We need more “activity centers”. That is my takeaway from this report by Brookings.

Activity centers are exactly what they sound like. But to be more specific, the definition used in the report is based on five categories of assets: community, tourism, consumption, institutional, and economic. And what the authors did was look at the relative concentration of each across the 110 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the US with at least 500,000 residents.

They then came up with 3 different kinds of activity centers. Monocenters (blue in the above map), secondary centers (yellow), and primary centers (orange). Monocenters have, as you’d probably expect, a lot of one kind of asset. Secondary centers, on the other hand, have “some of at least two kinds of assets.” And primary centers have “a lot of at least two kinds of assets.”

Looking at the above map, it is pretty clear — and not at all surprising — that Manhattan is, for the most part, one giant activity center. There is a lot going on. But this is not the typical condition. In the 110 metro areas looked at in the study, activity centers only occupy about 3% of land on average. The remaining 97% of land is, based on the above definition, a non-activity center.

Why this matters is that activity centers punch above their weight. Despite representing a small land area, activity centers are home to 40% of all private sector jobs in the US. Supposedly, they also increase productivity (by an additional ~$1,723 per worker), yield higher property values (+26%), increase inclusivity, and reduce vehicle miles travelled.

So yeah, more activity centers sounds like a good thing for our cities. Though as we have learned in recent years, we need to be careful with monocenters.

Map: Brookings