Downtowns are back

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I imagine they're replacing the (in)famous parking lots with highrises.

No need to imagine. Here are some photos of the infamous parking lots as they are now.









All photos by “cityliving” on HAIF https://www.houstonarchitecture.com


Plus three new residential high rises on the north end of downtown. Photo mine.

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Re. Birmingham, it isn't great urbanity or anything, but it isn't quite as bad as depicted.

For the South, it has pretty good bones. There are upscale neighborhoods south of downtown that are quite substantial and charming. The area around UAB and the medical center is decent. Mountain Brook is a nice suburb. You can definitely live in Birmingham proper and be in a nice neighborhood. Of course the nice areas are segregated, conservative-leaning (even intown locations) and virtually all white. And if you're Catholic, or Jewish or nonreligious, you'll be an outsider. It's still Alabama.

Also, these comparisons are a bit silly bc some metro areas include a lot of near-empty land, and some don't. I suspect Birmingham isn't really massively sprawlier than other Southern cities, it just has slightly emptier fringe incorporated in the MSA.

I think Birmingham is more progressive than most of Alabama. Because of the coal/steel history, it has a fairly strong union backround, and many of the immigrants were from Catholic areas of Europe. Birmingham reminds me of a southern version of Pittsburgh, Appalachian foothills hilly. If I had to live in Alabama, it would be either Birmingham or Huntsville, which has the NASA science/engineering culture. Both cities are far enough north to have somewhat cold winters and fall colors.

[emathias]

I've lived in the River North neighborhood of Chicago for 17 years. It definitely has exploded in the time I've lived here. When I moved in there were two surface lots across the street from me on my block, now they've been replaced by 8 and 15 story buildings. Behind me there used to be a two story motel, now there's a 40 story apartment building.

Not all Chicagoans consider River North to be "downtown," but it is across the river from The Loop, so it's definitely adjacent to downtown at the least. In the past five years something approaching 2,000 units have been added within two blocks (approx 1/2 km) of me.

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

a local clevelander would have to tell you about those details. my guess is that the lakefront airport lacks the terminals and other infrastructure to make it feasible as a commercial passenger airport. but yes, it does take up an egregious amount of precious lakefront real estate right in the core of the city.

chicago once had a very similar general aviation airport on its lakefront just south of downtown called Meigs Field. after the city engaged in a decades long battle with state officials to close it, King Richard II infamously sent in bulldozers to literally tear up the runaway in the middle of the night roughly 2 decades ago in the name of "homeland security". today the former airport is now ~50 acres of additional publicly-accessible lakefront parkland called Northerly Island Park, and is also home to a 30,000 capacity outdoor concert venue.

yes cleveland burke lakefront airport is a general aviation airport, not a domestic airport. there are business, commuter and mail freight flights, general aviation, the annual air show, and ... that's about it. it's a well known waste of space, but it isn't going anywhere anytime soon. interestingly, both burke and hopkins, the major airport and oldest municipal airport in the world, have rail transit service, but unlike hopkins it does burke no good at all.

the missing element here in talking aviation services in metro cleveland isn't burke, it's akron-canton airport (cak). that is a true gem of a domestic airport that is actually a wonderful pleasure to use, yes i am serious (!). annual use has exploded since 2010, its been voted best small domestic airport, and it often has better budget flights that hopkins or columbus.

the dream is to continue to grow and connect canton-akron airport and cleveland via the cuyahoga valley scenic railroad (cvsrr) expansion. cvsrr is the small national park tourist railroad located midway and it could act as a kind of stealth commuter rail service someday. that would provide direct passenger rail service to all three area airports, so you could transfer from one to the other by rail, which would be quite impressive.

[Tom In Chicago]

Originally Posted by emathias

Not all Chicagoans consider River North to be "downtown," but it is across the river from The Loop, so it's definitely adjacent to downtown at the least. In the past five years something approaching 2,000 units have been added within two blocks (approx 1/2 km) of me.

I think it's fair to say that everything encompassing the 312 area code is "downtown" Chicago. . . which is basically everything in North Ave./Ashland/Cermak/Lake Michigan. . .

. . .

[locolife]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Downtown Phoenix




------------------------------ 2020 ------ 2010 ------ 2000 ------ 1990 ------ Growth ------ Density

Downtown --------------------- 12,896 ------ 8,643 ------ 7,981 ------ 8,721 ----- 49.2% ----- 8.3% ---- -8.5% ------- 5.2 km² --- 2,495.8 inh./km²

Phoenix MSA --------------- 4,845,832 -- 4,192,887 -- 3,251,876 -- 2,238,480 --- 15.6% --- 28.9% --- 45.3% -- 37,731 km²


Census tracts (4) match perfectly with the official definition of Downtown Phoenix. Growth there picked up later, in the 2010's only, in a moment the region slowed down considerably. I don't know how things are on the ground there, population is still low, but it looks promising regardless.

Things continue to look really promising in downtown Phoenix, there are currently over 4,000 additional residential units under construction, 400 hotel rooms under construction, and now over 200 bars/restaurants. The local Skyscraper page is impatiently awaiting the ground breaking for the new tallest, Astra which we we're given a date of 6/30/22 by the developer last week.

On the population count, Downtown Inc shows about 20K in DT PHX, if I had to guess the difference may be the approximately 12K ASU students who now attend classes and live downtown, they probably don't show up in the Census but I'm not 100% sure. I can tell you it feels like a lot more than 13K when you're out and about in the city.

I noticed the photo posted is uptown, not downtown which doesn't show any of the new growth.

https://dtphx.org/business/?gclid=Cj...hoCMxEQAvD_BwE

[Yuri]

Downtown Indianapolis



--------------------------------- 2020 ------ 2010 ------ 2000 ------ 1990 ------ Growth -------- Area -------- Density

Mile Square ------------------ 10,469 ------ 6,478 ------ 3,742 ------ 3,387 ------ 61.6% --- 73.1% --- 10.5% ------- 2.9 km² ---- 3,628.8 inh./km²

Downtown --------------------- 27,781 ----- 19,440 ----- 19,096 ----- 16,505 ------ 42.9% ---- 1.8% --- 15.7% ------ 14.8 km² ---- 1,874.7 inh./km²

Indianapolis Metro Area --- 2,058,839 -- 1,834,672 -- 1,607,486 -- 1,380,491 ------ 12.2% --- 14.1% --- 16.4% --- 9,101 km²


Census tracts shape didn't help me with Indianapolis, therefore I came up with two definitions, one too big (I call it Downtown) and one too small (Mile Square). Regardless, it's booming as it's happening everywhere.

Indianapolis metro area, with Columbus, is Great Lakes region boomtown. Not only their strong growth is expressive, but how it keeps going decade after decade.

[mcgrath618]

yuriandrade, did you ever end up doing this?

Originally Posted by mcgrath618

Could you expand the limits of Center City to include everything from Girard to Tasker (with the same E/W borders)? Philadelphia City Hall defines this as “Greater Center City,” and in 2018 estimated it to be more dense than Chicago (or for that matter, anywhere outside of Manhattan). It had ~174K residents in 2010.

It's okay if you haven't gotten around to it yet; I was just catching up on this thread and realized I could've saved some trouble if I'd just asked.

As thoughtcriminal said in another post, the borders as I just defined them were expected to break 200k this census, and I am interested to see if this is the case.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by mcgrath618

yuriandrade, did you ever end up doing this?


It's okay if you haven't gotten around to it yet; I was just catching up on this thread and realized I could've saved some trouble if I'd just asked.

As thoughtcriminal said in another post, the borders as I just defined them were expected to break 200k this census, and I am interested to see if this is the case.

I'll go back to Philadelphia eventually. Promise. For Los Angeles, for instance, I expand the list with central neighbourhoods counting 450k people.

Now I'm working with cities all over the globe and slowed down American numbers.

[mcgrath618]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I'll go back to Philadelphia eventually. Promise. For Los Angeles, for instance, I expand the list with central neighbourhoods counting 450k people.

Now I'm working with cities all over the globe and slowed down American numbers.

No worries! Really appreciate all the work you’ve done.

[Yuri]

Downtown Orlando



--------------------------------- 2020 ------ 2010 ------ 2000 ------ 1990 ------ Growth -------- Area -------- Density

Downtown ------------------------ 4,922 ------ 2,879 -------- 700 -------- 860 ------ 71.0% -- 311.3% -- -18.6% ------- 1.4 km² ---- 3,525.8 inh./km²

Orlando MSA --------------- 2,673,376 -- 2,134,411 -- 1,644,561 -- 1,224,852 ------ 25.3% --- 29.8% --- 34.3% --- 9.040 km²


I found Downtown Orlando, even though minuscule, surprisingly dense. And as it's growing incredibly fast, it will become even more dense, following Miami's trend.

Regarding the MSA, with all due respect to people there, it's beyond me to understand what's Orlando's appeal. I'm usually open to visit any place, but I'd pass even if was for free. Many people like though, hence its strong growth.

[Yuri]

Downtown Melbourne


Wikipedia

--------------------------------- 2021 ------ 2011 ------ 2001 ------ 1991 ------ Growth -------- Area -------- Density

CBD ------------------------------ 47,192 ----- 21,815 ------ 7,644 ------ 1,611 ----- 116.3% -- 185.4% -- 374.5% ------- 2.4 km² --- 19,912.2 inh./km²

Central City -------------------- 169,860 ---- 100,240 ----- 55,398 ----- ****** ------ 69.5% --- 80.9% --- ***** ------ 37.3 km² ---- 4,547.8 inh./km²

Melbourne --------------------- 4,901,863 -- 4,025,375 -- 3,382,772 -- 3,092,675 ------ 21.8% --- 19.0% ---- 9.4% --- 6,390 km²


To revive the thread, I decided to bring Melbourne, also with two definitions, one strict following the local statistical areas and a broader following the Australian LGAs.

Melbourne CBD surge seems even more impressive than the ones we've seen in the US. From 1,600 to 47,000 inh., with Manhattan's density. The broader area also grew very fast, with adjacent areas such as Docklands and Southbank. A true urban revolution.

And Melbourne, with the immigration boom, left the sluggish growth from the 1990's to grow much faster than the national average and closing the gap with Sydney.

[Double L]

Downtown Houston is going through a high rise residential boom and is in good shape. It has very good office space occupancy, the third largest theater district in the country, several sports stadiums, light rail, a grocery store, food halls, a historic district, an aquarium, great parks and any type of restaurant you can imagine. The only thing they haven’t been able to get off the ground yet is retail. There was an attempt to build an urban outdoor mall on a light rail stop with residential and hotel called green street but it wasn’t able to attract enough retailers. Now, there is another attempt to bring truly good retail downtown with a mall called post Houston.

[mhays]

I'm glad Downtown Houston is improving, but let's be real

It has very high office space vacancy. Inside the freeway loop is at 24.2% vacant per Friday's CoStar numbers. Absorption isn't that bad, considering, at only 404,000 sf negative in the past year.

At the time of the census, the residential population was tiny. The only non-sparse tract in density terms appears to be based on the jail population. The other two tracts had fewer than 9,000 residents or around 6,000 per square mile.

Downtown Houston is rising from a base with extremely little housing or hotel rooms. From that point it'll take additional booms to turn around. It'll be exciting to watch of course.

[Double L]

I didn’t know that about the downtown office occupancy rate. Several years ago it was 90% occupied. My initial guess is that it has been impacted by the pandemic. The downtown Houston population is 17,000 people.

[Don't Be That Guy]

I was recently in Chicago for work meetings - first time in two years, and downtown was dead. There's lot's of residential construction happening but hardly any people walking around during the work week. You could even get into restaurants without reservations, which you can't even do here in Pittsburgh nowadays.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by mhays

I'm glad Downtown Houston is improving, but let's be real

It has very high office space vacancy. Inside the freeway loop is at 24.2% vacant per Friday's CoStar numbers. Absorption isn't that bad, considering, at only 404,000 sf negative in the past year.

At the time of the census, the residential population was tiny. The only non-sparse tract in density terms appears to be based on the jail population. The other two tracts had fewer than 9,000 residents or around 6,000 per square mile.

Downtown Houston is rising from a base with extremely little housing or hotel rooms. From that point it'll take additional booms to turn around. It'll be exciting to watch of course.

Man if you only saw downtown Houston when I first moved here in the 90's; it was a barren post apocalyptic void with just buildings and some people on the streets between 8-5. It's night and day better now and yes, compared to other major cities, still way to go but let's take the win anyways.

Houston's economy has slid over the past couple of years so the vacancy might be a reflection of that. New development has virtually ground to a halt.

[mhays]

It's certainly on the upswing.

The 17,000-resident figure from 2020 was 9,000 plus the tract that appears to be all-jail with 8,000.

The CBD office market got down to 9.2% briefly in 2014, but has been at least in the 17s since 2017 and was over 20 in Q1 2020. There was a small jump in 2021, but it looks like oil is the main factor.

[Yuri]

Downtown Sydney


Wikipedia

--------------------------------- 2021 ------ 2011 ------ 2001 ------ 1991 ------ Growth -------- Area -------- Density

CBD ------------------------------ 31,499 ----- 25,021 ----- 14,393 ------ 3,504 ------ 25.9% --- 73.8% -- 310.8% ------- 4.3 km² ---- 7,342.4 inh./km²

Central City -------------------- 242,237 ---- 183,281 ---- 128,901 ----- ****** ------ 32.2% --- 42.2% --- ***** ------ 26.7 km² ---- 9,059.0 inh./km²

Sydney ------------------------ 4,959,107 -- 4,240,340 -- 3,767,030 -- 3,399,573 ------ 17.0% --- 12.6% --- 10.8% --- 4,567 km²


Same story for Sydney: Downtown is booming, be it in the strict or in the broad definition. Growth rate not as impressive as in Melbourne, but big nonetheless.

[IluvATX]

I always liked this thread. Keep ‘em coming Yuri. Do you have any info on Southeast Asia cities?