This afternoon I rode Toronto’s new streetcar for the first time on my way home from Chinatown. I had been meaning to do it for weeks now, but this was my first opportunity.
The experience was infinitely better than what you get today on our current streetcars. I felt like I was in a new city. The proof-of-payment system makes onboarding much faster and the 4 loading doors means you just get on the train where there’s the most room – instead of getting on at the front and fighting your way to the back.
The other thing I liked is that they now have a map of our streetcar network within the train (see above image). Toronto never used to do this. For whatever reason, we didn’t like mixing subway lines with streetcar lines on the same map.
But why be so pedantic?
For one thing, our subway map looks pathetic without these additional streetcar lines on it. So for the sake of Torontonian morale, please fill it up with what you can.
But the other reason why I think it’s important to include them is that we shouldn’t be thinking about our cities just in terms of specific technologies (subway, streetcar, and so on). Our cities are now multi-modal. Which means we navigate them using many different means, from subways and streetcars to bikes and Uber cars. What people care about is getting from A to B in the most efficient and enjoyable way possible.
This may seem like a subtle distinction, but it’s an important one. And maybe, just maybe, these new maps will serve as an important reminder to us that there’s a lot of fixed rail in this city and that it could be far better optimized if we just tried a little harder.
I’m always on the lookout for great websites and communities dedicated to cities. And today, thanks to a friend of mine, I found a new one called City Observatory. It’s my new favorite site for city geeks.
They describe themselves as a “data-driven platform for sharing, analyzing and discussing the success of cities.” As soon as I read that, I immediately subscribed. I’m a big believer in using data to elevate the discussions happening around our cities and to cut through the bullshit.
I’m looking forward to digging into more of their articles, but I did already take a look at the first report they published, which is called: “The Young and Restless and the Nation’s Cities”. Click here to download the PDF.
What the report talks about is a demographic group that they refer to as “Young and Restless”, and which they define as being 25-34 years old and having a 4-year degree. And they focus on this group because they see it as critical to driving local economic development.
They’re the next generation who are going to start those companies and drive growth and innovation. And since the data shows that as people age, they become less willing to relocate (which intuitively makes sense), cities today are quickly realizing that they need to capture this group of smart people while they’re still restless (i.e. mobile).
So if this is important, which cities (in the US) are winning right now? Here are the top 10 cities via City Observatory:
Washington D.C. 8.1%
San Francisco 7.6%
Boston/Cambridge 7.6%
San Jose 7.5%
Denver 7.5%
Austin 7.0%
New York 6.6%
Minneapolis 6.6%
Raleigh 6.5%
Seattle 6.1%
The percentage represents the portion of the population that’s 25-34 years old and has a 4-year degree. I’ve just listed the cities here, but in reality they reference the entire metro areas.
Do any of the cities on this list surprise you? None are surprises for me. It’s more or less what I would have expected to see, except maybe for the absence of Chicago (it’s 12th according to this ranking).
Is your city doing enough to capture this group?
Image: Flickr
Josh Lehner of the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis published a study earlier this summer where he looked at employment growth according to city size across the US.
What he found since the Great Recession of 2008-2010 is that larger metros – with populations greater than 1 million people – have rebounded the fastest. They are shown in the light blue line below:
According to Josh:
This is at least partially due to the fact that all those good economic things — agglomeration effects, knowledge spillovers, clustering, etc — happen in certain locations, which are usually bigger cities.
However, if you go back to the 1980s, you find that this trend isn’t consistent. Large metros outperformed in the late 90s. But they were more or less on par with smaller metros during the housing boom of the early 2000s and actually under performed in the early 90s recession.
One possible explanation for this – which Josh proposes – is that the recent housing boom acted as a sort of equalizer for smaller metros. It created stronger population growth outside of the bigger cities.
I buy that.
But then does that mean that going forward big cities will continue to outperform? Is this going to be more or less the new norm? Intuitively, I would think yes.
You can find Josh’s blog post, here. Richard Florida also wrote one for CityLab, here.