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How a ‘Golden Era for Large Cities’ Might Be Turning Into an ‘Urban Doom Loop'

How a ‘Golden Era for Large Cities’ Might Be Turning Into an ‘Urban Doom Loop’

Quote:

The past 30 years “were a golden era for large cities,” Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate and finance at Columbia Business School, wrote in November 2022: “A virtuous cycle of improving amenities (educational and cultural institutions, entertainment, low crime) and job opportunities attracted employers, employees, young and old, to cities.”

Scholars are increasingly voicing concern that the shift to working from home, spurred by the Covid pandemic, will bring the three-decade renaissance of major cities to a halt, setting off an era of urban decline. They cite an exodus of the affluent, a surge in vacant offices and storefronts, and the prospect of declining property taxes and public transit revenues.

Insofar as fear of urban crime grows, as the number of homeless people increases, and as the fiscal ability of government to address these problems shrinks, the amenities of city life are very likely to diminish.

With respect to crime, poverty and homelessness, Brown argued:

One thing that may occur is that disinvestment in city downtowns will alter the spatial distribution of these elements in cities — i.e. in which neighborhoods or areas of a city is crime more likely, and homelessness more visible. Urban downtowns are often policed such that these visible elements of poverty are pushed to other parts of the city where they will not interfere with commercial activities. But absent these activities, there may be less political pressure to maintain these areas. This is not to say that the overall crime rate or homelessness levels will necessarily increase, but their spatial redistribution may further alter the trajectory of commercial downtowns — and the perception of city crime in the broader public.

“The more dramatic effects on urban geography,” Brown continued,

may be how this changes cities in terms of economic and racial segregation. One urban trend from the last couple of decades is young white middle- and upper-class people living in cities at higher rates than previous generations. But if these groups become less likely to live in cities, leaving a poorer, more disproportionately minority population, this will make metropolitan regions more polarized by race/class.

In his November 2022 paper, “The Remote Work Revolution: Impact on Real Estate Values and the Urban Environment,” Van Nieuwerburgh writes:

Since March 2020, Manhattan has lost 200,000 households, the most of any county in the U.S. Brooklyn (-88,000) and Queens (-51,000) also appear in the bottom 10. The cities of Chicago (-75,000), San Francisco (-67,000), Los Angeles (-64,000 for the city and -136,000 for the county), Washington, D.C. (-33,000), Seattle (-31,500), Houston (-31,000) and Boston (-25,000) make up the rest of the bottom 10.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/30/o...es-future.html

Maybe someday I'll be able to afford to live in NYC if it becomes a dump again...

Quote:

Since March 2020, Manhattan has lost 200,000 households, the most of any county in the U.S. Brooklyn (-88,000) and Queens (-51,000) also appear in the bottom 10. The cities of Chicago (-75,000), San Francisco (-67,000), Los Angeles (-64,000 for the city and -136,000 for the county), Washington, D.C. (-33,000), Seattle (-31,500), Houston (-31,000) and Boston (-25,000) make up the rest of the bottom 10.

i wouldn't put one penny's worth of stock in those estimates.

the CB has been estimating big messy legacy cities incorrectly for decades now.

something is fundamentally wrong with the models and algorithms they use to compute these things, and yet they don't seem to ever bother adjusting them, despite all of the swinging and missing.

a professional ballplayer would start making adjustments to their swing if they had such a cold streak of striking out, but not the CB.

I mean, it's sure as hell true for SF, Portland, LA, and Seattle. Downtowns across all cities are a shell of what they were 4 years ago. It really sucks. Somehow Canada and Europe doesn't seem to have this phenomenon.

I mean, the population data they're citing has to be way off. The residential vacancy rate in Manhattan is lower now than pre-Covid. Apartment rents are at record highs. The parking situation has worsened. So how could there be 200k fewer households than pre-Covid? Aliens?

200k missing households would imply that Manhattan is some Mad Max-level dystopia, with tumbleweeds. You would have half-abandoned neighborhoods. There were 740k households in Manhattan in 2020, so now there are fewer than 540k, yet schools have the same population, retail rents have risen and residential vacancies have dropped? Huh?

Manhattan has a giant population of second-home owners, so I could see, peak-Covid, a number of prime neighborhoods temporarily half-empty, but that ended by Fall 2021, at the latest. The really rich neighborhoods are completely "normal" now. The Hamptons are back to a seasonal community.

This is going to scare all the suburban people who think the "big city" is bad!
-perfect time to finally get a condo in SF that's above the 15th floor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by destroycreate (Post 9802948)

Not quite.

Don't know about the other cities, but DTLA is more vibrant than ever, at least in the contemporary era.

SF's downtown is not doing quite as well, specifically the FiDi for obvious reasons and Union Square. Outside of these areas, within SF proper, the residential neighborhoods are back to pre-pandemic levels of activity, and in some cases, surpassed as new projects come online.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crawford (Post 9802951)

200k missing households would imply that Manhattan is some Mad Max-level dystopia, with tumbleweeds. You would have half-abandoned neighborhoods. There were 740k households in Manhattan in 2020, so now there are fewer than 540k, yet schools have the same population, retail rents have risen and residential vacancies have dropped? Huh?

you didn't hear???

apparently, everything north of the park fell into the hudson.

https://i.postimg.cc/59Z6FPCh/madhattan.png

Here in Pittsburgh, there's been basically a 100% recovery to pre-COVID conditions everywhere outside of Downtown proper. That is to say that all the upscale/gentrified/gentrifying neighborhoods have a robust property market (though it's softening a bit with interest rate hikes) and commercial storefront vacancy isn't notably different than it was prior to the pandemic.

Downtown is still in bad shape, though much better than a year ago. Around half as many office workers still than prior to the pandemic. The City seems to have forced out the homeless people who were camping in vacant storefronts, but there's still a lot of weird loiterers/seeming drug addicts all over the place in Downtown. I don't know if it's higher numbers than prior to the pandemic, but they're more visible with less normal people walking around.

The city is already moving towards streamlining residential conversion downtown, and there are hundreds of new units in the pipeline. It's never going to be what it was, but frankly most of the 50% who didn't come back were suburbanites who were only in the city because their job forced them to be. I don't see how a scenario where they're not forced to be somewhere they'd rather not be is actually a positive.

^ similar in the clev of course, except other way around maybe as downtown is doing very well overall and anytime anyone leaves an office for a hot minute it seems they want to turn it into residential, so they are ahead of pitts in that aspect.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crawford (Post 9802951)

Those delightful population estimates are valid for July 1, 2021.

Next month sometime we will get the state estimates for July 1, 2022. The District of Columbia will give us a direct check on urban rebound, and the New York state change should be largely from NYC itself, so another, more indirect data point.

An article talking about a 30-year long golden era of large cities, uses (incorrect) stats during pandemic time to declare they are over. What a trash.

This is based on mid-Covid numbers. How asinine.

As for Seattle, it's trending in the right direction. Housing construction is booming, vacancy rates are still pretty low despite that, the tents left the Downtown core when a new mayor was elected this year, Downtown retail openings are gaining steam, tourism was huge this summer... Somehow we also keep breaking ground on new office buildings (typically biotech-friendly ones) in the urban core...at least 11 during Covid off the top of my head, including a couple just starting now.

The expensive overrated cities are definitely getting a wake up call. Turns out ignoring cost of living for the last 20 years was a bad idea. And the pandemic made a lot of people realize their high cost cities were fleecing them, they can get 90%+ of their amenities in much cheaper metros. And nobody wants to spend time or do business in a downtown with tent cities and homeless everywhere.

I'd say Midwest cities besides Chicago and Minneapolis have mostly avoided the total chaos of the last 3 years. With the once in a generation cash infusion from ARPA plus the infrastructure bill, these cities and downtowns are about to look better than they have in a very long time. Really a new golden age for them.

Reality deniers will say this is all fabricated by right wingers, but in the real world- this is all true.

Cities are not likely to do as well from here on out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by homebucket (Post 9802964)

Not quite.
Don't know about the other cities, but DTLA is more vibrant than ever, at least in the contemporary era.

Yes, it's extremely vibrant. Mainly due to the thousands of mentally unwell, unhinged, unhoused drug addicts stabbing people in Target and such, living directly on the street or in tents all over the sidewalk. Vibrant, sure, but not in a good way.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bossabreezes (Post 9803260)

Reality deniers will say this is all fabricated by right wingers, but in the real world- this is all true.

The OP article is from the NYTimes, hardly a wellspring of right-wing proganda.

The critique here isn't the source, it's the fact that the conclusions are based on monumentally erroneous data.

While I didn't live in Chicago pre-Covid, the city sure seemed normal to me this past Summer based on all of my previous trips. Maybe 2021 was different, but overall, I felt like the city was just as vibrant this past Summer as any other Summer in Chicago.

Again - A total antidote.

Not necessarily erroneous, just the wrong data. Who TF doesn't know that mid-2021 was a temporary condition?

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhays (Post 9803307)

Not necessarily erroneous, just the wrong data.

Well, given the CB's atrocious track record with the big legacy cities, let's just say it's both. ;)

Quote:

Originally Posted by bossabreezes (Post 9803260)

Given Downtown LA behaved like this:

1990: 32,786
2000: 40,836 --- 24.5%
2010: 52,538 --- 28.7%
2020: 74,349 --- 41.5%

And we have a thread on the other section showing dozens and dozens towers rising up there, I don't see why you find it so outrageous someone saying Downtown LA is booming.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bossabreezes (Post 9803260)

Reality deniers will say this is all fabricated by right wingers, but in the real world- this is all true.

Cities are not likely to do as well from here on out.

Yes, it's extremely vibrant. Mainly due to the thousands of mentally unwell, unhinged, unhoused drug addicts stabbing people in Target and such, living directly on the street or in tents all over the sidewalk. Vibrant, sure, but not in a good way.

I'm sure in Miami Is any better with fathers getting killed in broad daylight in front or their kids by drug addicts.
Or face eating cannibals.