I love cities. We all love cities right now.
Everyone, for good reason, seems to be fixated on both people returning to cities (like those narcissistic Millennials) and people urbanizing for the very first time. This latter scenario is happening rapidly across the developing world and in many cases – but not all cases – it is helping to lift people out of extreme poverty.
But by most measures, urban areas represent only about 2-3% of the world’s land area, despite housing over 50% of our population. So here’s an interesting thought for this morning: What is happening and what will happen with the remaining 97-98%?
In this recent talk by architect Rem Koolhaas, he attempts to dissect the future of living, loving, and working through the lens of architecture. However, he starts by saying that architecture is, in fact, too slow to properly capture the zeitgeist of any time period. It is, “an unbelievably slow art.” That said, Koolhaas has a remarkable ability to identify what is happening (see Delirious New York) and then call it out in a way that you probably haven’t thought about.
In the above talk, he hones in on the impact of Silicon Valley – certainly the spirit of our time – on the rural landscape outside of our cities. Interestingly enough, he also talks about how the tech industry has begun to borrow terminology from architecture in order to describe itself.
Screenshot from the video:

Despite their ethereal appearance, technology giants still have large physical footprints for servers, production, logistics, and so on. But there’s no reason – or way – to accommodate them inside of our cities and so they cluster outside, in the 97-98% areas. These are places like the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, which is the home of Tesla’s new Gigafactory.
Because of sheer scale and because there’s no need for them to possess much in the way of humanistic qualities, these are spaces which are void of architecture, urbanism, and, in some cases, a light spectrum beyond what is absolutely necessary for the specific function of the building (discussed in the video).
Of course, the periphery has long serviced the core. But Koolhaas’ thinking has, as it often does, made me consider this phenomenon in a slightly different way. He paints a picture of a spiky world where we are all crammed into sensor and app-driven cities (the front-end), all of which are then powered by big mechanistic boxes that many of us may be naive to (the back-end). In some ways it feels like the Matrix. What we see and experience could just be the tip of the iceberg.
Architecture may be unbearably slow, but as a society we have always built what matters to us most at the time. At one point it was places of worship. But today, at least for part of our landscape, it is boxes not intended for us to really experience. Maybe that’s not really architecture. Maybe it is simply the back-end for our cities.

The Center City District and Central Philadelphia Development Corporation recently published a report called: State of Center City 2016. The objective was to measure the progress being made in Philadelphia’s downtown.
I moved out of Center City (Rittenhouse Square) in 2009, but I still like to follow what’s happening. I really enjoyed my time in Philly. In fact, I remember missing its immensely walkable downtown after I returned to Toronto and touched down in the suburbs briefly before moving back downtown.
If you take a look at the report, one of the first things you’ll probably notice is the concentration of jobs and the concentration of knowledge works (with advanced degrees) in the Center City area. We are seeing this shift in so many cities around the world.
Here are a few graphics (all of which are from the report):

I love cities. We all love cities right now.
Everyone, for good reason, seems to be fixated on both people returning to cities (like those narcissistic Millennials) and people urbanizing for the very first time. This latter scenario is happening rapidly across the developing world and in many cases – but not all cases – it is helping to lift people out of extreme poverty.
But by most measures, urban areas represent only about 2-3% of the world’s land area, despite housing over 50% of our population. So here’s an interesting thought for this morning: What is happening and what will happen with the remaining 97-98%?
In this recent talk by architect Rem Koolhaas, he attempts to dissect the future of living, loving, and working through the lens of architecture. However, he starts by saying that architecture is, in fact, too slow to properly capture the zeitgeist of any time period. It is, “an unbelievably slow art.” That said, Koolhaas has a remarkable ability to identify what is happening (see Delirious New York) and then call it out in a way that you probably haven’t thought about.
In the above talk, he hones in on the impact of Silicon Valley – certainly the spirit of our time – on the rural landscape outside of our cities. Interestingly enough, he also talks about how the tech industry has begun to borrow terminology from architecture in order to describe itself.
Screenshot from the video:

Despite their ethereal appearance, technology giants still have large physical footprints for servers, production, logistics, and so on. But there’s no reason – or way – to accommodate them inside of our cities and so they cluster outside, in the 97-98% areas. These are places like the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center, which is the home of Tesla’s new Gigafactory.
Because of sheer scale and because there’s no need for them to possess much in the way of humanistic qualities, these are spaces which are void of architecture, urbanism, and, in some cases, a light spectrum beyond what is absolutely necessary for the specific function of the building (discussed in the video).
Of course, the periphery has long serviced the core. But Koolhaas’ thinking has, as it often does, made me consider this phenomenon in a slightly different way. He paints a picture of a spiky world where we are all crammed into sensor and app-driven cities (the front-end), all of which are then powered by big mechanistic boxes that many of us may be naive to (the back-end). In some ways it feels like the Matrix. What we see and experience could just be the tip of the iceberg.
Architecture may be unbearably slow, but as a society we have always built what matters to us most at the time. At one point it was places of worship. But today, at least for part of our landscape, it is boxes not intended for us to really experience. Maybe that’s not really architecture. Maybe it is simply the back-end for our cities.

The Center City District and Central Philadelphia Development Corporation recently published a report called: State of Center City 2016. The objective was to measure the progress being made in Philadelphia’s downtown.
I moved out of Center City (Rittenhouse Square) in 2009, but I still like to follow what’s happening. I really enjoyed my time in Philly. In fact, I remember missing its immensely walkable downtown after I returned to Toronto and touched down in the suburbs briefly before moving back downtown.
If you take a look at the report, one of the first things you’ll probably notice is the concentration of jobs and the concentration of knowledge works (with advanced degrees) in the Center City area. We are seeing this shift in so many cities around the world.
Here are a few graphics (all of which are from the report):


Part of the reason for this is that Center City is anchored by a number of fantastic Universities. This is critical for cities, today.

To end this post, I thought I would post the below comparison of average office rents in major CBDs across the US. I always find these charts interesting, even though the usual suspects are up at the top.

I hope you’re all having a great holiday weekend.
The chart compares the socioeconomic status in US cities (y-axis) against “distance from city center” (x-axis) in 1880 and then in recent years (1960 to 2010 census data). The orange circles represent the 1880 data and the red and blue lines represent the recent census data.
What this chart and research tells us is that in 1880, rich people overwhelmingly lived in the center of cities. And as you moved further away from the city center, socioeconomic status fell off pretty precipitously. This makes sense given that, at the time, it was hard to get around and travel long distances.
However, in the post-war years, the exact opposite became true. We began driving and wealth decentralized. This should surprise no one.
But what’s interesting is how this appears to be reversing. In 2010 (the red line), there’s a sharp increase in socioeconomic status for people living basically right in the center of cities. And for the 30 - 60 km range, there has been a decrease in socioeconomic status essentially from the 1960s onwards.
The important takeaway here – which is spelled out in the Washington Post article – is that the neighborhoods which appear to be in high demand today are also in very short supply:
“We have 80 years of essentially zero production of neighborhoods with these qualities,” Grant says. “We’ve spent the last 80 years building car-oriented suburbs. Then when the elites decide they want to go back into the city, there’s not enough city to go around.”
This is one reason why supply matters.

Part of the reason for this is that Center City is anchored by a number of fantastic Universities. This is critical for cities, today.

To end this post, I thought I would post the below comparison of average office rents in major CBDs across the US. I always find these charts interesting, even though the usual suspects are up at the top.

I hope you’re all having a great holiday weekend.
The chart compares the socioeconomic status in US cities (y-axis) against “distance from city center” (x-axis) in 1880 and then in recent years (1960 to 2010 census data). The orange circles represent the 1880 data and the red and blue lines represent the recent census data.
What this chart and research tells us is that in 1880, rich people overwhelmingly lived in the center of cities. And as you moved further away from the city center, socioeconomic status fell off pretty precipitously. This makes sense given that, at the time, it was hard to get around and travel long distances.
However, in the post-war years, the exact opposite became true. We began driving and wealth decentralized. This should surprise no one.
But what’s interesting is how this appears to be reversing. In 2010 (the red line), there’s a sharp increase in socioeconomic status for people living basically right in the center of cities. And for the 30 - 60 km range, there has been a decrease in socioeconomic status essentially from the 1960s onwards.
The important takeaway here – which is spelled out in the Washington Post article – is that the neighborhoods which appear to be in high demand today are also in very short supply:
“We have 80 years of essentially zero production of neighborhoods with these qualities,” Grant says. “We’ve spent the last 80 years building car-oriented suburbs. Then when the elites decide they want to go back into the city, there’s not enough city to go around.”
This is one reason why supply matters.
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