This week AN announced its 2022 Best of Design Awards, which is intended to celebrate outstanding built and unbuilt architectural projects from around the world. And this year I am excited to share that Studio Gang was awarded two editors' picks: one for 11 Hoyt in Brooklyn (Built-Residential, Multi-Unit) and one for One Delisle here in Toronto (Unbuilt-Residential, Multi-Unit). Selfishly, it of course makes me very happy to see our project being celebrated for its architecture. Go team! But from a less selfish perspective, it also makes me very happy to see Toronto being recognized in these awards. Because this is about city building, right?

Earlier this year, the Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, and the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, assembled a panel of civic leaders and industry experts to try and come up with a plan for a "New" New York.

Initially, this panel was intended to be entirely focused on reviving the city's business districts, and in particular those that have been slow to recover from the pandemic. But scope creep happens and it ultimately grew to include two other important goals: make it easier to get around and encourage "inclusive, future-focused growth."

The recommendations from this panel were released today and it's in the form of a report with 40 specific initiatives. In keeping with its original intent, the first recommended initiative is one that you would expect: "Make Midtown and other business districts more live-work-play." And what that means is the following:

We will remove barriers that have kept Midtown and other business districts stagnant by making it easier to convert and redevelop outdated office buildings to other uses, including residential, thereby empowering the market to create more vibrant, mixed-use districts. We will also update old-fashioned regulatory codes that have prevented small businesses from locating, expanding, and innovating in those districts, providing zoning flexibility for businesses to thrive. And we will unite our business districts behind a shared goal of vitality by aligning incentives for businesses to help maintain vibrant business districts.

New York isn't the first city to be encouraging office-to-residential conversions and it certainly isn't going to be the last. I think most of you know that I am a firm believer in office-centric cultures and that I'm in mine 5 days a week. But this is a recalibration that is going to need to take place in some submarkets.

And here is one of the capitals of the world -- New York City -- telling us that it needs to happen there.

There is a very common story that plays out in cities. It starts with an area that has seen disinvestment and is probably a little seedy and/or dangerous . This creates an environment where rents and real estate as a whole are relatively inexpensive. New, cool and creative businesses start to move in (attracted by said inexpensiveness) and the area begins to turn around. Eventually it becomes suitable for institutional-type investors, and this ultimately leads to everything becoming expensive as a result of demand outstripping supply. Gentrification complete.

The great irony of this story is that you sometimes, or oftentimes, lose the very things that made the area cool and interesting in the first place. Here is an example from Miami:

The result has been a property speculation boom that, when combined with the city's relatively low wages, put many businesses and residents on the street. Asking rents for industrial space, for instance, went up by 53 percent in the last year alone. Nobody can afford to buy, let alone rent, adequate space for a music venue because so much land has been snapped up by outside investors with a predilection for grand, "world-class urban" designs. 

And for some areas, it is arguably the result of a careful and deliberate plan that was put in place nearly two decades ago:

Teele's commissioner district in the early 2000s included both Park West and the historically Black neighborhood of Overtown. At the turn of the millennium the area was blighted and crime-ridden thanks to years of racist, regressive policy decisions from segregation to redlining. His plan was simple but incredibly effective. He spearheaded a campaign to revitalize the area by granting a limited number of 24-hour liquor licenses to clubs like Space. Dozens of venues rose up on and around 11th Street, including vast, multi-room clubs like Metropolis, live venues like Studio A and Grand Central, and more intimate spots like Vagabond. Sporadic police raids also gave the area a druggy, dangerous reputation, inadvertently raising its allure. 

This reoccurring arc has led some people to conclude that cities and/or areas seem to want to follow a kind of binary outcome: they're either dying or they're too successful. Why can't we just have urban homeostasis? I don't think this is necessarily always the case. Cities go through cycles just like any other market. I also know that it's complicated. But I do feel strongly that we need to be mindful that part of what makes cities such wonderful places is that they are factories for new ideas and creativity.

I can't remember when or exactly how he said it, but YouTuber Casey Neistat once described New York City as an incredible island (Manhattan?) where misfits from all over the world come to do whatever the hell they want. And that part of the reason for this is that nobody cares what you do, because everyone is just so damn busy. You could certainly argue that New York isn't what it used to be. But the lesson here remains the same: Cities are at their best when they allow humans to create, build, experiment, and express themselves.

And oftentimes a great place for that is in a space that nobody else wants.