As the readers of this blog probably know, I have spent a lot of time and effort on identifying the components of our Central Social Districts and analyzing what makes them succeed or fail. I’ve dug deeply into public spaces, movie theaters, housing, and various other components in cities large and small.
Recently, I was asked for one article that put it all together. I realized that I did not have one, so I consequently set out to write it. That article was recently published in The American Downtown Revitalization Review – The ADRR at https://theadrr.com/
Doing the topic justice meant that it would be long, about 30 pages, and more like a monograph than an article. Readers wanting a quicker take can just focus on the first six pages. However, if you are looking for more guidance about what to do and not do, you will need to dig deeper into the article.
Some of the important things I tried to do are to establish that some components are much easier and cheaper to establish than others, and which work better in different types of downtowns. I also tried to strip away a lot of the advocacy hype about some components that too often hides the challenges involved and obscures how progress needs to be evaluated, e.g., the arts venues, while spotlighting venues whose importance still goes widely unrecognized, e.g., libraries.
Here’s the article’s tease and link:
Strong Central Social Districts: The Keys to Vibrant Downtowns
By N. David Milder
DANTH, Inc.
CSDs and Some of Their Frequent Components. Since antiquity, successful communities have had vibrant central meeting places that bring residents together and facilitate their interactions, such as the Greek agoras and the Roman forums. Our downtowns long have had venues that performed these central meeting place functions, e.g., restaurants, bars, churches, parks and public spaces, museums, theaters, arenas, stadiums, multi-unit housing, etc. The public’s reaction to the social distancing sparked by the Covid19 pandemic, and the closure of so many CSD venues, was a natural experiment that demonstrated how much the public needs and wants these venues. They are the types of venues and functions that make our downtowns vibrant, popular and successful. To read more click here : https://theadrr.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Strong-Central-Socia-LDistricts-__-the-Keys-to-Vibrant-Downtowns__-Part-1-FINAL.pdf
Over recent months I’ve been getting a sense that some suburban downtowns may well make relatively strong recoveries from our current virus induced economic crisis, and relatively speaking, stronger even than those of our superstar downtowns. This also prompted me to think that the current and potential strengths of some of these suburban downtowns are too often underestimated and overlooked. I’m venturing to presume that others may also find these thoughts of interest and they are presented below. Please, let me know what you think about them.
Suburban Downtowns Are Different and Often Surprisingly Strong
Last year Bill Ryan and I did some research on dataset covering all of the 259 downtowns in cities in the 25,000 to 75,000 population range in seven Midwestern states. Our findings will appear in an article in the Winter 2020 issue of the Economic Development Journal, titled Living and Working Downtown: Is It a Population Growth Engine for Small Cities? Included in the dataset were 167 suburbs that usually are parts of relatively large metropolitan areas in which much larger cities are the cores, and 92 independent cities that are themselves the cores of a smaller metropolitan or micropolitan area. We were struck by how different these two types of downtowns are in many important respects. For instance:
Though less multi-functional, the suburban downtowns averaged about the same number of residents 3,089, as the independent downtowns, 3,294.
However, suburban downtowns had a higher population growth rate, 5% to 0.23%, and a lot fewer had declining populations, 31% versus 46%
Moreover, the suburban downtowns scored much lower on our two measures of live-workers in their downtowns, between 3.1% and 8.7%, than the independents, 12% to 29%. Additionally, such low levels even were present in the suburbs that had attracted relatively large numbers of office workers to other parts of their city, such as Dublin, OH, with 42,200+ in 2017
One factor that helps explain the greater strength of the suburban downtowns is that they are very probably located in metro areas with significantly stronger economies than the smaller metros the independent cities are anchoring.
A trend that helps to explain the low live-work numbers in suburban downtowns is that most suburban residents are not drawn to the type of dense housing units their downtowns tend to offer. National surveys for many years now have continued to show that about half of the adult population prefers living in the suburbs and that the vast majority of people who live in the suburbs want to be there. (See the table above.) That strongly implies that they prefer the urban lifestyle that includes single family homes, lower population densities, a slower pace of life, significant car use, and an environment that is predominantly “green” rather than concrete and asphalt.
Moreover, when these suburbs do attract offices they tend to be located in office park-like developments, within about a 5-minute drive of, but not in their downtowns.
The Importance of CSD Functions in Suburban Downtowns
Our findings also had some strong potential implications for a far broader range of downtowns:
Suburban downtown residential populations are not driven by the presence of downtown jobs, as some experts believe is the case with our large and superstar downtowns.
Consequently, they must be driven by other factors. Since the downtown populations of the suburbs and independents are so close, these other factors are probably as strong or stronger than downtown employment is in non-suburban downtowns. These other factors certainly are not weak, and they also could be present in non-suburban downtowns, too.
A very probable strong factor are the suburban downtowns’ Central Social District (CSD) assets: its housing, restaurants, bars, parks, athletic fields, public spaces, cinemas and theaters, libraries, art galleries, maker spaces, farmers markets, community centers, houses of worship, childcare and senior centers. Indeed, it can be reasonably argued that the suburban downtowns that have been successful in terms of popularity, use and investment have done so largely because of the strength of their CSD functions.
Housing is a very important CSD function. Two advantages suburban downtown housing may have are the likely greater comparative affordability of its costs and the convenience of it locations. In struggling downtowns units may be affordable because they are in poor condition and can only command cheap rents. In more successful downtowns, it may be that apartment rents/costs are cheaper than renting/owning an apartment in the region’s core city, or living in a suburban single family house (e.g., empty nesters), and/or because the apartment is occupied by several people who share the rent payments (young adults).
Units close to mass transit will probably be convenient for those who commute by rail or bus to large employment centers elsewhere in the region. Indeed, in these suburban districts, the commuters who live in TOD residential developments may be the equivalents, in terms of economic impacts, of the live-workers found in and near the cores of our largest downtowns. However, according to one report, NJ Transit has found that only 12.5% to 25% of the residents in the TOD projects developed around its stations are NJT commuters.1
These downtown residents can bring in substantial purchasing power. For example, it was estimated that, around 2010, the roughly 1,500 new occupied residential units in downtown Morristown, NJ, would bring in about $72 million in potential retail spending power. 2
Undeniably, when the CSD assets of a suburban downtown are strong, the district is highly urban in character, and more analogous to a strong big city neighborhood commercial district, such as Williamsburg in Brooklyn, or Forest Hills in Queens, than to a sizeable rural town. We might characterize these districts as “urbanized suburban downtowns.”
Typically, suburban downtowns have a Greater Downtown area that includes the downtown and nearby areas from which people can conveniently get to and from the downtown core , some on foot, but most by car. Sorry, folks, but we are talking about the suburbs here. That may be changing in the near future as AV vans and greater use of e-scooters and bikes come more into play.
The non-district portion of the Greater Downtown area can have relatively significant population and workforce densities and be the source of a lot of the customer traffic of downtown merchants. These users also can strongly influence the image of the downtown.
Unfortunately, there is no study of urbanized suburban downtowns. Some districts that I would include in that category are in Wellesley, MA; Englewood, NJ; Morristown, NJ; Cranford, NJ; Westfield, NJ; and Cranford, NJ.
Some have had strong GAFO retail, though that has weakened substantially with the upheavals in the retail industry over the past decade and the Covid crisis. Some have a lot of office workers located nearby in their town who are important lunchtime customers. Some have PACs, theaters and/or cinemas. All are walkable and have lots of eateries, coffee shops, and drinking places. All are surrounded by residential populations with high percentages of creatives – some also have large numbers of creatives working within or very near the town.
This suggests that non-suburban downtowns can also flourish by strengthening their CSD assets.
Suburban Creatives
For many creatives, these urbanized suburban downtowns may be extremely attractive, especially if they either: 1) prefer the suburban lifestyle when it comes to single family housing and green spaces, yet still enjoy urban type entertainment venues such as good restaurants and cultural events, or 2) they are nesting and need affordable and relatively spacious residential units, while also appreciating many aspects of urban entertainment and leisure time activities. The fact that these suburbs often have excellent public school systems also makes them attractive to core city nesting creatives who are looking for a more affordable place to live. In NYC, for example, the private elementary school average cost per student is $13,000 per year and for private high schools the average is $25,267 per year. With taxes, parents will probably need double that amount of their income to cover those costs.
My prior research on 14 counties in Northern NJ that are suburbs of NYC or Philadelphia – see the above table — certainly suggests that in 2010 very substantial numbers of creatives lived, worked or even possibly live-worked in these communities. Interestingly, the median of the percentage of their workforces that were creatives was 31%, but the median of the residential adult population in the labor force who were creatives was 40.3%. See above table. In Somerset and Hunterdon Counties over 50% of the residents in the labor force were creatives. So these suburban counties of superstar cities/downtowns probably have been recruiting lots of creative residents for decades. The size and economic power of these suburban creatives often seems to be overlooked because so much attention is focused on the young creatives being attracted to hip urban neighborhoods of the superstar cities.
Some downtowns in these high creatives counties have tried to attract more creatives to spark economic growth, while what they probably needed to do was to better leverage the numerous creatives they already had! Far too little attention has been paid to these suburban creatives.
The downtowns in these counties did not have anywhere near the number of apartments or condo units needed to house all of these creatives, so it seems reasonable to deduce that most were living in the single family type homes the suburbs are famous for. It also seems reasonable to deduce that the vast majority of these creatives probably were living there because they liked the lifestyles these suburbs support. In turn, this seems to counter the blindered visions of where creatives want to live that only focus on hip urban neighborhoods. Furthermore, it also counters visions that just focus on the young creatives who may indeed have a significant tendency to live in the hip urban neighborhoods, by showing lots of probably older creatives, who have probably nested, prefer suburban or rural residential areas.
Some Downtowns Will Be Better Positioned to Recover Economically Than Others
There already is plenty of evidence that points to the imputation that suburban downtowns, especially those that are urbanized, will be much better positioned to have a successful economic recovery than others. There are also a number of steps their leaders can take that will further solidify their strong recovery positions.
Tourists. Most suburban downtowns, especially those that have been urbanized, are unlikely to be heavily dependent on tourist customer traffic/expenditures as are the downtowns in our large cities such NYC, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, etc., or in rural towns where tourism is the main economic engine. In those areas the collapse of their tourist markets have had large negative impacts.
Moreover, the resurgence of tourism will be hampered by other factors besides the pandemic’s impacts. International politics is one. For example, It probably will be very hard for our major downtowns to regain the strong flows of big spending Chinese tourists they once had. Even under an optimistic scenario, it very probably will take a few years for tourism to return to prior levels in these downtowns.
Office Workers. Merchants in our big city downtowns have also been clobbered by the disappearance of their office workers. In many of them only abut 20% to 30% are now showing up. Moreover the growing adoption of remote work probably means that the number of office workers employed in our largest downtowns probably will decrease by 16% to 22% after the crisis. 3 In contrast, in the suburbs – e.g., Morristown, NJ, Dublin OH, Garden City, NY – that have attracted large numbers of jobs, office worker presence has remained substantially higher through the crisis than in central cities, and they are also more likely to fully recover more quickly. The suburban office workers do not have to use public transportation to commute to work. Consequently, these suburban towns are unlikely to be hurt as much by remote working or to experience their office jobs being decanted to less populated, and less public transit dependent areas as may happen in our large cities. To the contrary, some suburbs may be substantial recipients of such workforce decanting and the growth in remote working. Their downtowns will benefit from this.
Foot Traffic. It should not be surprising then to find that while in many large downtowns foot traffic has fallen by roughly 60% – 70% since 2019, it has been substantially less in their suburbs. See chart nearby.4 Foot traffic is critical to the health of any downtown. The suburbs may not need to recover as much as the center cities on this key variable.
Downtown Small Merchants. Truth be told, small merchants have been a disappearing breed in big city downtowns well before Covid19 appeared. At best they have retreated from the major commercial corridors to sidestreets. A number of factors were involved such as: unaffordable rents; associated real estate bubbles and consequent landlord needs for high paying tenants; new landlords who knew nothing about managing retail properties, and redevelopment that forced closures and relocations. In contrast, small merchants remain the primary occupants of the storefronts in most suburban downtowns, though vacancy rates have continued to creep up for many years now, and non-retail uses continue to increase.
While there has not been any rigorous systematic study, a review of many reports on the internet suggests that merchants who are more dependent on residential markets and less on tourists and office workers were doing significantly better than those who were focused on tourists. Many of our largest downtowns have relatively few residential units within their boundaries, but a whole lot within a Greater Downtown area that includes nearby neighborhoods from which residents can easily and quickly get to the downtown core. That would suggest that merchants in suburban downtowns, especially those with substantial new market rate housing, will not be among those hardest hit. Of course, that does not mean that they are not being hurt or stressed, but it may indicate that it will be relatively easier for them to survive and recover.
Downtown Retail Chains.
Superstar Downtowns, In these districts retailers have long paid extremely high rents for premier retail locations. However, in recent years, real estate bubbles and high rents have resulted in high “availability rates, ” with 20% or more not being unusual. The above table details such a situation in Manhattan in Q2 of 2019. Most of those locations have been very dependent on tapping office worker and tourist shoppers and their ability to again earn meaningful profits probably awaits the return of those shoppers at some still unknown time in the future. The prior high availability rate suggests problems that the Covid19 crisis can only have exacerbated.
Many of these retailers are in the luxury market and BCG recently estimated strong declines in luxury retail sales for 2020 and 2021, with a recovery appearing in 2022, BCG also found that many more shoppers are now trading down than trading up.5 Moreover, online sales of luxury merchandise has been growing significantly.
Many observers expect a new equilibrium between retailer and landlord needs will be reached in the coming years. However, until then retail in these big downtowns may be somewhat unstable. While the landlords of the luxury retailers may continue to claim that all is well, 20% availability rates and the disappearance of key market segments are strong visible evidence that those assertions are not true.
Retail Chains Resurging Post Crisis in Suburban Downtowns. The claim has been made that the closure of many malls and chains will set free so much market share that retail chains and small independent retailers located in suburban downtowns will grow and prosper as the current crisis ebbs. There is probably some merit to this claim – but not much.
Most suburban downtowns have not attracted large numbers of GAFO retail chains, though they often do quite well with those selling necessities such as groceries, convenience goods, and medicines. That is not likely to change in the future because these districts lacked and will continue to lack the required locational assets. Few have the auto traffic that passed near the malls. If retail chains do return to the suburbs, standalone locations abutting high traffic roads on the periphery of these towns may very likely be preferred to those in their downtowns. However, some in wealthier market areas – e.g., Westfield and Englewood in NJ, Wellesley in MA — have in the past attracted lots of GAFO chains, and they often were like open air lifestyle mall downtowns. Even then, though, while the number of retail chains present in these districts was often impressive, according to information confidentially provided by one well known national brokerage firm, their profits per store usually ranked relatively low within their chains. They were thus among the most prone to be closed if their chain got into financial trouble. So unsurprisingly their strength and numbers were eroded by the Great Recession, new competitors appearing both online and from strengthened malls, the retail chains’ corporate weaknesses being magnified by the process of creative destruction occurring in the retail industry, and the negative economic impacts of Covid19. For example since 2009, one of these retail chain rich suburban downtowns has lost the following chains: Esprit, Coach, Chico’s, Ann Taylor, Lucky Brand, White House-Black Market, Janis & Jack, Papyrus, Aerosoles, Victoria’s Secret, Eileen Fisher, Coldwater Creek, Kiels, Omaha Steaks, and Game Stop.
For many years the trophy retailers downtown leaders wanted to attract were largely in the apparel sector, e.g., The Gap, Chico’s, Talbert’s, Ann Taylor, Victoria’s Secret. Today, that sector is in disarray – even some off-pricers, like Stein Mart, that had been seen as well positioned, have fallen.
The argument for the supposed market share being yielded by closing malls and retail chains being captured by retailers in suburban downtowns has a number of problems analytically:
The demand for some kinds of merchandise has been in long decline, e.g., for apparel. This has been influenced by the trend toward informal workplace attire that has been strongly reinforced by the current crisis, and the growth in remote working. It also has been impacted by consumers wanting to spend more for interesting and rewarding experiences than for things.
More than ever, retail chains are looking for low risk locations. These locations tend to be in areas where there are significant numbers of fairly affluent shoppers or very large numbers of easily accessible shoppers with more modest incomes. About 20% of our malls were doing well prior to the crisis, and they tend to capture these affluent shoppers. Walmart, Target, Costco, Best Buy, et al are prospering even during the crisis from their growing proficiency with omnichannel marketing strategies. They are attracting the mid-market shoppers. These malls and big boxes are formidable competitors and probably are sopping up lots of any market share the folded malls and retail chains yielded.
E-retail was growing impressively before the Covid19 economic crisis, but its growth has accelerated substantially during the crisis, and strong evidence suggests these high e-sales levels will not diminish all that much as the economy improves. E-commerce definitely has and will capture substantial portions of any market share that folding malls and chains might yield.
There seems to be fundamental weaknesses with the business model used by retail chains, especially when they are taken over by hedge funds and the like. Bean counters seldom are good merchants, much less great ones!
Internet born retailers may look for spaces in suburban downtowns, but their behavior to date indicates they will look for locations in higher income market areas with strong customer flows. For example, Warby Parker now is located in downtown Hoboken and downtown Westfield in NJ. They are unlikely to flood our suburban downtowns.
The failed malls and chains probably will yield a relatively small amount of market share that downtown retailers might capture. Small downtown merchants are much more likely to benefit from that yielded market share simply because they need much lower sales revenues to survive. That said, these small merchants still better have other market segments to tap.
There is little reason to believe that our recovery from this crisis will somehow coincide with the resurging strength of our specialty retail chains. Because of their high rents, landlords in our large downtowns will probability continue to seek retail chain tenants, or shift to other users who can pay those rents. Consequently, the large downtowns will continue to feel the impacts of the process of creative destruction that the retail industry still is in. On the other hand, relatively few suburban downtowns had many GAFO retail chains, and their numbers were substantially reduced even before the Covid19 crisis. Consequently, they neither benefit a lot from the presence of these retail chains, nor are they very vulnerable to the substantial vicissitudes that these chains may continue to face.
The Costs and Availability of Space. The ability of small merchants to recover and for startups to succeed will be significantly influenced by the availability and costs of their storefront spaces. While deflated rents and increased availability can be expected in both suburban and center city districts, the suburban rents long have been significantly lower and probably will remain so in a relative fashion well into the future. This fact, combined with the greater stability of their potential consumer market segments, probably will give the suburban merchants a greater chance of achieving a sound recovery, or a startup succeeding, than their center city peers might have.
Rent costs are particularly important for restaurant operations.
Remote Working.
The suburbs are also likely to benefit significantly from the shift to remote working:
Their numerous creative residents are likely to be in occupations prone to remote working.
Remote workers are likely to favor downtowns with strong CSD assets as they seek relief from the social isolation of their home offices, and they often also require business services and supplies.
Suburban communities are likely to have more relatively affordable housing, with more space per rental dollar than their regions’ center cities. This may attract many remote workers who are residents of the regions core cities. However, the affordability advantage might be blunted by rent deflation in the core city. For example, reports indicate that rents in Manhattan below 96th Street have already fallen by 20% to 30%.
Also recent research has shown that significant economic growth based on quality of life assets and the attraction of remote workers can lead to rising housing costs even in rural areas.
What will not be blunted, however, are the large numbers of people who prefer living in the suburbs, and they often include commensurately significant numbers of creatives, the group most prone to becoming remote workers.
It is fairly probable jobs will be decanted by a significant number of corporations from their prime big city locations to less expensive, auto accessible suburban satellite locations. Such office facilities will have cheaper rents than those in the core city downtowns, and provide corporate tenants places where their remote workers can come to get the social interactions they need to help their productivity, creativity and career advancement.
Recovering CSD Functions.
Many CSD venues have been hit very hard by the pandemic’s economic adversities. Almost all performance and exhibition venues have been closed or their public access severely limited. Many pamper niche operations closed permanently or shifted to operating online. Yet many of these operations, when allowed by local governments, have reopened on a limited basis, and the characteristics of some suggest that they will recover along with the local economy.
Two characteristics will determine those that will recover quicker and stronger and those that will not: if they are for profit operations and if they are large.
Small Arts Organizations. About 40% of the arts nonprofits are usually in the red financially, and mortally threatened by strong economic recessions and economic crises such as the present one. 6 Their business model is so dependent on contributions from numerous sources that their financial recoveries are seldom easy. So downtowns of all sizes are likely to have to wait quite a while for these smaller arts organizations to recover and contribute to their vitality.
Pamper Niches. In contrast, many of the pamper niche operations are for profits and relatively small – hair and nail salons, Pilates and yoga studios, dance schools, martial arts, studios, spas and gyms. They have relatively very low start up and operating costs, and little need to keep large inventories of goods on hand. While many were quick to close during an economic crisis, they are also relatively easy to restart or start anew as the economy improves. They are also the types of operations that often occupy large numbers of downtown storefronts, especially in the suburbs. Indeed, in many of our suburban downtowns there have long been complaints that these pamper niche operations were crowding out retail tenants because they could pay the higher rents landlords were looking for that small retailers found unaffordable.
Restaurants. Some of the most important CSD venues for all downtowns are their restaurants and bars. From early on in the crisis, there have been dire predictions of calamitous levels of restaurant failures – one foresaw the prospect of 85% of our eateries failing.7 These claims seemed to be supported by prior research showing that the average small restaurant only had enough cash on hand to cover their expenses for so few day, 16, that they were unlikely to stay open if they faced a major economic crisis – see table below. Months later, well into the current crisis, the Census Bureau’s Pulse surveys of small businesses have had consistently similar findings.8 One might have thought that by then their numbers would have declined as many went out of business. National survey data seems to indicate that about 20% of our restaurants may have closed do far.
The Center City district in Philadelphia recently published very interesting and well researched counter findings about restaurant closures.9 Well into the crisis, their survey found that only about 5% of their 1,078 restaurants had closed permanently, with another 19% closed temporarily. Just 19% were deemed fully opened and have indoor dining. Perhaps most interesting are the 600 restaurants (about 55%) that are classified as partially opened because they have outdoor dining, or only do take outs and deliveries.
My observations in the solidly middle income neighborhoods close to my home here in Queens, NY, also found a surprisingly low number of permanent restaurant closures. My communications with some suburban downtown managers yielded similar observations. The only reports of numerous closures I’ve found were about the eateries in the Midtown Manhattan CBD that are so dependent on tourist and office worker customers. The City’s Comptroller just issued a report that “found that more than 2,800 small businesses had permanently closed between March 1 and July 10, including at least 1,289 restaurants.” That would mean that about 5% of NYC’s restaurants closed, on par with the Center City findings.10
The fascinating question is: How are so many restaurants surviving so long when they never seem to have enough cash on hand to do so? CARES or other government program dollars? Owners not taking any salary? Dipping into their 401ks? Tapping extended family resources? Landlord forbearance? Public donations via gift cards, crowdfunding, etc.? The Center City research findings suggest a possible viable explanation: many are in some stage of operational hibernation – e.g., the 19% that are temporally closed and the 55% who are partially opened. Their reduced operational metabolism rates translate into a reduced need for cash. In turn, that means that the cash they have on hand can cover more days of operation. It also may mean that financial tools that are well within the restaurant owners control – such as dipping into 401ks, using credit cards, tapping family resources, etc. – can get many through the survival phase of this crisis if they hibernate. That also would mean that they are making substantial personal and family sacrifices in the hope that they again will earn meaningful annual incomes as they emerge from hibernation during the economy recovery.
If recovery means that these restauranteurs have to come out of hibernation and compete to again win adequate annual incomes, then it may prove to be a time period as, or even more, arduous than was the survival phase of the crisis. More restaurants may close because they will need to earn a lot more money to thrive than they did to survive, while they may have depleted the financial resources that helped them to survive thus far. Local market conditions will probably play a very important role in determining those eateries that will survive and those that will fail.
Households in the top income quintile (above $109,743 in 2017) accounted for about 38% of all the consumer spending for food away from home; those in the top two quintiles (above $66,898 in 2017) accounted about 61% of those expenditures. See table above. Moreover, so far into the crisis, employment in households with incomes above $60,000 has been far more secure than for those with lower incomes. Downtown restaurants able to easily tap affluent residential customers are more likely to survive the recovery than those that are not. The urbanized suburban downtowns tend to be in rather affluent market areas: in 2016, I estimated the annual household income at $188,000 for downtown Wellesley, MA; $131,000 for downtown Englewood, NJ; $152,000 for downtown Westfield, NJ, and $165,000 for downtown, Morristown, NJ. That will help their restaurants recover relatively quickly and substantially.
Let’s compare the prospects during the recovery phase of this crisis for restaurants in our superstar downtowns with those in our urbanized suburban downtowns:
Markets: The superstars must wait for the return of two very large market segments, office workers and tourists. Their residential markets may not be all that strong. Financially, that means many may have to wait quite a bit of time for their revenues and profits to return to the levels their owners were sacrificing to stay in business for. Their potential residential customers live mostly in nearby neighborhoods that are likely to have their own restaurants that are much closer to them. In contrast, the suburban downtown eateries rely mainly on the residential market segment that has never gone away and that savvy operators have been serving with takeouts, deliveries, and curbside deliveries during the crisis. These suburban eateries may also have office workers who are still present in the town in significant numbers, and others returning at a rapid rate as the virus’s impacts subside because of their reliance on autos to commute. New remote workers and newly decanted office installations may add significantly to their numbers. The suburbs’ consumer markets will start strong and may get even stronger. The superstars’ markets will start off very uncertain and require an unclear length of time to reach an iffy level of recovery. For example, though their office workerforces eventually may return, they’re very likely to be, at best, about 16% smaller in number.
Most arts tourists (tourists who attend arts events) visiting our large cities are not big spenders. A study of 21 study regions with populations over one million by Americans for the Arts that included the cities of San Jose, Dallas, San Diego, San Antonio, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Miami—Dade and Chicago found that, in 2016, the average arts tourist spent about $51.41 a day. See the table above. About 31% of that went for meals and drinks, averaging $16.05. Another $6.57 went for refreshments and snacks. While there certainly are significant numbers of wealthy arts tourists and they are likely to be among those who resume visiting our superstar downtowns fairly early, they will tend to go to the higher priced eateries. The less expensive eateries in these downtowns are less likely to see their tourist patrons return as quickly or as robustly. Their recovery is likely to be weaker and slower
Rents. During normal times, the lower commercial rents in suburban downtowns may have been equivalent to those in the superstar districts when the number of potential diners and their spending power are considered. Today, with the superstars’ disappeared market segments, increased risk, and uncertain rent deflation, suburban commercial rents look like a much better buy for all businesses, especially restaurants that are so rent sensitive.
Performing Arts Venues, Museums and Galleries. One might assume that the superstars are far richer in major arts, cultural and entertainment venues than the suburban downtowns, and that will help them to be better at attracting people back to their districts. In turn, that would enable them to better support local merchants. A closer look, however, reveals that their advantages may not be as strong as many might assume.
For example, superstar CBDs often have surprisingly few of these venues. In Midtown Manhattan, there are only two important museums, MoMA and the Morgan Library & Museum. The Metropolitan Museum, Whitney, Frick, Guggenheim, Neue Galerie, New Museum, Folk Art Museum, and many others are not. The major area for art galleries was in Soho, but is now in Chelsea and other parts of Manhattan. In Cleveland, the prestigious Cleveland Museum and Severance Hall, home to the Cleveland Symphony, are located about five miles from the heart of the downtown. It’s theater district, Playhouse Square, is about one mile away. Similarly, in Philadelphia, the Museum of Art, the Barnes and the Rodin Museum are outside the downtown district. MOCA and The Broad are In downtown LA, but LACMA. Hammer, Norton Simon, Annenberg, Huntington Library and Getty Center are not. Still, many of these superstar downtown museums are themselves superstars and that means that they are very dependent on tourists for visitation. For example, about 75% of MoMA’s visitors are tourists. See table above. Their full recovery and ability to activate the downtown will probably await the return of the tourists.
Strong art museums are seldom found in suburban downtowns, so how strongly these districts are activated is not dependent upon them, or their recoveries, or the return of lots of tourists.
Theater clusters are certainly to be found In some of these large downtowns such as Manhattan and Houston, as are performing arts venues such as Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Center City Philadelphia, and the Music Center in downtown LA. However, in Manhattan, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is located close to, but beyond the Midtown CBD. These venues are often considered world class, and that usually means that they, too, are heavily dependent on tourist ticket buyers. About 66% of the attendance of Broadway’s theaters are tourists, as is about 46% of Lincoln Center’s. Some observers claim that tourists will return once these venues open. However, getting Broadway shows ready to open will take time as will the scheduling and staging of other performing arts events. The Broadway League, for example, is now talking about reopenings starting around June 2021, but how long it will take to achieve a full recovery is still unknown.
These performing arts venues have another characteristic that poses serious problems for the downtowns and neighborhoods in which they are located. For very substantial parts of many days they are dead and inert, only coming alive outside for relatively brief moments before and after performances that occur usually during the evenings and a few afternoons. When inert, they diminish from, instead of contributing to, the sense of activation and pedestrian friendliness of the sidewalks they abut.
A number of these urbanized suburban downtowns do have sizeable performing arts venues, though most do not. In NJ, for example, The Count Basie Theater in Red Bank was the attendance leader among the state’s theaters in 2016 and 2017 selling 235,000 tickets. It has a budget of around $17,000,000.11 The Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, NJ, has an annual attendance of about 200,000 and an annual budget of about $8, 000,000. It is a major component of the downtown’s strong and broadly defined entertainment niche that also includes a six-screen movie theater and eateries and bars that have annual sales above $100 million. The Bergen County PAC also has attendance in excess of 200,000 and an annual budget of about $10,000,000. These performing arts organizations have significant budget, and their audiences are not heavily dependent on tourists. Similar performing arts venues located in less affluent suburban markets have budgets well under $2,000,000 and lower attendance. The larger the budget, the more likely these performing arts organizations will survive through this crisis and recover. Once social distancing precautions are lifted, their primarily regional audiences, often from affluent households with members in creative occupations, can be expected to quickly return as their productions are presented. However, many of the weaker suburban performing arts organizations may struggle to recover or fall to the wayside—as will be the case pretty much everywhere.
Some Challenges and Opportunities Suburban Downtowns Will Likely Face
Downtown Cinemas Are Again In Danger. DANTH, Inc has been following the plight of downtown movie theaters for about 15 years. During that time streaming via cable or online was a persistent and slow growing threat to our traditional brick and mortar movie theaters. By releasing movies electronically either before or simultaneously with the theater releases the potential audiences of the theaters are substantially diminished. The Covid19 crisis has shut down movie theaters either completely or substantially. Streaming has grown enormously in utility, attraction and supporters among producers, and there is general agreement in the trades that it will be much more important in the future, and there is no going back. It’s a very cheap and efficient distribution channel that is unconstrained by the need for social isolation. Warner Bros. just announced that it will release all of its 2021 films on HBO Max at the same time that they open in theaters. Other studios are expected to soon follow.12
This Problem Is Especially Dire for Many Suburban Downtowns. How many movie theaters and theater chains will survive the crisis is a question of considerable interest to all types of downtowns, but much more important for those in the suburbs. For many, their movie theaters are their strongest arts/entertainment draw, especially after dark. Moreover, they invariably occupy strategically important locations in buildings that often are difficult to convert to other uses. Also, movie houses are among the most reasonably priced of all entertainment venues, and they have rather few user frictions compared to going to a sports event, concert or stage play.
Streaming may mean that it will be much more difficult for operators to make sufficient profits to recover from the crisis and stay in business long term. However, during the digital projection conversion crisis of a few years ago, many towns used community owned businesses to step in and save their cinemas. Suburban downtown leaders soon may find that tool can be used to save theirs’s, too. Moreover, a whole toolbox of tools to capture community value is emerging that also can be used. The leaders of these suburban downtowns should prepare for such a contingency since quick action is often needed to save these cinemas.
Unrealized Potential to Develop Strong and Well – Activated Public Spaces. By and large suburban downtowns lack popular, well-used downtown public spaces. Within their communities, the parks are generally located elsewhere. Additionally, even when they do have a physical public space downtown they are usually badly under-utilized, mainly purposed as adornments, ceremonial venues, and weakly scheduled event spaces. Where the missing vibrant public spaces are most surprising is in the urbanized suburban downtowns that have so many potential eager users and operations such as loads of strong eateries that mesh well with them.
In the past, this was just a missed opportunity, but with the need of these downtowns to have strong attractions that can again draw lots of people downtown, they well may be a savvy strategic move, or even a necessity. This need will also be reinforced if the local cinema weakens or closes.
The crisis induced closed streets and parklets can also provide these suburban downtowns a way of creating quickly and cheaply some needed spaces. Given that the sidewalks in many of these districts are fairly narrow, such projects can have a variety of immediate benefits. Still, the formula behind strong public spaces such Bryant Park can be distilled to scale to the smaller sizes and different characteristics of the urbanized suburban downtowns. A good place to start doing this is Andy Manshel’s new book Learning From Bryant Park.13 Here are a few things that interested downtown leaders might consider:
Location really matters. A public space on the periphery will have far fewer users and far weaker positive impacts on its surrounding properties and their uses.
How the space is programmed will have a far greater impact than how it is physically designed or how pretty it was meant to be. This is a major point that Andy strongly argues for.
Simple things really matter: as Holly White pointed out, if you want people to stay, they will need places to sit. Shade also counts. Andy stresses in his book that you don’t have to spend big bucks to succeed.
With programming, test things out and if they don’t work well, learn what went wrong, then either fix them, or do something better. Also, iterate, keep refreshing an improving the programming you have.
Just don’t think about events. Think also about how people-watching can be facilitated and enhanced. Public spaces can proved opportunities for people to do things, to let them become the space’s performers such as chess tables, boules courts, ping pong tables, reading rooms, ice skating rinks, carousels, swings, climbing rocks, etc.
Bottomlines
Urbanized suburban downtowns, with strong CSD functions, that are able to draw upon large numbers of creative class households, have growing numbers of remote workers, and maintain steady consumer market segments are well positioned to experience relatively strong economic recoveries from the Covid19 induced economic crisis. They can do even better if they take steps to protect their movie theaters and develop vibrant public spaces.
It’s about time that academics and economic development professionals realize that suburban downtowns do not grow or function in the same ways that our urban districts do. The suburban districts depend far, far less on being employment centers and more on being the central place for people to meet, enjoy themselves, help each other, buy necessities, and sometimes to buy non-necessities. Daytime workforces may be very important customers for district merchants, but their workplaces are far more often than not located beyond the district’s borders, and sometimes even in other towns. Their downtown housing is not driven strongly by live-workers, yet it can provide a very important in-close user/shopper base. Most of their shoppers also get to the downtown by car, and will continue to do so until AV shuttles and micro mobility vehicles provide viable alternatives.
ENDNOTES
1) Source: John Shapiro, formerly of Phillips Preiss Shapiro Associates, based on interviews with New Jersey Transit officials while working on multiple TOD projects in northern NJ, including for NJT.
3) N. David Milder. Remote work: An example of how to identify a downtown-related trend breeze that probably will outlast the COVID-19 crisis. Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal Vol. 14, 2, 1–20. Forthcoming.
4) The chart is from: Michael Sasso and Andre Tartar. U.S. Downtowns Yearn for Vaccines as Merchant Traffic Off 79%. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-03/u-s-downtowns-yearn-for-vaccine-as-merchant-traffic-falls-70?sref=mHw3n8zP
5) Christine Barton. BCG LUXURY PERSPECTIVE. Luxury First Look 2021| Where are we headed? September 2020. Presented at the Future of Luxury Conference, September 23-24, 2020, convened by Luxury Daily.
By William F. Ryan, University of Wisconsin – Madison/Extension and N. David Milder, DANTH, Inc.
Introduction
Within the downtown revitalization community a broad consensus has formed around the maxim that the greater the number of people who live in our downtowns, the more likely they are to prosper. These residents help to spark the “activation” of the district, providing the visible evidence of people engaging in a variety of activities, and nurturing the perceived sense of vitality among visitors that makes the area a magnetic place to be. A number of factors can impact this downtown population growth. The real estate market certainly is one. Job growth, especially of creative class employees, is another. One that has gained notice, of late, is the number of people who live and work in their districts, and the live-work environments that emerge to both support them and reflect their attitudes and behaviors.
Most of the attention paid to the live-work engine has focused on our largest cities. After a brief look at those downtowns, this article will look in greater depth at the numbers, behaviors and impacts of live-workers on suburban and independent cities with populations between 25,000 and 75,000 .1 Suburban cities are located in a metro area in which there is a large center city. They usually serve more as bedroom and leisure communities than employment centers. Independent cities are more geographically isolated and may be the cores of a small metropolitan/micropolitan area. They serve as employment and commercial centers as well as bedroom and leisure communities. They are often also government centers (e.g., county seats). They are more multi-functional than the suburban downtowns.
Live-work Environments as a Growth Engine in Our Largest Employment Nodes.
Job growth alone often has had mixed impacts on a downtown’s vitality and attractiveness in our larger cities. In the 1980s, for example, office development – with its large numbers of white collar workers — was seen as THE downtown redevelopment strategy, but it produced a large number of disappointing projects in dull and perceived unsafe downtowns. Many of them had to be “redone.”2 In office dominated districts, there were too many fortress-like office towers, and they lacked the multifunctionality and pedestrian activity that are critical for downtown vibrancy. Though somewhat active weekdays from about 11:00 a.m. to about 2:00 p.m., the downtowns were deader than doornails at other times. There were too few people around once the offices closed.
Since the early 2000s, and especially after a major paper by Eugenie Birch in 2005, observers noted that our larger downtowns in the 1990s had been attracting significantly more residents.3 In the years since, housing development has become increasingly seen as the secret revitalization sauce for a large number of downtowns, including those in numerous suburbs, and almost all of our largest cities. These new residents help activate their downtowns after 5:00 pm on weekdays and over the entire weekend.
However, not all downtowns experience household growth. For example, Birch found that about 27% of the downtowns she studied had declining numbers of households.
Downtown housing growth and district activation is thought to be strongest when downtowns have attracted large numbers of “live-workers. They are there after 5:00 p.m. and on weekends. They don’t spend much time in vehicles commuting, but often will walk to and from work, or make short trips on public transit. For example, in several zip codes in Manhattan over 50% of the residents who are in the labor force walk to work. The live-workers very often are also creatives with high salaries.
In a seminal monograph published in 2017, Paul Levy and Lauren Gilchrist researched the percentage of live-workers (those who both live and work in a district) in 231 major employment centers located in the nation’s 150 largest cities and within a one-mile radius that surrounds each of these centers. 4 Their work is important because it:
Demonstrates how downtowns are intractably inter-related with their immediately surrounding neighborhoods.
Showed that a significant number of the downtowns in the nation had very significant levels of live-workers of 40.7% to 55.9%, especially those in superstar cities. (See the above table). The authors did not overtly make that claim, but, several of the high performing downtowns they listed are what Aaron Renn has termed as superstar cities: “These “superstar cities”—New York, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Washington, and Seattle—are among America’s largest, most productive urban regions. They have well-above-average per-capita GDP and incomes and serve as the home bases of high-value sectors like finance (New York) and high tech (San Francisco)”. 5
However, the vast majority of our largest employment nodes had considerably lower levels of live-workers: 60% had fewer than 20% of their workforce being live-workers, with 42% in the 10%-19% range. 6
Live-workers in Independent and Suburban Cities.
The authors utilized a data set compiled by William Ryan, of the University of Wisconsin -Madison/Extension , and Prof. Michael Burayidi, of Ball State University, that covers 259 downtowns in cities with populations between 25,000 and 75,000 in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. The dataset contained valuable information about the sizes of these downtown populations and their growth or decline. Using the Census Bureau’s On-the-Map online database, two variables were added to the original dataset: the number of people who both lived and worked in the city (N Live-workers in City) and the percentage of people participating the nation’s workforce and living in the city who also worked there (% Live-workers in City). The limitation of these added data is that they are characteristics of the whole city and not just the downtown and its immediately surrounding areas. The reasoning for using these data is that the two live-work variables can be seen as indicators of a proclivity to live-work within a city and the analysis can be framed by looking at the impact of that proclivity on the size of these downtown populations and rates of population growth/decline.
A closer look at downtown live-work situations is also presented below. However, because of resource constraints, it is confined to 10 cities in this population range. Five are independents and five are suburban. Several of these downtowns are not in the Ryan-Burayidi dataset.
Downtown Population Growth and Decline. These downtowns do not appear to be having the impressive level of population growth that is to be found in our larger cities, and this is especially the case for the independent cities that are not part of a large metro area.
The suburbs averaged downtown populations that were about as large, 3,089, as the independents, 3,294, but had a slightly larger maximum and a lower minimum. The suburban downtowns captured only a slightly lower proportion of their city’s population, with a median of 7.6%, than the independents did, with a median of 9.2%. Their highest proportions were close, too, 28.4% among the suburbs and 27.3% among the independents.
However, the suburban downtowns had an average growth rate between 2010 and 2018 estimated at 5% compared to just 0.53% for the independents. Both growth rates were far below the two digit growth rates many of our larger downtowns have been experiencing. Unexpected is the large percentage of these downtowns with negative growth rates, 36%. One might think that we were back in the 1960s or 1970s. In this regard again, the comparative strength of the suburbs stood out: while 31% of the suburban cities were dealing with declines in their downtown’s population, 46% of the independents experienced such decline. The suburbs also showed much more variation in their growth, with a low of -57.2% and a high of 140.2% compared to the -11.6% and 17.9% for the independent cities.
Many of these downtowns could benefit from a strategy that can increase their downtown populations.
An important factor in the different downtown population growth rates of the suburban and independent cities is their current economic growth potentials. Recent studies by Brookings and AEI have noted that economic development these days is stronger in communities that are attached, in a metro area, to a large city that has a population above 250,000.7 Many of the suburban cities in the Ryan- Burayidi dataset are attached to such cities (e.g., Chicago, Minneapolis, Columbus). In contrast, the independents, all under 75,000, probably are not, and instead are themselves the core cities of smaller and weaker metro areas.
Levels of Citywide Live-Work. Again, because of their very natures, these two types of cities display quite different levels of live-workers at the city level. In the more geographically and economically isolated independent cities, half of them have over 33% of their residents who also work in the city, with 10% having between about 54.7% to 67.7% of their residents being live-workers. Those numbers, though at the city level, compare favorably with the percentages of liveworkers in and near our big city downtowns identified by Levy & Gilchrist. In contrast, the suburbs, being integrated into an economic region with lots of jobs, have many fewer live-workers at the city level. Half of the suburban cities have less than about 9.9% of their residents also working in their cities, with the highest percentage being 36%, about half that of the independent cities.
A Pearson Correlation analysis showed that both live-work variables have very weak relationships with downtown population size in both independent and suburban communities, with no r exceeding .166 or being statistically significant. These findings support the conclusion that the proclivity for live-working in both types of cities probably has little impact on the downtown’s population size. People who live close to where they work are not clustered in and near their downtowns in these 259 cities.
However, there was a positive r of .249 significant at the .05 level between the number of live-workers in the independent cities and their downtowns’ rates of growth/decline. This does suggest that the proclivity to live-working can have some positive association with downtown population growth in these communities when they are growing. That may point to the additional availability of new downtown housing units that facilitate live-working.
A Case Study of a Creatives’ Suburb. Looking at the nature of the live-work environment in one of the suburban cities in our dataset, Dublin, OH, provides an interesting case study. Dublin is the nation’s 13th strongest creative class city, according to Richard Florida. 8 For a suburb (of Columbus) , it also has a large number of people who hold jobs in the city, about 42,249 in 2017. (See the above table). Given the propensity for creatives to prefer hip urban areas, one might expect a high number of live-workers in this downtown. However, the number of live-workers within a half-mile of the downtown’s center point in 2017 is a miniscule five. In 2017 live-workers represented just 0.18% of the downtown’s workforce and 1.2% of its residents who are in the labor force. They also represented just 0.48% of the downtown’s 1,024 residents (includes those not in the labor force). Those five live-workers accounted for 0.2% of the 3,184 live-workers in the whole city. Live-workers seem, if anything, to be avoiding the downtown.
The number of people who are in the labor force and live in the 0.5 mile had dropped slightly, by 19, from 2007. Most notably, the absolute numbers of live-workers and their percentages of the relevant area’s workforce and residents increased with their distance from the downtown. Moreover, the number of live-workers in the city increased by 408, while the increase within the 1-mile ring was just 44, or about 9% of the city’s total increase. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the local residents and workers have little interest in living in urbanized environments, or at least the type offered in downtown Dublin. The downtown might not be seen as hip. It is very small. This should not be surprising in a town that is such a strong exemplar of a successful suburban city. Here is how Google describes the city:
“Dublin Ohio is a long standing community and is probably best known for being the home of Jack Nicklaus’ Country Club at Muirfield Village”.
“Dublin is in Franklin County and is one of the best places to live in Ohio. Living in Dublin offers residents a sparse suburban feel and most residents own their homes (italics added). In Dublin there are a lot of bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and parks. … The public schools in Dublin are highly rated.” 9
In 2014, a survey by Trulia found that 53% of the 2,008 respondents lived in a suburb and that about 93% of them preferred living in suburban locations. 10 That suggests a high probability that a strong majority of the residents in towns like Dublin might not be looking to live in a dense downtown location in a multi-unit structure. The situation in Dublin signals that many creatives may be among them.
Dublin recently undertook a massive new project, the Bridge District to strengthen the downtown. It will be interesting in a few years to see how that changes how many people live in its downtown and how many are live-workers. 11
An In-Depth Look At Working Populations, Jobs and Live-Workers in 10 Selected Downtowns.
The authors selected 10 downtowns they have visited and researched with populations in the 25,000 to 75,000 range (with the exception of Morristown, NJ) to look at their live-work rates, if these rates grew or declined between 2007 -2017, the size of their working populations (residents in the labor force), their number of jobs and how they also may have changed between 2007-2017. The data were downloaded from the Census Bureau’s On-the-Map online database using 0.5mile and 1.0 mile radii centered on the key intersection in each district. The assembled data are displayed in the two tables presented below. The analysis of such a small sample has obvious statistical limitations. In the natural sciences, e.g., astronomy, however, analogs are often treated as outliers that bring an existing theory or paradigm into question or suggests a need for their amendment. Our findings are presented as being directional, not conclusive, and sometimes as signaling that attention should be paid to them because they do not fit with the accepted professional wisdom.
For the downtowns in the cities in the 25,000 to 75,000 population range, the 0.5 mile ring will cover most or all of their district. It also represents an area that the average pedestrian can cover in about a 10-minute walk from the downtown’s center. It is also often used to define the boundaries of transit-oriented development districts. The 1 mile ring defines and area that is about 4.13 times larger than that of the .5 mile ring, and the average pedestrian would have to walk for about 20 minutes to go from the downtown’s center to the ring’s boundary. Such a walk is still doable for many, but its difficulty is sufficient to probably make others use some form of transportation or simply not make the trip. The .5 mile to 1 mile donut probably represents the nearby neighborhoods that are so crucial to the success of our downtowns.
Residents in the Labor Force. As can be seen in the above table, the number of people who live in the 1-mile ring and are in the labor force (labor force pop), for the most part, is far from negligible. (Note, they do not necessarily work in or near the downtown). The most are in two suburbs, Cranford, 8,817, and Morristown, 8,728, both in NJ. However, the average for the 5 independent downtowns’ 1 mile rings, 6,566, is about 10% higher than that of the five suburban cities, 5,977.
A far larger disparity appears when we look at the data for .5 mile rings: the average number of ring residents who are in the labor force is 1,776 for the five suburban city downtowns, but 307% larger at 5,455 for the independent city downtowns. This probably reflects key differences in their basic characteristics: the independents probably are larger and have traditional, more densely developed downtowns, with more housing units and more jobs, while the suburban downtowns are less densely developed and less multi-functional. However, within the suburban group, Cranford, Morristown and Downers Grove all have many more of these residents than the other two downtowns. Notably all three had completed a number of downtown housing projects in the 2007 to 2017 timeframe. Also, Morristown is both a suburb in the NY-NJ-CT Metropolitan Region, and a county seat and regional commercial center. Notably, it and Garden City have more people working in the city than residents. Starting out as bedroom communities has not stopped them from also becoming office employment centers.
The table also provides ring ratio values that are created by dividing a variable’s value for the 1 mile ring by its value for the .5 mile ring. This sheds light on where the weight of the geographic distribution is between the two rings. Here we are looking at the ring ratio for residents who are in the labor force. A value of 4.1 would indicate an evenly balanced distribution. Values below 4.1 mean the distribution is weighted to the .5 mile ring, and the lower the ratio’s value, the more heavily the distribution is weighted. Conversely, values above 4.1 indicate the degree the distribution is weighted to the 1 mile ring. While the ring ratio for the suburban cities, 3.4, and the independents, 1.2, indicate the weight of the distribution is toward the downtown, it is much stronger for the independent downtowns.
Live-Workers. When it comes to live-workers, the differences between the independent and suburban cities are even more striking. In the .5 mile ring the suburbs range between an unimpressive 5 and 216 live-workers, with an average of 80. On average, live-workers account for just 4.5% of the residents in that ring who are in the labor force. If we look at the suburbs’ 1 mile rings, the numbers rise, but they still are relatively small. Their live-workers range between 169 and 1,146,, with an average of 521. The live- workers in that ring, on average, represent just 8.7% of its residents who are in the labor force. These findings are consistent with the conclusion that the vast majority of the people who live in and near suburban downtowns do not do so because their jobs are also there, though some may be employed elsewhere in their cities. Other factors are leading these residents to select residences in and near their suburban downtowns. Such factors might include the convenience, transportation assets (e.g., commuter rail), and the attractive central social district functions these downtowns offer.
Live-workers have a stronger presence in the independent cities, especially in the 1-mile ring around their downtown’s central location. The range from 181 to 328 in the .5 mile ring, with and average of 231 and from 959 to 1,459 in the 1 mile ring, with and average of 1,212. On average the live workers are 7.7% of the residents in the .5 mile ring who are in the labor force , but 19.9% of those residents in the 1 mile ring. Moreover, Laramie and Rutland have much more impressive levels of live workers, 39.5% and 29.3% respectively. These are levels comparable to large numbers of our largest downtowns. One explanatory hypothesis is that live-working is likely to flourish in the core cities of a metro area, be it large or small, but not in suburban cities.
The ring ratio of suburban cities for the live-workers is 6.5, and for the independents it’s 5,2, indicating their distributions are weighted significantly toward the 1 mile ring, in the .5 mile to 1 mile donuts where residents are likely to find walking to the town’s center not really easy and liable to need/use some transport to get there. This also supports the conclusion that while live-workers may be great for downtown activation and success, downtowns often may not be where people who want to live-work will decide to reside. Being near, but not in the downtown may allow them to enjoy both the assets of the downtown and a suburban home and lifestyle. This may be a reflection of the local cultural where single family residences and traveling by car still are highly valued. While this may be more apparent in suburban cities, these cultural preferences can also be found the independent cities that are so often cities in the midst of a rural area.
Influence of Jobs. Levy and Gilchrist argue that job growth and density are major reasons why live-work levels get very high in our most successful downtowns.
Looking at suburban cities in the bottom half of the above table, one might note that three of them have relatively large numbers of jobs in their 1 mile rings: Garden City 31,309, Morristown 23,431, and Dublin 16,529. They are in the large NY-NJ and Columbus metro areas. Indeed, the five suburban 1-mile rings average 16,890 jobs In contrast, the average job count in the 1-mile rings of the independent cities is just 6,566, with the highest being Rutland’s 7,659.
However, when we look at the percentage of jobs being held by live-workers in both the .5 and 1 mile rings, the averages for the suburban cities are just 1.5% and 3.1% respectively. Despite their high job numbers, the percentages of Garden City, Morristown and Dublin in the 1 mile ring are just 1.5%, 4.9% and 1.0% respectively. The connection between jobs and the emergence of a large number of live-workers seems to be barely existent in these suburban communities, even in those that are prosperous and have lots of jobs.
Live-workers have a more significant presence in the independent cities, especially in their 1-mile rings. The average percentage of jobs held by live-workers in the .5 mile rings is 12.2% and 19.1% in the one mile rings.
However, many of these cities have been struggling. As noted above, 46% of the 91 midwestern independent cities in the Ryan-Burayidi database had declining downtown populations. Auburn, Laramie and Rutland had job losses in their .5 mile ring of -25.6%, -17.8% and -17.8% respectively between 2007 and 2017 and declines in the number of live-workers of -25.6%, -24.9% and -24.2% respectively (see table below). Still, in all five independent cities there is total agreement in all 10 rings between the directions of job growth/decline and live-work growth/decline. That certainly signals a meaningful association between the two.
The opposite is the case with the suburban cities. In seven of their 10 rings there is disagreement in the directions of job growth/ decline and live-working.
Also worthy of note is that between 2007 and 1017 the number of live-workers declined in six of the independent city ring areas and in eight of the suburban ring areas. While live-work may have been growing in our larger cities, these 10 cities suggest that it may have been struggling in our medium sized cities.
The ring ratios for the suburban cities, 3.2, and the independents, 2.7, both indicate the geographic weighting of jobs is toward the downtown. This is again the opposite direction of the live-worker ring ratios. Jobs may be going to the downtown core, but live workers are going to the close-in neighborhoods surrounding the downtown or at its periphery.
Conclusions and Implications
Many of These Downtowns Are Struggling. This is strongly evidenced by the analysis of the 259 cities in the Midwest with populations between 25,000 to 75,000. Many of their downtown populations are declining, not growing. The problem is 48% greater in the independent cities than in the suburban cities that are often attached to fairly large and more prosperous metro areas. That Laramie and Rutland are also having downtown problems suggests that such weakness is not confined to the Midwest, but probably national in scope.
The success of our superstar cities and downtowns should not cloud our awareness of the challenges many of our other downtowns are still facing.
That Said, Their Downtown Populations Are Not Insignificant. The average downtown populations of the 91 independent cities, 3,294, and the 168 suburban cities, 3,089, are similar. Downtown populations of that size can have over $150 million in total annual consumer spending. If they just make one trip daily outside their homes that totals over 6,000 potential in-out pedestrian trips. Those are not negligible numbers.
Live-Working in These Cities Is Struggling, Too. While live-work may have been growing in our larger cities, in the 10 cities given a close look in this study, the numbers of live-workers declined between 2007 and 2017 in all of them. In the suburban downtowns live-work was not significant to begin with. That suggests live-work may have limited potential in many suburban downtowns and that it is struggling in a large number of our medium-sized independent cities nationally.
The Job Growth/Decline – Live-Work Growth/Decline Connection Does Not Work in Suburban Downtowns. Even when they have tens of thousands of jobs, the suburban .5 and 1 mile rings have very low percentages of live-workers. Conversely, the independent cities, that are often the core cities of small metro areas and have denser and more multi-functional downtowns than the suburban cities, can have significant levels of live-workers. In them, the connection between jobs and live-workers seems to be meaningful. However, the data on these five independents indicate that this can be a double-edged sword. When jobs grow, so can the live-workers, but, when jobs decline, so will the number of live-workers, and many of these downtowns are in stressed regional economies. One explanatory hypothesis is that live-working is likely to flourish in the core cities of a metro area, be it large or small, but not in suburban cities.
Is Job Growth Really the Primary Engine of Downtown Population Growth? The average downtown populations of the 91 independent cities and the 168 suburban cities are similar, but they differ in what attracts these residents. While proximity to jobs might draw a significant number of residents to locate in independent city downtowns, that is not the case with the suburban downtowns. Indeed, even most of the residents in the independent downtowns probably are not drawn there by the proximity to their jobs. If that holds nationally, then the argument for jobs being a primary engine of downtown population growth needs to be amended. Moreover, the reverse commuters in our superstar cities, such as those riding Google buses from their San Francisco homes to their Mountainview jobs, suggest national applicability.
The question then becomes, what other factors can be attracting downtown residents? Since our data did not cover this question, we can only hypothesize based on the accepted conventional wisdom in the downtown revitalization field the following:
The downtown’s multi-functionality, that there are so many diverse needs and wants that can be met in a downtown.
The attraction of the downtown’s central social district assets: its housing, restaurants, bars, public spaces, cultural and entertainment venues, senior and childcare centers, places of worship, pamper niche venues, etc.
The convenience of being able to walk to all of these venues and engage in all of the activities in a compact and visually attractive and humanly scaled area.
In the suburbs, the housing units proximity to a commuter rail or an express bus station.
If this hold water, then these downtowns should pursue revitalization strategies that reflect those points.
The Signals of Important Cultural Preferences. It’s important to keep in mind that the vast majority of the cities analyzed in this study are either suburban or medium-sized cities in rural areas. Very high proportions of the people who live in these areas prefer living in such communities. Their cultural preferences are for single family homes, high car use, and a selective tolerance of dense clusters of people. Living in multi-unit buildings situated in or near a walkable commercial district may only be valued by a limited number of niche market segments, such as empty nesters, commuter rail users, and young adults who need to share residency costs.
Looking at the 10 cities spotlighted in this study: while the weight of the geographic distributions of the labor force population and jobs tilt toward the .5 mile ring, it tilts strongly to the donut area between the two ring boundaries for the live-workers. This suggests that there may be some important differences between the live- workers residing in the donut and those people who live in the core downtown area. One might conjecture that since it is likely that the housing available in the donut will not be as dense as it is in the downtown core, and also more likely to be single-family dwellings, that this signals an important lifestyle preference. This, in turn, may correlate with higher income households who can afford to buy houses going to the donut.
Moreover, as we noted about Dublin, OH, even though the town has a ton load of creatives working there, where its residents have chosen to live suggests a high probability that a strong majority of them are not looking to live in a dense downtown location in a multi-unit structure.
Would An Infusion of Creatives Alter These Cultural Preferences and Increase Live-Working? Creatives are often seen as the strategic solution to many downtown challenges. Would and infusion of them counter a culture’s existing preference for a dispersed lifestyle? Research by David A. McGranahan and Timothy R. Wojan found that in metropolitan counties about 30.9% of the workforce were in creative class occupations, while in rural counties it was just 19.4%. 12 One might reasonably deduce that the cities analyzed in this study have creatives that probably account for between 20% to 30% of their workforces. Creatives are famous for living where they will find the lifestyles they prefer, so the fact that they live in these suburban and rural cities can be taken as a fairly strong sign that they like living in these kinds of communities. That, in turn, suggest that they may have adopted many of the cultural values of their larger community. Moreover, whatever impact they might have already is reflected in the current situation in these cities and their downtowns. Also, given their education, income and employment, creatives also can be expected to have had an above average level of influence in the community.
One possible influence for change might be creatives who move into these communities. Will they bring in a more cosmopolitan worldview? There has been some research on the people who are moving back to small towns and rural areas that shows many are in creative occupations and that they move back to be closer to their families, to enjoy a slower pace of life, and to live in a place where social ties and engagement are more important. 13 They maybe bringing their creative and entrepreneurial talents into their suburban and rural cities, but they are not there to create a mini Midtown Manhattan or a mini downtown San Francisco.
On the other hand, if the incoming creatives are largely young, not nested adults, then there might well be a demand for apartment units. However, brain gain when it emerges in these cities, to date, has brought in more families than singles.
ENDNOTES
1) These cities were selected based on data from: U.S. Census Bureau, Governments Division, Government Organization, Table 7: Subcounty General-Purpose Governments by Population-Size Group and State. Census of Governments (2007).
2) Two of the most successful “redos” are Uptown Charlotte and the Lower Manhattan CBD.
3) Eugenie Birch, “Who lives downtown”, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, November 2005, pp 20.
4) Paul R. Levy and Lauren M. Gilchrist, “Downtown Rebirth: Documenting the Live-Work Dynamic in 21st Century U.S. Cities.” Prepared for the International Downtown Association By the Philadelphia Center City District, pp.57
5) Aaron Renn, “SCALING UP: How Superstar Cities Can Grow to New Heights”, Manhattan Institute, Report January 2020, pp. 16, p.1
11) Thanks to Aaron Renn for bringing this to our attention.
12) David A. McGranahan and Timothy R. Wojan, “Recasting the Creative Class to Examine Growth Processes in Rural and Urban Counties”. USDA. https://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/41989/PDF
Contact: N. David Milder, Editor The ADRR — The American Downtown Revitalization Review 718-805-9507 [email protected]
THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN DOWNTOWN REVITALIZATION REVIEW (THE ADRR)
There currently is no real professional journal for the downtown revitalization field. For many years, that has been strongly lamented by many of the field’s best thinkers. To remedy that situation, a band of accomplished downtown revitalization professionals are creating The ADRR. It will be a free online publication, appearing four times each year. The target date for the debut issue is now set for the June 1-15, 2020 timeframe, with the second issue aimed for the Sept 7-14, 2020 timeframe.
This ADRR is intended to be a lean and mean operation, based totally on the availability of free online resources and the time, energy and elan contributed by its authors, advisory and editorial board members, and its editor.
How to Subscribe to The ADRR
Those interested can now visit The ADRR’s website, www.theadrr.com , where, on the home page, they can sign up to become subscribers. This enrollment places the subscriber on a MailChimp mailing list so that they can receive New Issue Alerts (see below).
How Issues of The ADRR Will Be Distributed.
New Issue Alerts, containing the Tables of Contents of issues and links to their downloadable pdfs of articles are sent to subscribers via a MailChimp email blast and posted to the ADRR’s website. Each issue’s pdf files initially will be stored in a folder in ND Milder’s Dropbox account from which they can be downloaded. Subscribers can download only those articles they want to read and whenever they want to read them. The ADRR also can be found via Google searches.
The Content We Are Aiming For. Only manuscripts about major downtown needs, issues and trends will be considered for publication. They will be thought pieces and not just reports about a downtown’s programs and policies that its leaders want to brag about. Articles must have broad salience and their recommendations broad applicability within the field. The “voice” of The ADRR will be anti-puff, and very factual, evidence driven, though not dully academic. Discussions of problems and failures will be considered as relevant as success stories if, as so often is the case, something substantial can be learned from them. The ADRR will not avoid controversial issues.
Also, the focus of The ADRR will not be overwhelmingly on our largest most urban downtowns, but also provide a lot of content and relevant assistance to those in our small and medium sized communities, be they in suburban or rural areas.
Who Will Write the Articles?
Hopefully, they will be from people in a broad range of occupations – downtown managers and leaders, municipal officials, academics, developers, landlords, businesspeople, consultants, etc. — who have significant downtown related knowledge and experience.
Curated Articles and Wildflowers. Initially, the ADRR will solicit articles to prime the content pump. Once The ADRR is up and running some articles will continue to be solicited on topics deemed a high priority by the editorial board members. Each board member can select a topic to curate an article on and seek the author(s) to write them. However, there still will be a continual traditional general call for submissions (wildflowers) focused on subjects selected by their authors. All submissions, curated or wildflower, must demonstrate sufficient merit to warrant publication in The ADRR. All submitted articles will be reviewed by board members. We hope to see many submissions!
Article Length and Author Responsibilities.
There will be short reads and long reads. Articles of 1,500 to 5,000 words will be considered. Multi-part articles of exceptional merit and salience will also be considered. What counts is their quality, not their length. Authors must have their articles thoroughly proofread prior to submission. Poorly proofed manuscripts will be rejected. Guidelines for submissions may be found on The ADRR website.
Publication Schedule:
Published four times per year, with a minimum of 5 articles in each issue. Given that this is an online publication, from a production perspective, the number and length of the articles is not a particular problem. However, from an editorial and content management perspective, the number of articles and their lengths can quickly become burdensome.
How It Will Be Organized.
The ADRR will be published by an informal group for its first year, with no person or group having ownership.
Editor. During the ADRR’s first year, N. David Milder has volunteered to serve as its editor.
The Advisory/Editorial Board :
Jerome Barth, Fifth Avenue Association
Michael J Berne, MJB Consulting
Laurel Brown, UpIncoming Ventures
Katherine Correll, Downtown Colorado, Inc.
Dave Feehan, Civitas Consulting
Bob Goldsmith, Downtown NJ, and Greenbaum Rowe
Stephen Goldsmith, Center for the Living City
Nicholas Kalogeresis, The Lakota Group
Kris Larson, Hollywood Property Owners Alliance.
Paul R. Levy, Center City District, Philadelphia
Beth Anne Macdonald, Commercial District Services
Andrew M. Manshel, author
N. David Milder, DANTH, Inc
John Shapiro, Pratt Institute
Norman Walzer, Northern Illinois University
Articles in our first issue that will be published in June 2020
Michael Berne, MJB Consulting, Working Title, ” Bringing Downtown Retail Back After COVID-19”
Roberta Brandes Gratz, “Malls of Culture.”
Andrew M. Manshel, “Is ED Really a Problem?”
N. David Milder, DANTH, Inc., “Developing a New Approach to Downtown Market Research Projects – Part 1.”
Aaron M. Renn, Heartland Intelligence, “Bus vs. Light Rail.”
Michael Stumpf, Place Dynamics, “Using Cellphone Data to Identify Downtown User Sheds”.
The Spotlight: “Keeping Our Small Merchants Open Through the COVID-19 Crisis”
Katherine Correll, Downtown Colorado, Inc.
David Feehan, Civitas Consulting
Isaac Kremer, Metuchen Downtown Alliance
Errin Welty, Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation.
I have been working in the field of downtown and urban revitalization since 1974. Back then, the riots of 1968 had brought considerable attention to our urban distress. Many civic and business leaders became much more aware of the cascading erosion their downtowns were facing. The white flight of shoppers and residents living in the downtown and close-in neighborhoods, disinvestment by landlords and businesses, spreading physical decay, soaring fear of crime, badly tarnished public images, and widespread frustration about not knowing how to reverse this situation were common problems in downtowns across the nation. Today, many of our downtowns have been thoroughly revitalized and become very popular places for people to live, play and work. Scads of other downtowns are in the process of doing so. These days, the expectation that downtowns can and will be revitalized has replaced the fears of the 60s, 70s, 80s and early 90s that downtowns were doomed to be places of failure, despair and decay. Downtown leaders now can tap a large and growing knowledge base that includes an array of tools and techniques they can use to solve the problems that had previously plagued our downtowns. Among them are: place-making, improving walkability, transit-oriented development, mixed-use residential development, niche marketing, BIDs, TIF, PILOTs, community policing, etc. This success — both actual and expected — and the knowledge base and leadership pool that support it, are some of the defining characteristics of the New Normal for Our Downtowns.
The Downtown Residents – CSD Connection
Successful downtowns, however, are not stagnant socio/economic/geographic organisms. Indeed, some of the factors that explain their success have also both changed the way they operate and generated a new set of problems that now need attention and solutions. For example, though it is generally agreed among downtown revitalization experts that the significant growth of housing in and near our downtowns has been a primary engine for their recent rejuvenations, questions recently have emerged about downtowns being turned into ghettos for the affluent. Still, the significant presence of these residential units are themselves an important and new phenomenon. Moreover, these new residents have created a significant new demand for services, amenities and merchandise that are not typically associated with the Central Business District (CBD) functions and venues that dominated our downtowns in decades past. These CBD functions and venues also have long dominated our understanding of how successful downtowns should operate and been the focus of most downtown revitalization strategies (e.g., retail growth, office development, job creation, transportation improvements). While many of these new downtown residents may also work in the district, their demand for and consumption of opportunities to socialize, relax and be entertained has driven the development and/or use of strong restaurant and bar niches, public spaces and parks, libraries and community centers, movie theaters, museums, PACs, churches, senior centers, etc. These venues are associated with a downtown’s Central Social District (CSD) functions.
Another defining characteristic of the New Normal is that successful downtowns have very strong CSD venues and, with increasing frequency, they are as important or even outshine those associated with its CBD functions. Some types of CSD venues have long been present in some downtowns, but the appearance of a bolus of downtown residents has generally sparked their significant growth while broadening the kinds of venues present. In turn, by strengthening these venues, the downtown residents have helped them be stronger magnets for people working in the district as well as daytime visitors from the district’s largest trade areas and for tourists from even more distant places.
The presence of these residents and the strength of these CSD venues also has changed the way a downtown operates. Most importantly, they widen the range of a downtown’s multi-functionality, increasing the reasons why people will use the downtown. By doing so, they also provide a steady and significant flow of pedestrians and customers that helps assure the district does not close down on weekends or weekdays after 6:00 pm. Strong CSD venues also make the downtown “stickier,” keeping visitors in the district for longer periods of time.
Strong CSD venues also make working in a downtown more appealing. In a labor market where many job offers now find no takers, firms located in strong CSDs are likely to find it easier to recruit quality employees. Moreover, many of the quality of life needs of creatives/knowledge workers are met by strong CSD assets. In smaller towns, strong CSDs can help attract quality independent retailers and Lone Eagle business operators.
But CSD Development Can Be Very Bumpy
Nevertheless, CSD development and growth does not always have clear sailing. Many communities may opt for CSD development projects that are ill-suited for their demographics, geographic locations, or industry trends, while they could have instead undertaken projects that were cheaper to build and operate and capable of attracting many more users. For example, advocates for new arts events venues such as PACs, theaters, and museums as well as for arenas and stadiums often badly over-estimate their potential economic impacts on the downtown, while underestimating construction and operating costs. In larger cities, major organizations in the opera, ballet, symphony orchestra and nonprofit theater fields are badly stressed having to cope with significant declines in paid attendance and financial contributions. In smaller communities, the impacts of new arts events venues on their downtowns are too often grossly exaggerated, and operating costs badly underestimated. Consistently, between 40% and 50% of arts nonprofits are financially in the red.
The most effective strategic path is to first focus on the strengthening and/or development of well-activated parks and public spaces, restaurants and watering holes, and movie theaters. They are usually the easiest to create and operate and have the fewest user frictions or are asset treasures that need to be improved and saved.
Though a lot of strategic planning is done for CBD functions and venues, strategic plans for CSDs are rare, but equally needed. While attention may be given to individual CSD projects, too many of such studies are marred by advocacy induced puffery. Very unfortunately, little attention is being paid to the CSD as whole entity.
Technology Is Creating a New Set of Problems
The impacts of technology are also strongly defining the New Normal. This is most apparent in the way the Internet is forcing the whole retail industry to search for a new operating paradigm and electronic consumption has reduced the brick and mortar consumption of the arts. How and when people shop is consequently changing in significant ways. They first research online and then shop the store for the targeted item(s). Strolling and browsing shoppers subsequently are on the decline. Many Americans are time-stressed, so many shoppers want quick, convenient retail transactions. Yet, many others want more interesting, more meaningful and more socially appealing shopping experiences. Shoppers have also become much more careful and deliberate when making purchases. While this is most strongly apparent among middle-income consumers, affluent shoppers are also showing signs of greater caution.
Changed consumer behavior, combined with growing online sales, have reduced the demand for downtown store locations and the amount of space retailers want for their new stores.
While downtown retail shops will not disappear, they almost certainly will change in the way they operate, the amounts of space they each need, as well as the types of locations they will want.
Yet, as my discussions with potential clients demonstrate, many downtown organizations still see retail as a key element in their downtown’s future, while largely disregarding improvements to their CSDs.
The appearance of app-driven car services such as Uber and Lyft have already impacted on traffic congestion and the use of public transportation in several large downtowns. The imminent use of automated vehicles – e.g., by Waymo soon in Phoenix – will likely have important impacts on traffic congestion in a host of additional downtowns. What these impacts will be remains uncertain- as do the possible remedies to those that are harmful. The transition to automated vehicles will probably take 20 to 40 years, with different issues dominating downtowners’ concerns at each stage of its progression.
Success Can Create Problems
The very success of our downtowns also has created its own set of problems. For example:
High housing demand has created a very serious affordability problem for many downtowns and their nearby neighborhoods.
Downtown success usually means more pedestrian traffic. For example, from 2009 to 2015, pedestrian growth in Manhattan’s economically healthy central business district grew by about 18 to 24 percent. At what point does the density of downtown pedestrian traffic become uncomfortable and unappealing for pedestrians and detrimental to an area’s image and popularity? The uncomfortable density of users is already occasionally being felt in such famed public spaces in NYC as Times Square, Bryant Park and Central Park. Will those instances of pedestrian congestion increase? Some of the managers of these public spaces seem unconcerned about pedestrian congestion. Indeed, they seem to be committed to having the largest number of visitors possible.
As a recent study of Center City in Philadelphia has shown, greater downtown development density increases traffic congestion.
Postscript.
This is part of book proposal I am writing. I’d appreciate hearing if you would be interested in a book that expanded upon the above content. Please let me know at [email protected] .
