Robert Manduca, who made an extremely detailed map of job locations in the US back in 2014, recently published a paper with estimates for central business district employment for US metropolitan and micropolitan areas.
Manduca utilizes an algorithm to delineate CBDs as areas of contiguous job density. This creates a standardized calculation of downtowns that allows comparisons across regions. This is very useful because there is no standardized definition of downtowns.
You can download a spreadsheet with summary information about every MSA. In some cases, the largest employment area is suburban, so you’ll see the CBD classified as “suburb” in this case. (The spreadsheet is of the largest employment center in each metro).
The Figures below provide an update through October 5, 2020 to the relationship between county urban densities and COVID-19 death rates. The data continues to show a strong association between higher urban densities and death rates. The analysis approach and method are described in “Perspective: US Covid-19 Deaths and Urban Population Density.” See: Figure 1: “COVID-19 Death Rates by County Urban Density Category” and Figure 2: “Deaths Proportionate to Population” and Figure 3: “COVID-19 Death Rates by Urban Density.”
Join us October 17th for a live interactive webinar on how the middle class can survive and thrive during this time of social and economic uncertainty. The event will attempt to unpack the key challenges, economy, housing and family, that citizens face, yet aren't being addressed by our leaders. This event will bring you deeper insight around the issues, as well as an opportunity to connect with the speakers and other audience members, so that you can start bringing about change and greater opportunity in your community right away.
Hosted by Tom Piechota, Ph.D. PE, Vice President of Research, Chapman University
Panelists:
Michael Lind, Author of The New Class War, Professor at the University of Texas
Karla Lopez Del Rio, Community development professional and advocate for working families; Principal at Connexions Consulting
Pete Saunders, Author and researcher whose work focuses on urbanism and public policy
With:
Joel Kotkin, Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures, R. Hobbs Professorship in Urban Studies, School of Communication, Chapman University
Marshall Toplansky, MBA, Clinical Assistant Professor of Management Science at Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics, and Research Fellow at the C. Larry Hoag Center for Real Estate, Chapman University
On today's episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by guests Harry and Fred Siegel. Fred is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. His son, Harry is a senior editor at the Daily Beast. Their conversation covers the future trends of cities, the workforce, and Manhattan. They begin by discussing how the work-from-home and pandemic crisis in New York have led landlords to write an open letter to New York Mayor, Bill de Blasio.
Fred and Harry discuss the migration from New York and how many people have left the city due to the coronavirus. New work-from-home policies for many companies. Both Fred and Harry and the hosts stress that migration from New York was happening long before the pandemic. There was a real estate crisis before the pandemic, but the pandemic amplified and sped up those situations. There are ways to turn this into an opportunity, Harry says by working to create a more breathable and affordable city that works for the people who actually live there.
Urbanists and policy makers Joel stresses, should be more focused on the mobility of businesses. Small business made New York interesting, these businesses have been bleeding with the cost of doing business. New York has been in crisis before, Fred explains that there has been a revival of the city, but Fred and Harry disagree with how the city comes back this time. As the episode ends, Joel asks Harry and Fred to list three things they believe would need to happen to begin reinventing New York. Harry stresses addressing cost of living, quality of life and quality of the school system. Fred lists sanitation, addressing homelessness and mental illness.
On today's episode of Feudal Future hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky welcome Jay Garner. Jay is CEO of Garner Economics as well as the Chair of the Site Selectors Guild. This episode explores the topic of site selection and how companies are choosing sites for their expansions. The group talks about how these types of decisions have been affected by the pandemic. Jay explains to listeners that the Site Selectors Guild are peer-selected location advisors that help facilitate location decisions of companies all over the world.
Joel asks Jay how site selection has changed during the pandemic. Jay explains that there was a pivot - He says, “...what we did pre-pandemic and what companies seem to be doing differently, with respect to different industry sectors - is changing significantly.” Jay explains information found in a survey or their membership that happened in April of 2020. About 49% of corporations surveyed said they were not continuing projects at that time. In June 2020, when the membership was surveyed again, there was an increase of global activity with companies moving forward with their projects. Another survey will be done in September.
Marshall talks about how he and Joel have researched future housing trends. He describes the trend of people moving out of expensive, big cities to more affordable and smaller cities. Marshall asks if Jay has seen a trend in projects in these areas. Jay explains that these were actually trends before the pandemic! Other than the price, another reason for this is that millennials are getting to the age where they want more space. He also says that public safety is very important to people.
The group talks about how remote work is affecting large companies. Jay talks specifically about remote work and productivity, cost, and how it is affecting employees’ creativity. Teamwork and creativity could be negatively affected by remote work. Jay says that long term, he thinks we will get back to working socially (depending on the status of therapeutics and a vaccine). The group talks about the potential changes in people after the pandemic.
Jay explains that most of his comments are his opinions, not necessarily that of the Site Selectors Guild.
The Figures below provide an update through September 13, 2020 to the relationship between county urban densities and COVID-19 death rates. The data continues to show a strong association between higher urban densities and death rates. The analysis approach and method are described in “Perspective: US Covid-19 Deaths and Urban Population Density.” See: Figure 1: “COVID-19 Death Rates by County Urban Density Category” and Figure 2: “Deaths Proportionate to Population” and Figure 3: “COVID-19 Death Rates by Urban Density.”
In this episode of the Feudal Future podcast, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by guests Jim Young and Kirstie Acevedo of Gensler, the largest design and architecture firm in the world. Their conversation covers the future trends and needs of office spaces and what kinds of issues employers are facing in our current world. They begin by discussing how wide-spread the redesigning of workspaces is as folks return to their offices. Jim explains that what companies are looking for the most in these times is flexibility. No one knows what tomorrow may bring, so agility and the willingness to try new things is paramount. Kirstie explains that Gensler bases their design on the science and needs of the client at all times, especially as the desire for safety takes top priority.
Many employees, even at Gensler are making the move to work from home; Jim and Kirstie believe that post-pandemic the workplace will evolve into a place to meet. Employees can come together to collaborate in offices, but continue working from home with increased regularity. Jim explains that they’re not seeing a move away from open collaborative office spaces, but rather a new focus on how to make those environments safer for everyone at work. They’re trying to balance the needs of social distancing alongside the decreased need for people to work 100% of their work time at work.
The episode wraps up with Jim and Kirstie sharing some of the ways offices are planning to reopen, including outdoor spaces, home offices, and digitally immersive workspaces. Kirstie emphasizes the shift towards a local mindset and how office communities can be part of buying, living, and creating locally. Jim expresses an optimism for the future, and what can be created in adversity and unknown times.
In this episode of the Feudal Future podcast, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky interview one of their longtime collaborators, Wendell Cox. He is an expert in urban policy, focusing much of his work on demographics and transportation, and he joins Joel and Marshall for a conversation on the COVID-19 pandemic, death rates, and public policy.
The first topic of the conversation is a chart Wendell explains correlating death rates from COVID-19 and urban density rates. Wendell describes the significance of urban density, specifically as it contrasts with county density. Urban density is associated with overcrowding in close spaces, and highlights the need not only for social distancing, but also for good ventilation. The group considers the possible reasons behind a seemingly low death rate in Manhattan, the issue of dense housing, and how various parts of California fare on the chart.
Next, the group considers implications of the issues of density and death represented by Wendell’s chart. They think about possible policy changes to come, and Wendell argues that we need to avoid full lockdown as we move forward in order to avoid bringing more ruin to the economy. Rather than locking down, we ought to specify our problem areas and target them. Further, rather than making the politically correct move of denying the problem of density, we need to look our situation in the face, figure out what’s happening, and take action to address it.
The group talks through what changes may be needed in the days ahead. There are issues to address with regard to building codes and transit systems. There are also major questions to answer about how to move cities - such as the majorly impacted city of New York - toward recovery. Wendell instructs Marshall and Joel in how to think about the example of Asian cities, speaks with them about how various cities in the US are faring now and how they may move forward, and emphasizes the need for cities to consider where people are going.
In a new report on income inequality, authors James Galbraith and Jaehee Choi examine whether there is an association between income inequality and American presidential politics. An excerpt from the introduction follows:
For the first three decades following the end of the Second World War, economic inequality barely figured as a topic of economic research, and some major preoccupations, notably in growth theory, presupposed stability in functional shares. But this changed as evidence of rising inequality began to emerge for the United States in the late 1970s, and by the early 1990s a robust debate over the sources of rising inequality was underway, which spread to all the advanced countries and beyond, especially as the publication of the Deininger-Squire/World Bank (1996) compilation of past surveys opened a path toward empirical investigation at global scale.
Given that US presidential elections are decided on a state-by-state basis through a winner-take-all allocation of votes in the Electoral College, we ask whether and to what degree levels or changes of economic inequality at the level of individual states affect the partisan alignment of those states and therefore the outcome of US presidential elections.
The Figures below provide an update through August 7, 2020 to the relationship between county urban densities and COVID-19 death rates. The data continues to show a strong association between higher urban densities and death rates. The analysis approach and method are described in “Perspective: US Covid-19 Deaths and Urban Population Density.” See: Figure 1: “COVID-19 Death Rates by County Urban Density Category” and Figure 2: “Deaths Proportionate to Population” and Figure 3: “COVID-19 Death Rates by Urban Density.”
Infinite Suburbia is the culmination of the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism's yearlong study of the future of suburban development. Find out more.
Authored by Aaron Renn, The Urban State of Mind: Meditations on the City is the first Urbanophile e-book, featuring provocative essays on the key issues facing our cities, including innovation, talent attraction and brain drain, global soft power, sustainability, economic development, and localism.
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