City Sector Model

Let’s talk about the “urban doom loop”.

There were quite a few pundits who believed that the Covid pandemic would be the catalyst for a profound transformation of cities.  read more »

Demographia World Urban Areas contains population, land area and population density for the nearly 1,000 identified built-up urban areas in the world with 500,000 or more population. The total population of these urban areas is estimated at 2.36 billion, representing 52 percent of the world urban population as estimated by the United Nations.  read more »

Canada and the United States are among a minority of national governments that formally designate metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas are labor and housing markets which include a core urban area (built up or developed area) as well as rural territory  read more »

Despite the continuing pressure from employers for employees to work on-site, working from home continues at a strong pace. Just released data from WFH Research indicates that 41.3% of US workers worked at home at least part of the time between March and June 2023.  read more »

After decades of self-celebration and relentless media hype, the great “urban renaissance” predicted by the New Urbanists—a vision of cities built by and for the creative class—has come crashing down.  read more »

With the COVID-19 pandemic declared over, a significant question for politicians, planners, and pundits alike is what to do with city centers and old urban cores after the pandemic pushed many Americans to move away from dense urban areas.  read more »

In the middle of the 20th century, there was considerable interest in developing new communities (new towns). The interest was, to some degree, driven by the establishment of new towns in nations like the United Kingdom and France, where a number of projects had been completed by 1970.  read more »

Fred Siegel’s passing this weekend represented a huge loss not just for me personally but, more importantly, for all those concerned with the future of the United States, and particularly its cities.  read more »

In a previous post, I commented on the difficulties faced by the Calgary CBD (downtown), with its huge office vacancies resulting from the mid-decade oil bust  read more »

"Town and country must be married and out of this joyous union will spring a new hope, a new life, a new civilization.”
— Ebenezer Howard, 1898"

All cities must evolve over time. Those that fail to do so end up, at best, like Venice, Vienna, or Florence: lifestyle and tourist hubs. This fate now awaits our greatest urban cores if they cannot address the demographic, social, and economic forces transforming the metropolitan landscape.  read more »