On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Austin Williams and J.H. Cullum Clark. This episode focuses on the future of cities and what it will take to build the new world.
Dr. J.H. Cullum Clark is the Director of the Bush Institute-SMU Economic Growth Initiative where he is responsible for managing various aspects of the new partnership between the Department of Economics and the Bush Institute and leads the Initiative's work on domestic economic policy and economic growth. Learn more about J.H. Cullum Clark
Austin Williams is the director of the Future Cities Project, China correspondent for the Architectural Review and has written for a range of publications; from the Times Literary Supplement to Top Gear; from Dezeen to The Economist.
His latest books are "China's Urban Revolution: Understanding Chinese Eco-cities" (Bloomsbury, 2017) and "New Chinese Architecture: Twenty Women Building the Future" (Thames & Hudson, forthcoming, 2019). His previous books include: "The Enemies of Progress", "The Future of Community" and "The Lure of the City". He co-founded the mantownhuman manifesto (featured in Penguin Classics "100 Artists' Manifestos") and the New Narratives initiative. (Kingston) Learn more about Austin Williams
About the hosts:
Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute, and an internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends. His most recent book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism is now available for order.
Marshall Toplansky is a widely published and award-winning marketing professional and successful entrepreneur. He co-founded KPMG’s data & analytics center of excellence and now teaches and consults corporations on their analytics strategies.
This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.
The latest fatality rates as of December 5, 2021 from COVID-19 are shown in Figure 1. This is derived from data reported by usafacts.org. The data includes all the pandemic period, that began in the first quarter of 2020.
Fatality rates data continue to show an association between higher county urban densities and their fatality rates. Urban density is used as a surrogate for the overcrowding that increases exposure density. The issue is not density per se, however, but consistent with crowding which is often found in dense urban areas.
Death rates remain near or below the national death rate in counties with urban densities of 1,000 to 10,000 per square mile or below (Figure 2). These counties account for 91% of the nation’s population (267 million out of a total population of 328 million). Death rates are higher at densities above 10,000 per square mile and below 1,000 per square mile.
The death rates in counties with higher urban densities have improved materially since our first report (July 9, 2020). The earlier, higher rates were influenced by the pre-lockdown fatality data, with improvements as lockdowns were typical for more than a year. Figure 3 illustrates the fatality rates by urban population density category.
The service, according to the Star, is operated with trains with six cars each, with a capacity of 162 passengers. This means is operating at three percent of capacity (that assumes all riders travel the entire distance from London to Union Station in downtown Toronto).
According to The Star, the GO trip takes nearly four hours each way between Toronto and London. VIA Rail, Canada, the national passenger rail system operates services between the two terminals in 2:10.
Metrolinx, which operates the GO train system across the Greater Golden Horseshoe, indicates that ridership remains about 75% less than normal, due to the pandemic. Even if the new London service were to attract four times the ridership (which returning to normal would accomplish over the entire network), less than 15% of the capacity would be utilized. This is a patronage level that could be easily handled by a few buses, which would also permit provision of trips throughout the day.
On the assumption that the public purpose of this service is serving people, the least expensive option should be provided --- that which attracts the highest number of passengers for the least cost. It is inconceivable that this could involve six car trains, and not even one-car trains.
This is not intended to criticize Metrolinx or GO trains, since similar decisions have been made by governments and transit operators virtually around the world, favoring trains, regardless of the cost. There are obviously places where rail transit is justified, but regrettably, not in many of the places it has been built in recent decades. The result has been to provide considerably less transit service and fewer rides than would have been the case if more efficient alternatives were adopted --- and alternatives that are time competitive with the car.
The University of Toronto’s Professor Shoshanna Saxe “hit the nail on the head,” noting “It’s very hard to attract people to transit when it’s slower than driving,” The problem not limited to the London to Toronto service. For example, international research found that within the Toronto CMA, cars provide 4.5 times the 30-minute job access as transit, despite the fact that it is hard to find a better transit system in North America.
Employment access should be the principal driver of transit policy, with emphasis on obtaining the largest increases among lower-income households that have less automobile access. That would lead to less poverty, an improved economy and more jobs.
The issue is not cars, trains or buses, it is outcomes for people. Transit’s potential can only be achieved if available resources are committed to maximizing ridership, especially to work, which is the most important trip.
Note: As a matter of interest, Metrolinx made a pre-pandemic-pandemic map of ridership by train line available (April to September 2020).
The pandemic has interfered substantially with the annual release of the American Community Survey (ACS). The Census Bureau indicates that “Due to the challenges of fielding a household survey during the COVID-19 pandemic, household nonresponse increased substantially in the American Community Survey, with evidence of increased nonresponse bias in many statistics.”
Fortunately, the Census Bureau went to considerable efforts to release the 2020 American Community Survey 1-Year Experimental Estimates yesterday (November 30). The Census Bureau recommends caution in comparing the data (for the nation, the states and the District of Columbia) to previous years data and we offer tentative estimates based on the assumptions below.
Our principal interest is employment access by working from home, largely because of the considerable evidence of large increases during the pandemic. These data will not match the ACS 2019 data, because only five modes are included in the experimental data (drive alone, car pool, transit, taxicabs and work from home). The ACS experimental data excludes modes such as walking, bicycles and motorcycles while this analysis does not include taxicabs.
Assumptions
In that spirit, we cautiously offer a “what if” analysis with clearly stated assumptions to provide “guesstimates” of the widely reported expansion of working at home (the largest share of remote work) during the pandemic. The tentative assumptions are that:
In the first two months of 2020, work access modes is assumed to have had had the distribution of usual work trip access methods as was reported for the entire year of 2019. Generally, the changes in employment access that have been associated with the pandemic lockdowns in early March 2020 or later.
Employment access shares for ten months (March through December) were assumed to be equal to the annual ACS 2020 experimental estimates minus the estimates from Assumption #1, above.
Working From Home
Tentative employment access estimates are derived based upon these assumptions, shown in Figure 1. Driving alone is estimated to have dropped 12%, car pools 14% and transit 43%. Working from home would have increased more than 210% (Figures 1 and 2).
If the assumptions above were to hold, the work at home access figure for the pandemic period (March to December) would be 18.7% compared to 6.0% for the first two months (the 2019 rate).
The same assumptions can be used to estimate the work from home share for the states and the District of Columbia. This data is illustrated in Figure 3, with the actual estimates shown in Table 1, below.
The District of Columbia would have had by far the highest work from home share, at 46.7%, almost 75% above second place Massachusetts (26.7%). The District of Columbia (Washington) results are not surprising, reflecting the huge physical commuting losses that occurred in the nation’s largest central business districts (CBDs), since their office jobs are so easily replaced by remote working. At the state/DC level, the District is by far the smallest jurisdiction and with one of the largest CBDs in the nation, a larger work at home share is not unexpected.
Nearby Maryland (estimated third at 25.1%) and Virginia (estimated seventh at 23.1%) also show high work from home shares, as many formerly Washington bound auto and transit riders worked from home instead.
The state of Washington is estimated to have ranked fourth, at 25.0% and is home to the nation’s seventh largest CBD (Seattle). Metro Seattle is one of the nation’s premier tech centers, in which many jobs can readily be done from home. Colorado is estimated to have ranked fifth, while New Jersey was sixth. Before the pandemic, New Jersey supplied many commuters to New York’s Manhattan, by far the nation’s largest CBD as well as to Center City Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth largest CBD.
The largest work from home increases from pre-pandemic to pandemic levels also occurred in the District of Columbia and Maryland. New Jersey had the third largest increase, and Maryland the fourth largest (shown in Table 1).
The Future?
The ACS data are based upon usual mode of employment access. There are indications that once the pandemic passes, many more workers will have hybrid schedules that could have them still usually at the physical work location, but working more often from home. Jose Maria Barrero (Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico) Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University) and Steven J. Davis (University of Chicago) have reported survey data to the effect that 20% of full workdays will be from home after the pandemic. This includes the “usual” work from home access and the more hybrid arrangements that would entail fewer work at home days. Further, the National Association of Realtors notes falling office demand in major downtown areas, Further challenges to the largest and densest office markets from working at home could come from the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 and working from satellite offices.
With the pandemic effects still with us, it could take some time to obtain the reliable ACS estimates down to the lowest geographies normally reported.
On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Jill Stewart, organizational and political strategist, and Steve PonTell, a leading voice on community development, housing affordability and neighborhood transformation, to discuss the truth behind affordable housing.
Jill Stewart was the Managing Editor at LA Weekly and laweekly.com. At LA Weekly, she oversaw a team of print and digital journalists who pursue the newspaper's brand of digital hyper-localism and analytical, print journalism. She also oversaw the newspaper's video team and video productions.
Steve PonTell is the Chief Executive Officer and President of National CORE. In 1996, Steve founded the La Jolla Institute, a California-based nonprofit think tank that advances a better understanding of the critical elements necessary for both communities and corporations to achieve sustainable economic competitiveness. He is a nationally recognized authority on community development and creating forward-thinking organizations to maximize evolving market environments. Steve has a Bachelor of Science from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo in City and Regional Planning and an EMBA from Claremont Graduate University’s Drucker School of Business.
About the hosts:
Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute, and an internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends. His most recent book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism is now available for order.
Marshall Toplansky is a widely published and award-winning marketing professional and successful entrepreneur. He co-founded KPMG’s data & analytics center of excellence and now teaches and consults corporations on their analytics strategies.
This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.
Economic development professionals in Texas will remember this November for a long time as the month saw announcements for three record-breaking, colossal construction projects. It’s fair to call them “Texas-sized.”
Also, Tesla just revealed that its Gigafactory in Austin – where construction and interior finishing work is underway – revealed that its cost is estimated at $1.1 billion.
The announcements totaling $48.1 billion were announced in only an eight-day period, which may be a record in the world of economic development. I can speak only for myself, but I don’t recall anything of this magnitude occurring in such a short time span in any state.
Joe Vranich helps businesses make location decisions driven by growth, consolidation, market changes, or a need to relocate to places with more favorable business climates.
populyst is launching a new initiative, together NYC, to crowd-source and to map sentiment across New York City. It is an invitation to users to mark on a map their sentiment at a given location and point in time.
There is a menu of eleven preset sentiments and one that is user defined. A user can sign in as a guest, or can create an account if he/she wishes to track or review their own sentiments over time. Click on this image to open the page.
To view the map and participate in this project, click here.
You are invited to attend an online international Bookshop Barnie with Professor Xing RUAN (based in Shanghai) in conversation with Austin Williams (London).
Professor Xing Ruan is Dean at the School of Design at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China and his latest book is "Confucius' Courtyards: Architecture, Philosophy, and the Good Life in China" (to be published soon). The book has been described as “a truly magnificent work of scholarship for the understanding of China.”
If you want to understand Chinese society and civilization, its mindset and morality, this is the book to read.
DATE: Saturday 27th November 2021
TIME: 1pm-2:30pm (UK), 9pm-10:30pm (China), 8am-9:30am (New York)
ALL WELCOME(FREE)
REGISTER AT: Eventbrite
Ontario’s premier Doug Ford indicated strong support for the new 60 kilometer (more than 35 miles) Highway 413 across the northwest suburbs of metropolitan Toronto. The highway would connect Vaughn, in York region with Milton, connective with Highway 401 west of Toronto International Airport. Highway 401, the MacDonald Cartier Freeway is one of the world’s busiest and widest highway, especially as it traverses within the northern city limits of Toronto, with from 12 to 14 lanes (see map at Toronto CTV News).
According to the Toronto Star, Ford “dismissed critics as downtown Toronto ideologues.” Ford told the Star: ““Just sitting there and telling people, ‘hop on your bicycle or get behind a horse and buggy and start driving,’ it doesn’t cut it.” The premier added “That’s the ideology of a lot of people that are from downtown Toronto making their comments about up here.”
On this episode of Feudal Future, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky are joined by Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor of Newsweek, to discuss America's new journalism through digital media.
Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek. Before that, she was the opinion editor of the Forward, the largest Jewish media outlet in America. She has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, the New York Review of Books Daily, and other publications. She has appeared numerous times on MSNBC, NBC, the Brian Lehrer Show, NPR, and at other media outlets. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her new book, Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy is available on Amazon. Batya Ungar-Sargon reveals how American journalism underwent a status revolution over the twentieth century―from a blue-collar trade to an elite profession.
About the hosts:
Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute, and an internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends. His most recent book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism is now available for order.
Marshall Toplansky is a widely published and award-winning marketing professional and successful entrepreneur. He co-founded KPMG’s data & analytics center of excellence and now teaches and consults corporations on their analytics strategies.
This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.
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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