Sprawl is how much of the US provides new housing, and so it's interesting to ask the opposite question: Which cities are actually building new housing in walkable neighborhoods? Here is a study published this week by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley that looked at exactly this. What they did was divide all US neighborhoods into five categories based on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per resident in 2023.
The categories:
Very Low VMT - 12 miles per person per day
Low VMT - 17.3 miles per person per day
Mid VMT - 21 miles per person per day
High VMT - 25.5 miles per person per day
Very High VMT - 37.5 miles per person day
These seem like oddly specific distances, but it's what they used to sort new housing supply. Here's all of the US:
Since the 1950s, new home production in very low VMT neighborhoods has generally been declining. Most of the lower VMT stuff was built before the 1940s, which is why New York City is so walkable and its chart looks like this:
Most newer cities do not build in this way. In fact, based on this study, there are only five large metro areas in the US that have (1) built at least 15% of their total housing since 2000 (meaning, they're a younger city) and (2) built at least 40% of their homes over the last decade in lower-VMT neighborhoods (very low and low).
These metro regions are:
This is not that many cities. At the same time, is it even the right benchmark to be aspiring to? "Lower VMT" just means you don't need to drive as much as you might in other neighborhoods. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you live in an amenity-rich and walkable community. What about the new homes being built in neighborhoods where people don't need a car at all? How many of these exist?
Very few, I'm sure.
Cover photo by Jo Heubeck & Domi Pfenninger on Unsplash
Here's an interesting table via the Globe and Mail:
As of January of this year, residential real estate loans in Canada totalled approximately $2.07 trillion. On top of this there's another $350 billion in home equity lines of credit. This brings total loans secured by residential real estate in this country to about $2.42 trillion.
What this chart really shows, though, is how concentrated the mortgage market is. The "big six" banks make up about 74% of the market. If you include Desjardins, the total increases to 80%. That's pretty much the market.
Cover photo by Tiago Rodrigues on Unsplash
In my opinion, digital nomadism is a growing trend for at least two reasons: 1) people like traveling (it's more fun than sitting in an office cubicle) and 2) technology keeps making it easier to work in a decentralized way.
This is not a new phenomenon, but it's a growing one. In 2020, it was estimated that there were ~11 million so-called digital nomads in the world. This year it's somewhere around 40 million people. And it's hard to imagine this trend reversing.
Let's consider what's happening on the technology side. This week at Google I/O, the company announced a lot of AI-powered tech in the hopes of not becoming extinct as a result of it. And one of these things was a new 3D video communication platform called Google Beam.
Two things are really neat about this tool. One, it uses some AI volumetric video model to make the person in front of you appear in full 3D. So it's closer to real life. And two, it does real-time language translations. Here's a video of it in action:
In watching this, my mind immediately went to "this is going to make it even easier for people to work from Bogotá." It also collapses the world. Now we can all speak to each other regardless of language.
Imagine, for example, being able to participate in a community meeting for a new development project in Bogotá. You could be at home speaking in English and the community could be yelling at you in Spanish. That's powerful.
There's also speculation that Apple will be adding real-time translations to its AirPods later this year. Meaning, you won't need to hide behind layers of screens and technologies. You'll be able to get yelled at in person!
All of these innovations are only going to make it easier for people to live and work fluidly around the world. And I strongly believe that an increasing number of people will take advantage of it. But now the hard part: What does this mean for cities, real estate, and everything else?
Cover photo by Random Institute on Unsplash