Johnny Cash from the same Kennedy era time frame on a real estate listing site. It was a perfectly comfortable home, but like Liberace’s place it seemed underwhelming with its wagon wheel chandeliers and imitation wood beams hot glued to the kitchen ceiling. It was a little bit of Nashville in the hills of Southern California with a faux hacienda vibe and linoleum. Kitsch comes in many flavors.

Anyway, the Liberace Mansion is currently a private residence no doubt owned by someone who appreciates the distinctive aesthetic and provenance.

Around the corner are modest homes from the same period. It’s clear that for a long time these houses had declined and are only just recently turning over to new owners. As Vegas grew exponentially outward in every direction the lure of larger more up-to-date properties drew money and attention away from established neighborhoods. If these older places are lucky they get rediscovered every couple of generations and see new investment and care. Is the area tragically passé and a bad investment? Or is it convenient to culture and employment at a bargain price point compared to far flung subdivisions out on the suburban periphery? It depends on who you ask.

Directly across the street older homes are being scraped for new development. The University of Nevada is right across the road. The dirt has more value than the vintage buildings that sit on it. Traffic makes this a less desirable venue for single family properties. Commercial and institutional uses are pressing in.

Several properties on the block have been repurposed as social service facilities, youth outreach centers, women’s shelters, and housing assistance agencies. The point here is that over time places evolve and change. The Las Vegas of 1962 is gone and isn’t coming back.

Read the rest of this piece at 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.

Photos: by the author

Life Cycle of Black Urban Neighborhoods

Pete Saunders — Tue, 26 Jul 2022 20:28:58 -0400

Without a great deal of thought put into it, most urban observers can rattle off what can be considered a reasonable life cycle for neighborhoods – a growth phase, a stable peak or plateau, a period of decline, a phase of accelerated decline, then ultimately a chance at renewal. It’s a familiar pattern, not unlike the four seasons most of us experience every year. What distinguishes cycles in neighborhoods within and between cities is usually the height of their growth phases, the depths of their declines, and the overall duration of all cycles.

But Black urban neighborhoods in American cities seem to have a life cycle all of their own. The process in Black neighborhoods deserves keen understanding.

First of all, I think it’s important to note that the life cycle of Black neighborhoods usually starts well before any Black residents live in them. Indeed, in my view the growth phase of neighborhoods has almost always taken place without Black involvement. Historically the housing and commercial infrastructure of urban neighborhoods were created to appeal to specific market segments – working class laborers, office and administrative workers, upper middle class professionals. Such neighborhoods often had an immigrant or native component to them. However in 19th and 20th century America, that did not include Blacks, unless segregated areas were purposely developed to exclude Blacks from other parts of a city. Blacks have rarely gotten in on the ground floor of neighborhood growth.

After a certain period neighborhoods reach a level of stability. Whether they’re comprised of small workingmen’s cottages, walkup apartments or spacious homes, they reach a point when they’ve maximized their growth potential and the focus shifts toward maintenance. How long a neighborhood remains at this stable phase depends on who is permitted to live within it. There are neighborhoods that have been relatively stable for a half-century or more, because they continually appeal to and attract a market segment fairly consistent to what was attracted to it in its early days. But it’s often at this point that Black residents move in. But reactions to our arrival disrupts the trajectory of the cycle.

The Great Migration saw millions of Blacks move from rural locations in the South to urban neighborhoods across the nation. They were seeking the economic opportunity presented to them by the promise of well-paying manufacturing jobs, but they were also seeking the social opportunity to escape racial violence and dehumanizing second-class citizenship in the Jim Crow South. The economic importance of Blacks at the time was recognizable. But White society in Northern cities wasn’t any more interested in integration than their Southern peers.

Swift Transition

That created the “vacuum” – the White flight that precedes Black neighborhood residency, and continues to occur as Black neighborhood residency expands. This happens when a neighborhood reaches its peak, but there’s an uncertainty among White residents as to how long it will stay at that level. If White residents believe their stability is threatened, they’ll move – whether the move is viewed as a lure to greener pastures, or an outside force that compels them to do so.

My parents bought their first house, in Detroit, in the summer of 1968. I was almost four years old at the time and my sister was coming up on her first birthday. The house was a two-story, three-bedroom, one-bath brick Colonial style built in 1950. Probably about 1,800 square feet in size, with a half-finished basement. It was located on a 50-foot wide lot in a solid single-family residential neighborhood on the city’s Northwest Side. It’s still there.

Our house was one of maybe twenty on our Manor Street block. My parents told me we were the fourth, maybe fifth, Black family to move onto the block. If I remember correctly, they bought the house from another Black family that owned it for maybe five years or so. Being just short of four at the time I don’t recall many details, but I vaguely remember a White family living next door to us with a son about my age. I don’t remember any other White families from that time. What I do know is that by the time I started first grade two years later, there were no more White families on the block to remember, with only one elderly White couple across the street that remained through the ‘70s.

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.

Graph: Proposed public transit routes identified in the Detroit Future City Strategic Framework, a 50-year comprehensive plan, which came out in 2013. Of particular note are the 2030 density estimates made by the planners: the huge uncolored areas northeast and northwest of downtown were projected to have a density of 0-2 persons per acre, indicating near abandonment. Source: detroitology.com