cbd

How long will Toronto’s downtown be a ghost town? (Toronto Star)

Wendell Cox — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 11:43:06 -0400

Echoing concerns being raised around many world metros with the most important downtowns (central business districts), Toronto Star real state reporter Tess Kalinowski asks how long Toronto’s downtown will be a ghost town victim of the pandemic. Toronto has the largest and most important central business district in Canada, with nearly 500,000 workers, nearly the size of Chicago’s Loop. In North America, only Manhattan, itself having spent months as a ghost town, is larger than these.

The September 3 article quotes a styling salon owner on the depth of the problem. His salon is operating on a three-day week in the absence of clients from the offices above who are still working from home. He says that “The towers are empty. Businesses like mine, we rely on the towers,” he said during lunchtime amid a late August heat wave. “Clients aren’t going to commute from home.”

An office worker characterized the situation as “The new normal.”

The latest weekly occupancy survey found that only 8% of downtown workers were in the office, though that is an improvement from the low of 3%.

The Go Transit (Metrolinx) suburban rail system, almost completely dependent on travel to and from downtown’s Union Station, is operating at “20 to 30%” of pre-Covid levels. This even trails New York City, where the latest data shows ridership reductions of 55% to 65% on the suburban rail Long Island and Metro North systems.

Of course, downtown Toronto, along with Manhattan, Chicago’s Loop, downtown San Francisco, the Sydney and Melbourne CBDs and the many others, will not be ghost towns forever. The “downtown” experience for the post-college as yet non-parent set continues to be attractive even in some moribund cores, including Toronto (as the article indicates).

Toronto Mayor John Tory noted the challenge in a September 5 Toronto Star interview, “one of the areas that was hardest-hit and most hollowed out by the pandemic was the downtown core.” With respect to downtown workers, the Mayor added: “…25 to 30 per cent won’t necessarily be at the office every single day because they will follow a hybrid model.” With the already likely widespread adoption of the hybrid model, the “old normal” seems unlikely to return to the downtown ghost towns.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Downtown Employment Estimates

Aaron M. Renn — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 11:00:13 -0400

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).

Read the rest at Heartland Intelligence.

On the Death of Australia's Jane Jacobs

John Muscat — Thu, 14 May 2020 14:05:34 -0400

The life of trade union leader Jack Mundey, who died this week, is being celebrated across the Australian media. He undoubtedly had a long lasting impact on Sydney, but perhaps in ways most commentators fail to acknowledge. As secretary of the communist controlled NSW Builders Labourers’ Federation from 1968 to 1975, Mundey pioneered a boycott tactic which came to be known as ‘the green ban’. In short, if the union disapproved of a property development on heritage or environmental grounds, BLF members would be withheld from the site. The BLF’s share of the construction workforce was such that this type of strike effectively killed the project.

Mundey came on the scene at a crucial time in Sydney’s post-war history. Cost-efficient developments in transportation technology like motorisation, particularly trucking, and containerization ended the industrial sector’s need for proximity to maritime facilities, which had been the case since settlement, and rail junctions, which had emerged in the mid-19th century. This led to a dramatic transformation in Sydney’s industrial geography, including a process of inner-city deindustrialization. The traditional light industrial ring surrounding the CBD and extending westward along the harbour foreshores began to disappear. Transport hubs which had serviced the ring like Darling Harbour wharves and rail yards became redundant. As factory, workshop and warehouse owners moved their operations to cheaper sites in the western suburbs, industrial workers left the inner-city in droves for the prospect of a quarter acre block. Until now, the cost of housing across inner suburbs was suppressed by low amenity associated with noisy and dirty industry. The departure of these activities combined with locational advantages created the potential for a rapid escalation of land and property values.

Read the rest of this piece at The New City Journal Blogspot.

Commuter tax on Suburbanites Working in Indianapolis?

Wendell Cox — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 17:46:37 -0500

According to the Indianapolis Star, Mayor Greg Ballard of Indianapolis is poised to improve the slowing growing city's competitive position relative to the suburbs. The Star noted:

"Indianapolis may be a bigger draw than surrounding areas in attracting young residents, but it’s got a problem."

"Right as they begin raising families, many in their 30s split for the suburbs — taking their growing incomes, and the local taxes they pay, to bedroom communities in Hamilton, Johnson, Hendricks and other counties."

Mayoral Chief of Staff Ryan Vaughn told The Star that initiatives would include a focus on improving schools, and public safety, both of which had much to do with the decades long declines of US central cities. Vaughn told the newspaper that "Ballard wants to focus on strategies to compete more fiercely with suburban counties that draw — and keep — middle- and higher-income residents."

Certainly, the fact that central cities are far safer today than they were when New York's Mayor Rudolph Giuliani implemented his much copied policy of intolerance toward crime in the early 1990s. Even so, Mayor Ballard has it right. Long term, sustainable recovery of cities as livable environments within the metropolitan economy requires both good public schools and an environment in which parents feel that they and their children are safe.

There is a cautionary note however. While the Mayor's office is on the right track in wanting to solve the endemic problems that have so weakened core cities such as Indianapolis, he has yet to take a position on a proposed commuter tax that would be levied against employees who live in suburban counties and work in the city. This would make the suburbs more attractive for employers who are presently located in the city. Further, it would make the suburbs more competitive to businesses that choose the Indianapolis area for relocation. Trying to attract and keep middle income households, while repelling business makes little sense.

Chicago, Portland: Employment Dispersion from Downtown Continues

Wendell Cox — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:10:02 -0500

New data shows that the downtown areas of both Chicago and Portland (Oregon) are modestly dispersing and losing market share in relation to metropolitan area employment.

Chicago: The Chicago Loop Alliance reports that private sector employment in the Loop, the core of the Chicago downtown area, fell from 338,000 to 275,000 between 2000 and 2010. An additional 30,000 government workers are employed in the Loop, however 2000 data was not provided for the government sector. As a result of the loss, the Loop private sector share of total Chicago metropolitan area employment fell 13 percent, from 7.7 percent in 2000 to 6.7 percent in 2010.

The larger downtown area, including areas to the north (North Michigan Avenue area) and to the south had total private sector employment of 480,000. Chicago had the second largest downtown (central business district) in the nation in 2000, with an employment density of more than 160,000 per square mile and a transit work trip market share of 55 percent, trailing only the Manhattan business district (south of 59 Street) and the Brooklyn central business district).

Portland: The Portland Business Alliance reported that downtown Portland employment had fallen from 86,800 in 2001 to 83,400 in 2009. This represents a four percent market share loss in comparison to the metropolitan area over the period. All of Portland’s growth over the period has been in suburban Clark and Skamania counties in Washington, which added 12,700 jobs, while the Oregon portion of the metropolitan area was losing 4,500 jobs.

In 2000, Portland had the nation’s 22nd largest central business district, and the 12th highest transit work trip market share, at 30 percent (Brooklyn included).