Archinect - News

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.

Understanding the difference between cities proper and the metro areas that surround them

2019-08-27T16:30:00-04:00

When tracking the performance of cities across the United States, various factors come into play. Growth in population and employment are often the first to be researched and analyzed. However, not all cities are seen and discussed in the same light. CityLab co-founder and editor-at-large, Richard Florida, writes a new series that dives into understanding contemporary urbanism by researching cities and their economic performance.

In the first installment of this four-part series, Florida explains the importance of making this distinction between cities proper and metropolitan areas through population and job growth. "The reality is that most studies that purport to talk about cities are really talking about the performance of broader metropolitan areas, which are made of up core or principal cities and their surrounding suburbs and exurbs. Looking at cities by themselves is important and useful for several reasons."

He continues to point out, "there is lots of talk these days abou...

New report assesses worrying impact of vacant properties in U.S. cities, and what local communities can do about it

2018-07-30T15:50:00-04:00

Neighborhoods with high vacancy rates rarely recover, according to the study. Vacancy is “first and foremost a symptom of other problems — concentrated poverty, economic decline, and market failure,” the study notes. That means the solutions must go beyond just tearing abandoned buildings down. The study urges local governments to use tools like “spot blight” eminent domain, vacant property receivership, and land-banking to speed up the transition from owner to owner.

CityLab editor-at-large Richard Florida summarizes a new report by Alan Mallach of the Center for Community Progress about the increase of vacant properties and hypervacancy in cities across the U.S. in recent decades — another worrying aspect of the American housing crisis. The report assesses how vacant properties are affecting certain cities, and it also outlines mitigation strategies for local governments and community groups.

Richard Florida on the fragility of the Urban Revival

2017-09-06T15:26:00-04:00

For all the concern about the gentrification, rising housing prices and the growing gap between the rich and poor in our leading cities, an even bigger threat lies on the horizon: The urban revival that swept across America over the past decade or two may be in danger. As it turns out, the much-ballyhooed new age of the city might be giving way to a great urban stall-out.

Richard Florida paints a gloomy picture of the state of the great American urban revival in his NYT op-ed, "The Urban Revival Is Over," citing gentrification, income disparity, rising crime numbers, unaffordable housing prices, and the anti-urban agenda of the current White House tenants.

Joe Cortright, over at City Observatory, offers a good analysis of Florida's piece; breaking down numbers, highlighting statistics, weighing in on the crime numbers claim, and easing the general dystopian mood: "Rather than proclaiming the end of the urban revival, Florida’s evidence really makes the case for a renewed national commitment to building more great urban neighborhoods."

'The New Urban Crisis' as Richard Florida's mea culpa

2017-08-21T14:45:00-04:00

After fifteen years of development plans tailored to the creative classes, Florida surveys an urban landscape in ruins. The story of London is the story of Austin, the Bay Area, Chicago, New York, Toronto, and Sydney. When the rich, the young, and the (mostly) white rediscovered the city, they created rampant property speculation, soaring home prices, and mass displacement. The “creative class” were just the rich all along, or at least the college-educated children of the rich.

Richard Frorida's latest book, The New Urban Crisis, represents the culmination of this long mea culpa. Though he stops just short of saying it, he all but admits that he was wrong. He argues that the creative classes have grabbed hold of many of the world’s great cities and choked them to death. As a result, the fifty largest metropolitan areas house just 7 percent of the world’s population but generate 40 percent of its growth. These “superstar” cities are becoming gated communities, their vibrancy replaced with deracinated streets full of Airbnbs and empty summer homes. Meanwhile, drug addiction and gang violence have spread to the suburbs. “Much more than a crisis of cities,” he writes, “the New Urban Crisis is the central crisis of our time” — “a crisis of the suburbs, of urbanization itself and of contemporary capitalism writ large.”

The author offers both—specific solutions like more affordable housing, more investment in infrastructure, and higher pay for service jobs—and va...

Too many people today conflate density with height.

2012-05-16T23:54:00-04:00

The urban tech districts that are emerging today, from SoMa in San Francisco to New York’s Silicon Alley and London’s Silicon Roundabout, are housed in similarly walkable, low to mid-story neighborhoods.

Richard Florida looks at recent writing by Edward Glaeser, Edward McMahon and Jonah Lehrer regarding the desirability and effects of density. He concludes that there are limits to the usefulness of density as a frame of reference.