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
This is an interesting article from Brookings that talks about the "myths of converting offices into housing." What I especially like about the article is that it's nuanced, and it directly addresses many of the myths that currently surround offices. The first one is that "offices are over."
Regular readers of this blog will know that I don't agree with this. And the article provides some good data points to support this:
Office utilization may be below pre-pandemic levels in many cities, but the data suggests that we have not yet hit a plateau. Utilization rates continue to increase, albeit gradually. So if we are to be more precise here, it's not that some people will never return to the office, it's just that it's taking longer than I think many people expected.
That said, this is not the case in all cities. Downtown Salt Lake City, as we have talked about before, is the busiest it has ever been. Similarly, ridership on the Utah Transit Authority network is up 26% from pre-pandemic levels.
Europe is generally ahead of North America with utilization rates in the 70-90% range, according to JLL. And Asia is even further ahead with rates in the 80-110% range. Meaning that, similar to downtown Salt Lake City, there are (many?) cities in Asia where more people are in the office today compared to in 2019.
So I would not be so quick to claim that "offices are over."
For the full article, click here.
As a general rule I don’t like to recommend books that I haven’t read yet. And so I’m not here today to recommend Jenny Schuetz’s new book about how to repair America’s crumbling housing policies. Instead, I’m just telling you all about it. You can then do your own research and decide if it’s worthy of your time. The premise sounds good though:
Unequal housing systems didn’t just emerge from natural economic and social forces. Public policies enacted by federal, state, and local governments helped create and reinforce the bad housing outcomes endured by too many people. Taxes, zoning, institutional discrimination, and the location and quality of schools, roads, public transit, and other public services are among the policies that created inequalities in the nation’s housing patterns.
This may be confirmation bias at work but I continue to feel like there’s a groundswell of interest in housing reform. In particular, there seems to be a growing interest in rethinking the privileges that we have decided to bestow upon low-rise housing (at least in this part of the world). But of course, that’s only one part of what is ultimately a complex set of systems.