How important are urban restaurants? This recent article by Eduardo Porter makes the argument that they are a "central pillar of superstar cities." They are the social spaces that draw young and smart people to cities (see above) and that fuel our creative economy.
According to Eduardo, in the 1970s, urban consumers in US cities typically devoted about 28% of their overall food budget to dining out. As of 2019, restaurants, bars, food trucks, and other dining establishments consumed about 47% of this budget for people living in cities with a population greater than 2.5 million.
By comparison, people who resided outside of an urban area in 2019, spent only about 38% of their food budget on eating out. Still, these are substantial numbers. A big part of the food and drink that we consume is, at least during normal times, happening outside of where we live.
Right now is certainly not the finest hour for cities. Urban amenities (like restaurants) and social networks are part of what make living in a city so enjoyable. And these two things have been greatly (and rightly) reduced. But I don't for a second doubt the overall resiliency of our cities.
This isn't their first crisis and, unfortunately, it won't be their last.
Image: New York Times
What’s happening in Houston right now is devastating. Ian Bogost of The Atlantic is calling the flood a “disaster of biblical proportions.” Harvey has unloaded 9 trillion gallons of water.
It is once again reminding us of the importance of resiliency when it comes to our cities.
One emerging argument is that this is an almost inevitable outcome for Houston, brought on by the multiplicative effects of climate change, unfettered urban sprawl, and poor design decisions.
The barriers to development are famously low in Houston, which allows the city to quickly add housing and people. There are many benefits to this.
But it also means that there has been, among other things, a dramatic increase in the amount of impervious surface.
This matters because impervious surface creates runoff.
According to The Texas Tribune, impervious surface in Harris County (third most populous county in the U.S.) increased by 25% between 1996 and 2011.
And it replaced things like the below prairie grass (switchgrass), which are highly absorbent as a result of their deep root system.
But much like climate change, not everyone believes this is to be blamed.
For more on this, check out The Texas Tribune’s full interactive piece. It’s called “Boomtown, Flood Town” and it’s worth a read.
Image from The Texas Tribune
1042 Queen St W by Kevin Steele on 500px
Earlier this week I attended a talk at the University of Toronto called Data Innovation and City Governance. It was by Mark Kleinman who is from London, but is now a Visiting Scholar at the Munk School of Global Affairs.
The topics covered would have been familiar to anyone who is a regular reader of this blog (the power of open data, the knowledge economy, etc…), so I’m not going to repeat it all here. But I did want to touch on one of his impressions of Toronto, which is that this is a city that is “never finished.”
What does that mean?
The opposite of a city that is never finished would be a city like Paris that feels a bit like a monument that is now done and shouldn’t be touched anymore. It’s a city that almost feels too precious to intervene in. This is obviously not the case for all of Paris, but I think you get the point.
Toronto, on the other hand, is a city that is constantly building, changing, and renewing itself. There are often layers upon layers of new interventions being applied, which gives you the impression that the city will never be done. It’s constantly in flux.
Some of you may not appreciate this kind of “messy” urbanism, but I think it gives cities a kind of entrepreneurial resiliency (resiliency is a hot topic right now in urbanist circles). Cities are an ecological system. And the most resilient ecological systems in the world are the ones that are able to adapt to constant change.
So in my view I look at this as a feature, not a bug. The only constant is change.