Zoom Town to Boom Town: North American business districts are going to evolve instead of dying off completely

2022-08-29T17:30:00-04:00

Even if the office were to go the way of the horse-drawn carriage, the neighborhoods we refer to today as downtowns would endure. Downtowns and the cities they anchor are the most adaptive and resilient of human creations The rise of remote work today won’t kill off our downtowns, but they will be forced to change once again. And with smart strategies and perseverance on the part of city leaders, real estate developers and the civic community, they can become even better than they were.

Writer Richard Florida is back with a new look at the “basic reason” behind his predicted rebound of central business districts, which he claims is an inevitability based on the historic evolution of such areas and recent building trends to convert hotels and office buildings into residential housing. Florida had previously explained that the pandemic has merely accelerated existing shifts towards remade “central connectivity districts,” and now points to a new study by the University of Toronto’s School of Cities as evidence that their rebound is (pardon me) a slam dunk.

He then predicts that suburbs will bear the brunt of the urban office exodus — in particular for knowledge workers — which in turn will remedy the “separation of life and work that was the product of the Industrial Revolution.” Florida also alluded to an interesting Gensler survey of city dwellers, which ranked office space near the bottom in terms of importance.

New York moves ahead with congestion pricing

2019-04-01T19:01:00-04:00

More than a decade after New York came close to enacting the country’s first-ever congestion pricing program, it’s finally becoming a reality. A tolling structure for Manhattan’s central business district (CBD)—roughly defined as the area below 60th Street in the borough—passed as part of the FY2020 budget, as both a means for reducing the traffic that clogs city streets, and introducing a new stream of revenue for the perpetually cash-strapped MTA.

"New York’s congestion pricing move may also lead other cities to implement their own traffic surcharges—Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle are among the municipalities that have been considering it," writes Curbed.

Archinect - News

Zoom Town to Boom Town: North American business districts are going to evolve instead of dying off completely

New York moves ahead with congestion pricing