The New York Times recently published “a portrait of new single-family homes” in the US in 2016. Here’s that portrait:
For those of those living in dense urban centers, this portrait is perhaps a reminder that in many other places a large single-family home can be had for about the price of a studio apartment.
Nothing in the above portrait likely surprised you, but it’s interesting to note that over half of all new single family homes delivered last year were in “The South.” Only 7% were built in the dense northeast.
The New York Times also recently looked at “international rents per square foot” using data from RentCafe. Here they are:
New York City sits at the top with an average rent of $4.98 psf. This is across all boroughs. I am surprised by how low some of these international rents are. But averages rarely tell you the whole story.
In any event, I do think that these two graphics start to speak to the economic spikiness that we are seeing across the US.
The world is increasingly spiky. Inequality is growing and it is increasingly geographic in nature. We know that people tend to make more money in urban areas compared to rural areas – even when they possess the exact same level of education. The returns to being smart and educated are simply greater in cities.
But they also depend on the size of the city. Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton of Brookings recently published data looking at labor market performance – by metro size – from 2009-2015 (right after the financial crisis). What they found is that larger metropolitan areas simply performed better than smaller ones.
In summary:
City size matters because it’s a major influence on city prosperity and adaptability as well as local worker fortunes. Bigger cities are more productive. They are more innovative. They draw better-educated workers by offering higher wages.
The situation is even more pronounced across the pond. According to the New York Times (quote from Richard Florida), a third of Britain’s gross domestic product comes from London alone.
What is far less clear is what should be done to address the decline of some of the smaller cities in America – cities that are stagnating and feeling left behind. But perhaps the first step is acknowledging what has happened and what remains feasible in today’s global economy.
Here is another quote from the above NY Times article:
Mr. Trump’s promise to relieve the pain by reviving the coal and steel industries, by keeping immigrants out of the country and by raising barriers against manufactured imports is only a rhetorical balm to satisfy an angry base seeking to reclaim a prosperous past that is no longer available.
That rhetorical balm.
The New York Times just published a piece called “a generation of architects making its mark at dizzying speed.” It’s a current list, albeit not an exhaustive one, of notable architects and their projects.
Included on this list is One Spadina, home of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, which was designed by Nader Tehrani and the Boston practice NADAAA.
Some of the best architecture in the city is being built on this campus.
One thing you’ll notice about this summary of architects is the emphasis on age. Architecture is a slow process. This is true for buildings in general. So historically it has been the case that architects usually don’t hit their stride until later in their career.
The youngest architect on the list is Bjarke Ingels at 42. An outlier for sure. He saw tremendous success in his 30s, and even in his 20s with the firm PLOT. I think great storytelling had a lot to do with this.
Tehrani is 53. And the author rightly points out that Frank Gehry didn’t become Frank Gehry until he renovated his own house at the age of 48.