WSJ says Seattle and DC buck the trend and are retaining families

 The Wall Street Journal--the best way to access it is through your local library system, which probably provides access, my registration evaders no longer really work on it--writes in "Seattle and D.C. Are Bucking the Trend by Attracting Families With Kids" that most cities are losing families but not DC and Seattle.

This family lives in DC's Mount Pleasant neighborhood--which is great.  And the daughter goes to the local Spanish-English immersion elementary school.

More households with six figure salaries are staying as they add children.

It comes down to amenities, schooling options--DC has a plethora of charter schools plus Pre-K education/child care for 3-5 year olds), cheaper housing compared to the suburbs--sadly we can thank Trump's evisceration of the federal workforce and the impact on the DC housing market ("A housing market on the precipice: New insights from the DMV Monitor," Brookings, "Did DOGE Cripple Northern Virginia’s Housing Market?," Arlington Magazine) and incomes.  

Interestingly, both cities are losing population of lower income families.  But this makes sense economically, as the cities are increasingly expensive, and job income growth and job growth are slowing as the effects of the Trump economy trickle throughout DC's microeconomy.

WSJ says Seattle and DC buck the trend and are retaining families

The Wall Street Journal--the best way to access it is through your local library system, which probably provides access, my registration evaders no longer really work on it--writes in "Seattle and D.C. Are Bucking the Trend by Attracting Families With Kids" that most cities are losing families but not DC and Seattle.

This family lives in DC's Mount Pleasant neighborhood--which is great.  And the daughter goes to the local Spanish-English immersion elementary school.

More households with six figure salaries are staying as they add children.

It comes down to amenities, schooling options--DC has a plethora of charter schools plus Pre-K education/child care for 3-5 year olds), cheaper housing compared to the suburbs--sadly we can thank Trump's evisceration of the federal workforce and the impact on the DC housing market ("A housing market on the precipice: New insights from the DMV Monitor," Brookings, "Did DOGE Cripple Northern Virginia’s Housing Market?," Arlington Magazine) and incomes.  

Interestingly, both cities are losing population of lower income families.  But this makes sense economically, as the cities are increasingly expensive, and job income growth and job growth are slowing as the effects of the Trump economy trickle throughout DC's microeconomy.

Boston wonders if they can re-support nightlife based on the results so far from the World Cup

People waited to be seated outside The Union Bar. Photo: Christian Kantosky, Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe has been writing about the impact of the World Cup on the city's nightlife.

Where the Scots cleaned out alcohol supplies ("‘We’ve never seen anything like it’: Patrons emptied bars and liquor stores in Boston this weekend"), the city extended open hours till 3 am ("Governor Healey signs bill allowing 3 a.m. last call for the World Cup, expanding public drinking through July"), outdoor public drinking zones, like Bourbon Street in New Orleans, etc.  

So the Boston Globe wonders if "Boston nightlife is in the midst of a grand social experiment. Can the good vibes last?."

As someone who worked on commercial district revitalization for 20 years in DC and wrote a lot about this issue, they missed the biggest possible point and difference, the addition of many tens of thousands of people from out of the area who were there for nightlife.

-- "Aging cities | Maintaining economic dynamism in the face of aging populations at the city and metropolitan scale" (2025)

-- "Richard's Rules for Restaurant-Based Revitalization: New business models are needed for 2025" (especially the comments where I quote from relevant articles I come across)

-- "Experience economy/nightlife: Boston, LA, Pittsburgh, London, Santa Monica" (2025)

-- "Planning programming by daypart, month, season: and Boston Winter Garden, DC's Holiday Market, etc." (2016)

Bourbon Street.

Temporarily, World Cup cities are functioning more like 24/7 nightlife districts in Las Vegas, Miami, and not quite NYC, plus Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Beale Street in Memphis?.  People go to those cities to party.  

I follow Reddit Las Vegas and people write about going there and being drunk and/or high for most of their stay.  Maybe the Scots were like that.  Not Bostonians.

Plus the super posh clubs with bottle service and all night dancing, massive pool parties in Vegas, etc.

Beale Street.

A traditional city, at least in the US, just doesn't have that kind of latent populations always going out, and willing to be shitfaced and then go to work.  Concerns like:

• Having to work two jobs
• mobility when drunk
• the impact of smartphones on entertainment choices, less ability to socialize
• the cost of going out
• consumption of experiences
• labor for the establishments and the the rise of the cost of goods sold, 
• rents and changing business models due to work from home reducing office visits
• people drinking less
• People consuming edibles instead of drinking, 
• mocktails (just as expensive to produce, lower margins, 
• etc.

Make it a lot harder to go out.

Aquatic deserts: Atlanta | Presidential Fitness Test

Contested Waters A Social History of Swimming Pools in America

An article from Urbanize Atlanta, "Rejection of Va-Hi swimming pool will set Atlanta kids back," was in my newsfeed, about the identification of aquatic deserts in Atlanta. 

This has been fostered by racism in terms of both differentiated provision of civic assets, but also in how with integration, many facilities were closed instead of reversing the segregation that had existed previously ("When Cities Closed Pools to Avoid Integration," JSTOR, "Anacostia Park Pool Riots," National Park Service, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America, "The forgotten history of segregated swimming pools and amusement parks," The Conversation).

Of course, lack of access has led to a low rate of swimming ability among African-Americans--fewer than 40%-- in a city that's majority black.

The author's solution is for the parks and school departments to join together and create swim teams.

Anacostia Park swimming pool - Washington DC Photo by: Evening Star, June 11, 1939, p. C-5

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My response:

While well argued, the article on aquatic deserts equates swim teams to learning how to swim, leisurely using a pool, and more comprehensive recreation planning. They are not the same. 

Swim teams are teams with a limited number of participants versus the much bigger number of 60+% of African Americans who don't know how to swim. I don't see how that's going to have much affect on the number of Atlanteans who know how to swim.

Yes the schools and parks should work together, probably swim teams are a good idea, but only as a single element of what should be a broader swimming recreation plan for Atlanta aiming to address the aquatic deserts identified by the author, and to extend the range of public facilities and programs available to Atlanta citizens.

Indoor water park, Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

In my community, I am just a leisurely user of a semi public pool (the public ones are harder to get to from where I live). 

I'm a parks guy not a recreation planner so I am unfamiliar with best practice examples of swimming facilities and programs for swimming. 

In Salt Lake County, most but not all recreation facilities are county run although some cities remain independent with their own facilities. 

A majority of swimming based recreational facilities, both indoor and outdoor, are set up not just with traditional pools for swimming and racing, complemented by lazy rivers, hot tubs, water slides, sometimes wave pools/currents, and shallower open plunge facilities, rather than just pools they are referred to as aquatic centers. 

This allows children to be introduced to swimming without the pressure of joining a team as well as being able to try wide range of activities, to learning how to swim, to having access to teams serving all ages, including masters adult programs. 

And yes, some have swim teams, but all have lessons and in Salt Lake County youth are entitled to a free pass until they are 19. 

Many jurisdictions have similar free pass programs for youth, and discounts for seniors. 

Cities like Philadelphia and DC do have indoor and outdoor pools (mostly just a pool rather than an aquatic center) but have problems staffing and in my opinion start closing too early, in August, when hot temperatures typically are present through September. 

Having a plan addressing these issues, including seasonality and staffing will likely have more impact addressing aquatic deserts than developing a swim team program alone. A quick perusal of the Internet finds these resources. 

-- "Designing Modern Aquatics Centers," Parks & Recreation Magazine  

-- Salt Lake County Health Regulation #2: Design, Construction and Operation of Pools

-- "The Do’s and Don’ts of Planning Aquatic Centers," LPA   

-- "Making a Splash: Key Principles for Effective Aquatic Center Planning," Sports Facilities Companies 

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Trump and the revival of the Presidential Fitness Test.  Given how sedentary and obese our population is becoming ("Just 28% Of Americans Are Exercising Enough, CDC Says—And It’s Even Lower In Some Regions," Forbes), reviving standards for fitness and wellness are in order.  From the journal article (Proceedings of the Mayo Clinic)  "Healthy Lifestyle Characteristics and Their Joint Association With Cardiovascular Disease Biomarkers in US Adults": 

{O]nly 2.7% of American adults in the study were found to exhibit four fundamental healthy lifestyle characteristics. These four were: 

• Being sufficiently active 
• Eating a healthy diet 
• Being a non-smoker 
• Having a recommended body fat percentage

The Post's Kevin Blackistone wrote a response to President Trump's announcement of bringing back the fitness test ("The presidential fitness test is nostalgia in the worst way") and how while there is a great need to improve the fitness and wellness of youth (and adults), Trump's focus is in all the wrong places on teams and competition, not fitness.  This is the point I made above about the difference between a swim team and knowing how to swim.

Trump’s approach to youth fitness is on-brand nostalgia, in the worst way. Like his administration’s thwarting wind energy construction and electric vehicle manufacturing in lieu of boosting coal mining and building more combustion engine cars. It isn’t helpful. It’s hurtful. And it’s narrow-minded by focusing on competition — Trump placed “sports” before “fitness” in the program’s title — to ensure what the president fanaticized as “America’s global dominance in sports.”

He contrasted this approach to that of  Spelman College, where the then president realized that focusing on intercollegiate athletics meant that most of the student body was not served at all.

Retired Spelman College president Beverly Tatum took an opposite approach when she led the all-women’s HBCU in Atlanta for 13 years starting in 2002. In her soon-to-be-released book “Peril and Promise: College Leadership in Turbulent Times,” Tatum recalled reading an article about the sedentary lives of young Black women and how it contributed to diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, breast cancer and other health vagaries that plague Black women. So, she took the unpopular tact of shutting down the small school’s intercollegiate athletic program in favor of a wellness initiative for the entire student body.

“The overall approach to wellness that we were implementing at Spelman was certainly very much in line with the activities of the Obama White House,” Tatum, a psychologist by profession who wrote the noted book, “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? and Other Conversations About Race,” told me Wednesday. “And I say the Obama White House because Michelle Obama was one of the great champions of eating better and moving more. And our slogan was, ‘Eat better. Move more. Sleep well.’ 

 “If you’ve got those three things working, particularly for late adolescence — improving your diet, engaging in regular activity, not only for better physical health, but also mental health, and then … sleep,” Tatum said she and the Spelmanites learned, “you are well on your way to a long and healthy life, which is of course what we wanted for our students.”

This is why I use the term health and wellness planning versus hospital planning, as a keyword identifying blog posts.  Because health planning should go beyond providing access to acute and emergency care through hospitals.  But our "health care system" isn't set up to promote health per se, but to deal with health problems.

Building housing ahead of the market in "transitioning" markets

At a real estate conference I was at many years ago, a developer made the point that building affordable housing was unprofitable in Prince George's County, Maryland (the area's least economically vibrant community but comparatively still quite successful) because it was underpriced by existing Class B, C, and D housing.

I've mentioned the HUD typology of neighborhood type, ranging from distressed to healthy, with various types of emerging and transforming points in between.

Photo: Justin Guido, PPG.

An example in Pittsburgh about new construction in urban neighborhoods with relatively weak microeconomies, illustrates both points.

A developer built some new (ugly to me) rowhouses in Pittsburgh's Hill District, believing that the "neighborhood deserves" new construction housing and greater choice, just like more thriving parts of the city ("Six new townhomes. Zero buyers. And one developer on the brink," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The houses were priced at about double the area's mean housing price of $227,000.  None have sold even after price reductions.  From the article:

The six modern townhomes on a quiet stretch of Rose Street were built by developer Steffan Johnson — who saw them as a personal response to the difficulty he experienced while shopping for urban housing desirable to upwardly mobile Black professionals when he and his family moved here in 2009 from Minneapolis.

“I wanted to show what’s possible for this side of the city by bringing modern architecture and high-end finishes — almost custom homes — to a part of the Hill that is long overdue,” he said. But five months after listing the homes — for $480,000 — Mr. Johnson has yet to find a single buyer.

This is a lesson for revitalizing cities and neighborhoods that you can't be too far ahead of the market.  Especially when it is still emerging.

East of the River neighborhoods in DC have a similar problem with new construction not always being able to appraise at the right price to support a mortgage, because existing housing costs less, and it's hard to find higher price comp(arison)s.

It's interesting to think about this in terms of his target market.  Does it exist in Pittsburgh, or are people content to live in non-Black majority neighborhoods.

Another is the idea of the "one over neighborhood" ("When the one over neighborhood is in the county next door, and housing prices have been in the tank: Mount Rainer, Maryland," blog entry 2016) by Live Baltimore.  The Hill District hasn't developed positive dynamics at the scale of the metropolitan residential housing landscape the same way that South Pittsburgh or Lawrenceville have.

Aging cities | Maintaining economic dynamism in the face of aging populations at the city and metropolitan scale

The San Francisco Chronicle has a series on aging in the Bay Area, how it's faster than in other metropolitan areas, and the potential impacts going forward.

The theory of ecological succession (invasion-succession) focused on concentric rings emanating from a city's core posited by University of Chicago sociologists in the 1920s is based on the foundational belief that population keeps growing  

What if it doesn't?

The Chinatown piece's reference to the dissertation, "The politics of Chinatown development in American cities," where the author posits different dynamics for Chinatowns in different cities in terms of growth, maintenance, and shrinkage are extendable to thinking about cities.  Although plenty's already been written about growth, decline, stasis and renewal.

The basic cause of urban decline in the 1960s-1970s was outmigration--losing residents, business development, commerce, and revenues to the suburbs.  At the same time, the city's neighborhoods concentrated on low income and/or aging populations.    

Similar to the dynamics of outmigration is the consolidation of industry, movement to lower wage communities first in the US, then overseas (like apparel manufacturing, "A Mill Town Lost Its Mill. What Is It Now?," New York Times) and the Northeast/Midwest versus the South, growth shifted to the latter in the post-war period, spurred in part by the development and location of the defense industry (The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America) and the seeking of broader horizons, and sun, after more than 15 years of urban decline in terms of quality of life derived from the disinvestment of the Depression and the need to focus on the war economy during WWII..

Among other effects, as populations age, they buy less stuff, which affects the success of urban retail commerce and nightlife, especially in the neighborhood commercial districts.  Schools close.  Etc.  This fact is why I was against DC's passing various tax benefit laws in favor of seniors, because it discourages people from moving and comes at the expense of neighborhood renewal.  (Although now at my age, I'd benefit.)  Places stagnate.

From "This is the real doom loop. It will change everything about life in the Bay Area":

For years we’ve heard of the potential economic doom spiral circling San Francisco, where a massive city budget deficit fueled by remote work leads to poorer services and even more residents fleeing. But another threat has been building in relative silence.

The Bay Area is getting old fast, and it’s accelerating. Though aging is a global trend, the San Francisco metro area — which includes San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo and Marin counties — is already the third-oldest among 20 of the largest regions in the U.S., trailing only two places in Florida. And no other region is growing older at a quicker pace.

That means fewer children, more elderly people and a declining number of 20-somethings. The confluence of demographic shifts will profoundly impact every aspect of life in the San Francisco area. Combined with rising housing costs and growing hostility toward immigration, the graying of cities and towns means the region’s continued prosperity is in doubt.

... In Berkeley, we found a once-vibrant neighborhood that is now essentially a retirement community of single-family homes. In Sonoma County, we visited a city with a family-friendly reputation that lost 35% of its children in a decade. In San Francisco, we spoke to bar owners trying to survive a one-two punch: older patrons are spending less while younger guests are drinking less.

... Of course, the Bay Area isn’t uniformly elderly. Certain parts of the region — such as around the UC Berkeley and San Francisco State campuses, the city’s Marina neighborhood and parts of downtown Oakland — are quite young.

Conversely, some areas are exceptionally old. Two Berkeley neighborhoods, Thousand Oaks and Northbrae, have median ages nearing 60. What makes these places remarkable is that, unlike most older communities, they don’t include nursing homes or senior care centers. Most of the residents have been living there for over 20 years, according to a Chronicle analysis of census data.

This affects all elements of the local economy including: 

• availability of workers
• school enrollments
• aging services and housing
• cost of housing more generally
• tax revenues
• reduced support for nightlife and other forms of urban commerce ("No drinking or late nights: How 20-somethings are changing S.F.’s nightlife scene," Chronicle)
• transit needs
• the importance of immigration as a way to continue population growth in the face of population shrinkage and the decline in fertility (as measured by births).  (This is evident in the effects of Brexit and the decline of the British economy in response to economic xenophobia.)

For example, one of the things missed in the discussion of broadening the range of types of housing in neighborhoods formerly limited to detached single family housing ("‘Missing middle’ housing plan in Montgomery County faces backlash," Washington Post), is the need to accommodate other demographics who will populate the community in the future.

And of course the non-economist discourse about the effects of immigration in US political discourse fails to consider immigration as a source of economic dynamism ("In 1965, the government tried replacing migrant workers with high-schoolers. It was a disaster," Washington Post, "How Does Immigration Affect the U.S. Economy?," Council on Foreign Relations, "Despite Trump’s claims, data shows migrants aren’t taking jobs from Black or Hispanic people," AP, "Economists Love Immigration. Why Do So Many Americans Hate It?," New Yorker).

The problem is that the average resident/citizen doesn't task themselves with thinking about and addressing these types of long term issues, in particular, neighborhood, city, metropolitan, or national decline.

Experience economy/nightlife: Boston, LA, Pittsburgh, London, Santa Monica

I wrote about this issue recently, in "Ain't got that soul (when younger demographics leave the city): and musings about the nightlife economy" as well as some other pieces.  

This does not look very congenial.  BG photo.

This Boston Globe article,  "Downtown Boston is trying to find its post-pandemic identity. It’s fighting an uphill battle," hits a home run on the topic, that cities need to reshape their downtowns to remain relevant, that mixed use neighborhoods are more popular, that people tend to stay closer to home, especially if they don't work Downtown.  From the article

Measures of foot traffic and office vacancy haven’t fully rebounded. Hybrid work remains pretty common. Car traffic is worse. Empty storefronts persist. But more than anything, we just don’t mix like we did before.

A Northeastern University study of cellphone data found that when COVID hit, inhabitants of Greater Boston became far less likely to interact with people of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Those numbers have been recovering, but for many parts of the region, particularly in the suburbs, levels of what researchers call “social exploration” have fallen sharply.

And that’s bad news for a city whose culture and economy have, for centuries, been built on people mixing, connecting, and sharing ideas, said Northeastern University physicist Esteban Moro, who’s leading the study. Bad enough that it raises questions about what cities like Boston are for, now, and how we make them places that people connect once again.

... It’s an indicator of the diminished role that downtown plays in the daily lives of Bostonians. According to recent figures from the Downtown Boston Alliance, about 20,000 fewer people work downtown than they did five years ago, and they come in, on average, about three fewer days per month. Add it up, and the work trips into the core of the city district have fallen by almost half.

... “The fundamental thing that we’re asking is where are people?” she said. “Where is the center of gravity in the city, whether for shopping or for hanging out or for work? Where do people come together?”

Increasingly, that’s neighborhoods where people do more than work. While foot traffic downtown remains below pre-pandemic levels, according to city data, it’s nearly back citywide, and up in places such as Fenway and Longwood. What’s the difference? These “multipurpose” neighborhoods, as Moro describes them, provide chances to live, work, and play in more equal measure.

... To Crockett, even the word “downtown” feels a bit archaic, as it implies we’re all going to the same place. In this more splintered age, we aren’t. “If people are going to venture out of their home for any reason,” she said, “it’s to have a particular experience.”

And experience is a big part of how developers aim to draw people out now. Food halls, for instance, are springing up across the city, not just catering to office workers seeking lunch but also tourists, families, and after-hours crowds into the night.

... A slew of for-profit “Instagram museums” and immersive art experiences have recently taken up residence in hollowed-out storefronts. A Harry Potter exhibit has lately drawn throngs to an empty old Best Buy at the CambridgeSide mall. “Competitive socializing” is all the rage in the Seaport, where different venues offer mini-golf, ping pong, bowling, pickleball, or darts. And the recent arrival of new spaces where people can both shop and linger — be it at Beacon Hill Books & Cafe, or the batting-cage-boasting Dick’s House of Sport in Back Bay — are models for how businesses can transform an errand into an event.

Complementary articles I've come across and/or written about over the past few months are "Once LA's nightlife epicenter, the storied Sunset Strip has a murky future," from the San Francisco Chronicle, "An interesting public space development project in Downtown Pittsburgh: extends the range of after-work activities to keep office workers engaged," about a forthcoming space in Downtown Pittsburgh that has some of the characteristics of experiential interaction discussed in the BG, and the Los Angeles Times, "‘Experiential’ retail surges as landlords try to lure customers back to the mall," mostly about Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade and its need for change in the face of the decline of traditional retail--it had been anchored by at least two department stores, and about the reproduction of a 1970s study on people's use of public spaces ("People aren't "hanging out" as much outdoors during the workday in the center city").

Plus, this "The suffocation of Soho: how London's creative rogue is being sanitised," on London's SoHo (Evening Standard).  It's more about how permanent residents want to put strictures on businesses. 

 Westminster borough has put together a report, After Dark, about their desires to quiet things a bit.

So I guess I shouldn't have been as derisive of Mayor Bowser's similar effort in DC ("Know your market #2: DC commercial property incentives"), the issue wasn't so much an overfocus on big things and converting office into residential, but that many steps are necessary especially because there is a hard ceiling on how many people want to live Downtown.

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Also see, "Getting a filling — at the mall. Why dentists and other wellness tenants are in big demand," Los Angeles Times. and "A $100M bet on experiential entertainment by Chicago restaurant vets," Crain's Chicago Business.

Along the lines of the Pittsburgh project, "A historic gas station in Glendale becomes art when an artist fills it with color," Los Angeles Daily News, a streamlined old gas station maintained as a public art space, and "Pacific Science Center and Seattle Center forge new partnership," Seattle Times, on continuing to redefine and improve programs and spaces.

Since their creation for the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair, Pacific Science Center and the adjacent Seattle Center campus have operated independently: Seattle Center as a department of the city of Seattle and PacSci as a science and education nonprofit with its own buildings.

That’s now changing. Pacific Science Center and the city announced Wednesday morning their plans to integrate the two campuses as one public space, open to all, though PacSci will retain ownership of its buildings. The organizations will also explore city funding options for courtyard renovations and expanded public access.

The deal opens the door for more city funding and involvement for PacSci’s iconic but aging buildings. It likely also speeds up funding for the removal of its north gates and kiosks as well as improvements to its southern entrance.

Big changes are coming to Pacific Science Center, which neighbors Seattle Center.

 (Greg Gilbert / The Seattle Times.

This, leaders said, should make its beloved, currently gated courtyard more accessible, ideally by the FIFA World Cup in summer 2026. It will also help with previously announced renovations of PacSci’s aging courtyard and leaking pools.

... More broadly, the partnership charts a more sustainable path forward at a time when the future of both Pacific Science Center and Seattle Center — as well as Seattle’s downtown as a whole — are in flux, and as civic leaders aim to “revitalize” downtown ahead of the World Cup.

“This is our opportunity to help the Science Center ensure the future of its incredible campus,” said Seattle Center Director Marshall Foster, and “to breathe new life into … programming, activation, things that will give people reasons to visit Seattle Center and the Science Center.”

... But, like a cream pie, the building wasn’t really designed to survive forever — it was made to house the largest science exhibit ever assembled by the federal government at the time then move on. While the facilities ended up enduring under the umbrella of a private nonprofit, they’re in dire need of renovations, Daugherty said. Much of the courtyard isn’t ADA-accessible. The terrazzo is deteriorating. The pools are leaking.

Ain't got that soul (when younger demographics leave the city): and musings about the nightlife economy

The San Francisco Chronicle ("Why 20-somethings are abandoning San Francisco — even when they can afford it") makes the point that as the demographic of younger people shrinks in the center city, mostly due to lack of jobs or high rents, there are fewer customers for night life--bars, restaurants, etc.

“Young people supply culture and creativity, which are the beating hearts of a city,” said Assembly Member Matt Haney, who represents eastern San Francisco. “When a lot of young people leave a city, that place loses some of its soul.”

Overall, from 2013 to 2023, the share of 20-somethings in San Francisco County dropped from about 18% of the population to about 14% — the largest such decline of any major U.S. county and nearly quadruple the national drop. The data prompts a big question relating to the city’s economic future: Is this the mere ebbs and flows of San Francisco’s demographics at play, or the start of something much grimmer? ...

“You can feel the drain of young people from the city just by how empty the bars are,” said Aaron Paul, co-owner of San Francisco bars Macondray and Zhuzh. “It’s definitely a tough time to be working in nightlife.”

Positioning in neighborhoods versus entertainment districts.  I saw this in a different way in DC in terms of neighborhood demographics.  As people age they go out less to bars, spend less in restaurants, and maybe on concerts, etc.  So there is a distinct difference in clientele and positioning for restaurants in entertainment districts versus neighborhood districts, which is captured in the various "Richard's Rules for Restaurant (Food) Based Revitalization, Salt Lake City and DC's Chinatown" posts over the past 20 years.

Aging out.  And I've written about how people age out of living in "entertainment districts" as they get older, their household configuration changes, etc. I've written about this, "Daypart and age-group planning in mixed use (commercial) districts" 2009), partly in response to a Washington Post article (but there were others), "Residents of Washington's U Street Corridor Tired of Area's Growing Noise.."

Inflation and upscaling.  This has only been exacerbated by the post-covid rise in food inflation, which makes food and drink more expensive, and upward pricing more generally--e.g., $30 cocktails ("D.C.’s Minetta Tavern is an alluring chip off the old block in N.Y.," Washington Post), which makes going out even more expensive.

Sometimes restaurant pricing seems out of control.  I was looking at the tasting menus of the restaurant Gravitas in DC, which got online opprobrium because of the chef-owner's support of Elon Musk's wacking government--when government is the main business in DC--and I was somewhat shocked at the pricing.  

It's a once/year super special occasion if anything.  But the food looks amazing.  

Get the $60 upcharge for wagyu prime rib, which seems cheap compared to the caviar course that can be as much as $1800.

Similarly, the Houston Chronicle reports on two restaurant closings in the Houston Heights neighborhood.  Patton's Steakhouse, has entrees starting at $45 to $155.  The companion restaurant, Savoir, had entrees from $19 to $65.  

Patton's is not the kind of restaurant that should be placed in a neighborhood (Savoir is on the cusp) even though it's definitely a high income neighborhood, unless somehow it can develop a regional clientele that transcends its neighborhood location.  My sense is that the average neighbor might go there once/year, which isn't enough of a revenue stream.

Musings/further implications for night life in the city

1.  Reduced number of the college aged going forward.  Extending from this, another demographic trend that will negatively impact cities is the decline of the college age population.  Fewer students in college ultimately means fewer graduates moving to cities.

2.  Fewer patrons means that some places are over-supplied with entertainment districts, and likely some will suffer.  Is that a problem for H Street NE in DC ("H Street NE went from riot-torn neighborhood to success story. Now it’s lost its magic," GGW, although I wrote about this in 2023, "H Street NE nightlife district, failing?" and "A follow up on the H Street article: Learning from Philadelphia | More sophisticated daypart, retail, cultural, and experience planning").

3.  Some entertainment districts will broaden their reach by adding upscale establishments, e.g., the Minetta's Tavern mentioned above is but one of a large number of expensive choices in the Union Market district.

4.  Programming and management of the district will help some become stronger than others, remaining successful.  Union Market has a significant chunk of property owned by a sophisticated property owner and manager, while H Street NE is laissez faire with a commercial district revitalization organization and Eastern Market is encumbered by city ownership and other issues ("Eastern Market DC's 150th anniversary last weekend | And my unrealized master plan for the market").

5.  High quality transit access probably makes a difference, e.g., Union Market has a Metrorail station within walking distance, not so much for H Street NE or Ivy City.

6.  Arena/stadium entertainment districts may have similar issues.  As ticket prices increase, the patron base shrinks, and older patrons are less likely to consume a lot of alcohol or stay out later.

7.  WFH affects after work happy hour culture and sales.  Fewer workers, fewer younger workers, means happy hour is a less successful sales event.

8. Private clubs will diminish the amount of spend available to "in the wild" restaurants ("Inside Ned’s, the private club for a new generation of D.C. cool kids," Washington Post).

9.  And I forgot that Gen Z is less inclined to drink alcohol ("Why Gen Z is drinking less," TIME Magazine).

Equity/"Equity" versus efficiency and the school closure debate

I've mentioned that Salt Lake City is in the process of closing schools ("School closure and consolidation planning needs to focus on integration planning at the outset as a separate process").  

Enrollment of elementary school aged kids has dropped by 6,000 over the past 10 years, and the State Legislature has ordered the district to right size the number of elementary schools in response.

The way the city grew pre-1960s, there are a lot of schools concentrated in what is termed central city.  Even though the area is dense, and the city is growing in population, the number of households with children is declining, decreasing demand for classrooms.  Whereas when schools were built, they ended up being concentrated, because at the time there were lots of families with children.

On the other hand, on the east side of the city, schools are less concentrated so if a school is closed the distance a student will have to travel to another school is significantly increased or otherwise difficult.  

There is an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune, "Salt Lake school closures feels reminiscent of ‘The Hunger Games’," making the argument that equity demands that schools on the east side should be closed too, not just schools in the core.

I have made an equity argument before, although I didn't use that word, in arguing that strong neighborhoods are built around quality neighborhood schools ("National Community Planning Month: Schools as neighborhood anchors") and sometimes, when enrollment drops, it might be worth keeping a school open regardless because of its community impact.

But in the Salt Lake Schools case, the issue is efficiency--closing schools in an area where there is a preponderance of them, where there are other schools nearby that the students can attend--versus equity--closing schools across the city even if it isn't efficient and more costly, because it's unfair to make one particular area suffer most of the change.

I am on the efficiency side.

But it's interesting that equity is used as an argument generally, without acknowledging that sometimes it's just about cost, not unfairness.  

Note too in this case, it is about geographical and income equity, and much less about racial and demographic equity--although schools on Salt Lake's west side will also be "disproportionately" closed too, again because of demographics, not out of targeting.

The author uses low income students (Title I) as a proxy.  From the article:

The 25% schools with the lowest percent of low-income students are: Ensign (1.28%), Bonneville (8.24%), Uintah (9.18%), Indian Hills (13.25%), Highland Park (17.04%), Beacon Heights (18.21%) and Dilworth (20.22%). Combined, these schools served 376 Free Lunch students, which is 7.5% of the total Free Lunch students served in the SLCSD in 2022. 

Instead, the short-listed schools were selected west from the great divide in the central east and central west areas of SLCSD. Our tributes — Emerson, Hawthorne, Bennion, Riley, Jackson, Newman and Wasatch Elementaries — were reportedly identified through evaluation of all 27 SLCSD elementary schools, yet they are remarkably all geographically located west of the 25% most affluent neighborhoods and in two distinct lines that transect SLCSD, almost stacked like dominos, disproportionately impacting central east and central west neighborhoods.

It's an interesting argument, pitting middle class income whites against higher income whites (the area to the east is the highest income zip code in Salt Lake City).

Is it inequitable that a white household making $160,000 or more per year faces school closure and that a white household making $200,000 or more per year does not?

Revisiting St. Louis revitalization planning in the face of population shrinkage

 KMOX radio reports ("Here's what could happen if the population of St. Louis dips below 300,000") that St. Louis is depopulating still, with a risk of going under 300,000 population, which would render it ineligible for certain types of funding made available to larger cities.

In response to a feature in the Washington Post about Tishaura Jones, Mayor of St. Louis, in 2021 I wrote a couple pieces outlining what I would do were I in charge of revitalization planning there.

-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 1: Overview and Theoretical Foundations"
-- "St. Louis: what would I recommend for a comprehensive revitalization program? | Part 2: Implementation Approach and Levers"

1.  A big point is merging the city and county, which would immediately increase the city's population, maintaining its eligibility for large city funding opportunities.  That's been sputtering for awhile ("City, county and residents weigh in on merging St. Louis entities together," KMOV-TV).

The population of the county as a whole is just under one million.

2.  And further investment in transit, which might be moving forward ("Reduce crime in St. Louis? Mayor looks to transit, investment in north side," St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

3.  Obviously, the city's number one priority needs to be neighborhood stabilization and resident recruitment to staunch the population losses.  Live Baltimore is one of the nation's best practice examples of how to do residential recruitment.

Later I wrote a couple of other relevant pieces on urban revitalization:

-- "Social urbanism and equity planning as a way to address crime, violence, and persistent poverty: (not in) DC," 2021 
-- "Black community, economic and social capital: the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago/Chicago," 2021
-- "Pontiac Michigan: a lagging African American city in one of the nation's wealthiest counties," 2022

Interestingly, Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, who just lost her bid for reelection, had a revitalization initiative for the South and West parts of the city, called Invest South/West.

-- "Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s signature Invest South/West program is 3 years old. But some of its big projects were already planned when she took office," Chicago Tribune
-- "Invest South/West program remains mostly a vision, without a single project under construction after three years," Crain's Chicago Business 

Even though I wasn't particularly impressed by Mayor Lightfoot, the reality is that it takes a lot longer than three years to move a revitalization plan forward in significant ways.  

I'm not holding DC up as a great example, but it took about 20 years to start to see movement on the redevelopment of the Skyland Shopping Center, and H Street's revitalization hit in the 2000s once trends favored urban living, and after the city announced plans to add streetcar service to the corridor--leading to $1 Billion in new development--but the city had been working on revitalization of that riot scarred corridor since the late 1970s

The basic lesson of intensification that government officials and activists don't understand: intensification happens first in high value areas, not low value areas

Illustration from The House Book by Keith DuQuette, showing the intensification of land use as you move from suburban areas to the center city.

Where do I begin?  

This comes up because of the Chicago Sun-Times article, "City’s test of additional dwelling units finds most takers in gentrified wards."  From the article:

This involved allowing additional dwelling units, or ADUs, typically basement or attic apartments or coach houses. The program carries many restrictions, but planners wanted to see if adding a unit here and there would introduce lower rents in expensive neighborhoods, help families or small landlords make extra income and encourage multi-generational housing that’s typically rent-free. Some units are called “granny flats.”

The affordability argument assumes that because of the size and location of the units, rented units would command a lower price than the neighborhood standard.

The city’s Housing Department ran the data and found, at this early stage, the program is working in some ways but is challenged in others. It might just be adding expensive units in already expensive neighborhoods.

Also see "The nature of high value ("strong") residential real estate markets," 2017.

I always say that the first big lesson I have from involvement in DC urban revitalization was that you needed to have plans before they were needed, not after, because once the velocity of development has been unleashed, you can't catch up.

But the second would be that development happens in the high value areas first, because that that's where the most demand is, the most willingness to pay higher rents, and where the most profit is for the seller or landlord.

"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
-- Yogi Berra 

I think I figured that out before I read Harvey Molotch's paper (later expanded into the book Urban Fortunes) "City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place," where the abstract reads:

A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite. Such an elite is seen to profit through the increasing intensification of the land use of the area in which its members hold a common interest. An elite competes with other land-based elites in an effort to have growth-inducing resources invested within its own area as opposed to that of another. Governmental authority, at the local and nonlocal levels, is utilized to assist in achieving this growth at the expense of competing localities. Conditions of community life are largely a consequence of the social, economic, and political forces embodied in this growth machine.

But Molotch explains very well why what happens (intensification) happens.  Intensification makes more money for everybody, especially when it's built in the most desirable places.

New Urban Transect

Relatedly, I once had a conversation with the retail and private equity finance innovator Herbert Haft about creating a coffee shop, and he said that it costs about the same to build and operate a business regardless of where you are located, so you might as well open where you are more likely to make more money ("Herbert Haft, 84; Built and Lost a Business Empire," Los Angeles Times). 

Which is why at a recent community meeting on housing in Salt Lake City, where the city is aiming to open up the single family zoning category to duplexes, triplexes, and quads ("How communities can change the playbook to expand housing options," Salt Lake City), I challenged the statement by a planner, who said that if that happens, it will happen on the Westside first--which is home to more people of color and lower income households--because the properties cost less.

I said, "no.  It will happen in the high value areas first etc."  He was very surprised.

From the Smart Transportation Guidebook.

This jumps off a comment made on an entry about Minneapolis expanding its SFH zones to duplexes ("A short point about why eliminating single family zoning won't result in a rise in "affordable housing" (any time soon) ") where the person made the point that the push for expanding beyond SFH there was driven by people wanting to live in the more desirable areas of Minneapolis, and there "not being enough housing there."

Minneapolis has a false scarcity, in that housing advocates driving the push for density have fixated on densifying a few mature, desirable built out neighborhoods, while ignoring hundreds and hundreds of vacant lots on the other side of town. No one wants to appear to be behind the “G” word, but as this article points out the economics of the redevelopment of premium neighborhoods preclude helping to solve the affordable housing crunch.

It's a similar process to that of the original development of city centers (Downtowns).  Land value was high because of location.  To maximize the value of the property and location, buildings were built taller, and took up as much of the lot as possible.  That's why smaller communities have less intensely developed centers.

And why in some places, proximity to transit has little value premium, so creating transit oriented development is very difficult, time intensive, and requires subsidy ("From the files: transit planning in Baltimore," originally written 2010).

Or how in low income areas, revitalization/intensification is expensive and can take decades and requires scads of subsidy ("Weak markets are really really really hard to develop: Baltimore's Poppleton (... State Center; Park Heights; etc.) neighborhood," 2019, ("Blaming Walmart for Skyland's failure is misdirected," 2016,"For the first time, Skyland Town Center's revitalization might have a chance: creating a community focused retail destination," 2018).

1. The first lesson in urban revitalization is that strong markets are a lot easier in which to spur revitalization than weak markets.

2. It's all relative when it comes to strong and weak markets within communities.

3. Most developers only do development in weak markets once most of the development capacity in the strong markets has been absorbed.

ADUs aren't cheap to build, at least a couple hundred thousand dollars, especially if you have to put in utilities, in particular water and sewer.  That takes a long time to pay off.  So if you're going to make the choice to do it for profit, people with greater resources are going to be the first movers.

Note there is an ADU initiative in Guadalupe, a Hispanic neighborhood of Austin, Texas, focused on supporting extended family living ("As housing costs and economic segregation increase, Austin's granny flats proliferate," Architect's Newspaper).  But it's not so much about lower cost housing, except on a relative basis.

-- Alley Flat Initiative, Guadalupe Neighborhood Development Corporation

If a city like Chicago wants to add accessory dwelling units in lower income areas, especially as a lower cost housing option, they're going to have to provide serious subsidy and other forms of assistance.

-- "Strategies to Help Homeowners Finance Accessory Dwelling Units in Austin A report on findings from a student-led research project,"  CRP 386: Financing Real Estate Projects: Nonprofit and For Profit, University of Texas.

Revisiting the 2016 entry, "Ford Motor Company as a transportation company not a "car" company: bike share and small scale transit"

The Congress for the New Urbanism publication Public Square is somewhat Panglossian for my taste.  They just published an article, "Ford promotes street grids," about how Ford Motor is supporting the efforts of Bastrop, Texas to re-orient its urban form to a grid.

Myself and others pointed out that Ford Motor Company, and other auto companies, foremost focus on the promotion of automobility, regardless of this particular project.  You can hardly say coming up with the funding for a video indicates that the company has been transformed.

This ad was published by Ford in 1953, their 50th anniversary, as part of a series.The title: "The street will never be the same again" was prophetic in terms of the impact of the car and automobility on center cities. 

My joke is that the current state of Detroit is what the auto industry intended to happen to cities, because it wasn't in their interest to have center city urban form promote mobility alternatives to the car (walking, transit, biking).

In my comments on the article, I mentioned an entry from 2016, "Ford Motor Company as a transportation company not a "car" company: bike share and small scale transit."

While I think it's a great analysis from that point in time, a number of things have changed in the interim, and a major conclusion I drew is wrong.  Here were the major points:

-- Millennial demographic and psychographic changes are changing the US automobile industry.  That's still true.  Fewer people were buying cars overall, especially younger segments.  More people are buying trucks, to the point that GM and Ford have announced a reduction in the sales of cars while expanding the sales of trucks and SUVs ("Ford to stop making all passenger cars except the Mustang," NBC News).

But with the pandemic, more people took up automobility as opposed to using mass transit.  

-- Telecommunications enables car use without car ownership.  This is true, but few companies have figured out how to make money doing so.  Mercedes, BMW, GM, and others have dropped out of the business of car sharing.  

More recently, ride hailing (Uber, Lyft) has been repriced upward as drivers leave the business because of minimal profitability and an unwillingness of venture capital to continue to subsidize rides ("Farewell, Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy," New York Times).

-- New entrants competing to sell cars using different technologies or business models.  This is mostly about electric cars, and is unchanged.  EVs require a different fueling system than gasoline, which requires the buildout of a charging network ("The White House wants a robust electric vehicle charging network. Here's the plan," WGBH/NPR, "A perspective on equity in the transition to electric vehicles," MIT Science Policy Review).  And companies like Tesla prefer to sell cars directly rather than through independent dealers.  

-- Car companies versus transportation companies.  The entry focuses on something Ted Levitt wrote decades ago, about GM thinking of itself as a car company, not a transportation company.  I don't think he was right exactly, but he was on to something.  

GM saw itself as a "vehicle manufacturer" producing cars, trucks, heavy trucks, construction equipment, buses, and railroad locomotives.  That's transportation.  

What Levitt got wrong was that GM's problem was three-fold, that they didn't think of transportation as opposed to vehicles, they were stuck with a production and operations model that was increasingly unprofitable except for luxury vehicles and trucks, and they weren't sufficiently focused on the quality of the customer experience in terms of manufacturing quality, dealership to customer relations, and on technology like OnStar instead of the experience (versus Tesla).

When the price of gas changed significantly GM was stuck--their design sensibility didn't work with smaller cars, and their labor-health insurance and pension requirements made cars not particularly profitable.

Ford was similar, producing heavy trucks, tractors, airplanes for a time, with some dabbling in transit.  Like GM they got out of everything but cars and trucks, with an increasing focus on trucks, especially SUVs.   Both companies have been downsizing foreign operations, while still focused on China.

Ford created the Ford Mobility division (GM has a similar unit), its arm focused on serving customers "using cars" not necessarily owning them, along with other initiatives such as small group passenger services ("Ford’s Farley On Building Mobility Technology And Services Amid Auto Industry Disruption," Forbes). 

But these initiatives have shifted from dealing with "car customers" versus "car buyers and owners" and more towards technology initiatives like automated vehicles.  The Chariot group passenger unit was shut down in 2019.

Some of Ford Mobility's initiatives, like sponsoring for a time the SF bike sharing program, I argued were more about seeming appealing to potential and younger employees, especially in the Silicon Valley.  Ford ended  its participation in 2019.  

They still have a research unit there, but it's pretty small, about 300 employees ("A New Frontier: How Ford is Engaging Silicon Valley Startups to Transform Transportation").

More recently, Ford announced the acquisition of the long abandoned Michigan Central Station, and committed to its rehabilitation and that the Company's advanced technology initiatives would be based there as part of a new "Mobility Innovation District" ("Ford Reveals Plans for Inclusive, Vibrant, Walkable Mobility Innovation District Around Michigan Central Station").

It will have about 5,000 employees, demonstrating it tends to work better for companies to have employees and innovation units closer to the center.

New developments:

• I was wrong about Tesla, it will become a mass manufacturer.  Part of my problem was recognizing that just because Elon Musk is a blowhard and the stock is driven up by fanboys disconnected from underlying value, the company is transformational, and is redefining the car industry.
• The other thing that I didn't fully understand is that Tesla's entry as an exogenous shock (disruptive innovation), the lead promoter of electric vehicles, and the first mover especially in terms of branding has the strong possibility of boxing out the ability of GM and Ford to reposition and rebrand around electric vehicles.  Electric vehicles challenge the ways cars are designed, internal combustion engines and the billions of dollars of sunken investment, gasoline producers and sellers, existing business models, and traditional car dealerships.
• Just as Sony's Walkman lost out to smartphones, VHS to DVDs, Kodak to digital photography, Nokia to Apple, newspapers and travel agencies versus the Internet, taxi companies versus Uber and Lyft, etc., GM and Ford may be analogous to Sony, Kodak and the printed newspaper.  That's the power of exogenous shock.
• Tesla is years ahead both in terms of battery technology and IT systems and it may be too difficult for the other companies to catch up, especially as younger buyers see legacy companies as old news and not worth considering.
• GM's Chevy Bolt has been a failure ("Chevy Bolt Battery Recall: How Could This Have Happened?," Car and Driver), when I thought it would redefine the industry.  Even without the battery fire problem, most potential customers preferred to buy a Tesla over a Bolt.
• Tesla has opened a plant in China, and has one under construction in Germany.
• However Ford and GM do have an advantage in the truck segment, which may keep them in the game as trucks shift from ICE to electric.  But not for cars?
• Focusing on "car users" rather than "car owners" is likely to remain a niche market, and may require direct participation by public transportation agencies along with subsidy ("In DC and Seattle could Car2Go (ShareNow) be converted to a nonprofit and remain in business? (Or could it be sold to Zipcar?)," 2020) as part of transportation demand management planning.

• In 2019, GM and Ford announced a shift away from car production to focus on trucks and SUVs.  Foreign manufacturers like Toyota and VW in a wide range of segments, and BMW and Mercedes in luxury segments, continue to offer a wide range of cars.
• GM and Ford announced massive new programs for electric vehicle production.  
• The big hang up is battery production, and the scarcity of the unique minerals necessary for batteries ("Is There Enough Lithium to Maintain the Growth of the Lithium-Ion Battery Market?," GreenTech).
• Interestingly, rather than use existing plants, many of the vehicles will be produced in new facilities increasingly outside of Michigan and the core of the Midwest.  Is this because Michigan isn't competitive or is it a way to get cheaper labor and reduce the power of the UAW? ("Michigan Gov. Whitmer slammed after Ford opens electric vehicle plants in other states," Fox Business).
• Car sales are up, but there are also supply problems because of a microchip shortage ("Microchip Shortage Update: Car Inventories Could Stay Low All Next Year," Kelly Blue Book).  This has led to a massive increase in the price of used cars too.
• Gas prices are high as a result of supply difficulties, but mostly because of the contraction of the US shale oil industry because of a price reduction campaign by Saudi Arabia, designed to put many of the companies out of business ("With shale subdued, Saudi, Russia become more comfortable with oil rally," Reuters). 
• It's not clear the US electricity grid is robust and resilient enough to power an automobile fleet shifting in toto from internal combustion engines to EVs ("Plug in cars are the future: the grid isn't ready," Washington Post).
• And legacy dealers aren't necessarily committed to EVs, which demonstrates the importance of Tesla's decision to sell direct, starting from a fresh plate.
• Many cities in Europe have "low emissions zones" in their center cities, which means that diesel and gasoline cars can't enter, or have to pay a significant daily fee upon entrance to the zone. 
• In 2020, California banned the sales of gasoline powered vehicles effective in 2035 ("California will ban new gas cars starting in 2035. Gas station owners worry about their livelihoods," KCRW/NPR).  But too many states are dependent on fossil fuel production, car dealerships, car manufacturing, and the sprawl land use paradigm to be as bold.

Great Boston Globe article on the hole in progressive visions when it comes to affordable housing and racial diversity in neighborhoods

Most people aren't aware of all of the institutional supports that created and maintained segregated neighborhoods, in both cities and suburbs.

Sure, people probably understand segregation.  And might know about the now illegal practice of deed restrictions.

But people don't actually know how the term "redlining" was coined--to qualify for mortgages, neighborhoods had to be segregated and white.

Redlined neighborhoods, marked out on maps for banks and companies originating mortgages, were either black or racially mixed, and didn't qualify for loans.

And this was done by the federal government, as part of New Deal programs aimed to energize the housing market and to improve bank profits.

This practice was extended to the suburbs, and it wasn't until the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968 that it was "officially" stopped, although the effects continue to effect housing markets and household wealth dynamics to this day.

I haven't read it yet, but that's the topic of Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (other resources).

Most people aren't conscious that their unwillingness to open their neighborhoods to affordable housing and a wider variety of types of housing--with the aim of increasing racial and income diversity--is out of sorts with their concerns about racism and institutionalized and structural racism in the context of the Black Lives Matter movement.

There's a great op-ed, "Housing will test white support for Black lives," in the Boston Globe by Noah Kim, about this disconnect.

Twitter photo by moiety.

The author calls our attention to this photograph of a yard fence in Newton, Massachusetts, with signs for "Black Lives Matter" and two anti-affordable housing initiatives there "Right Size Newton" and "Right Size Riverside."

Although this and other residents see the "Right Size" efforts as focused on maintaining neighborhood character, without any connotations of racism.

The suburbs aren't what we think: Politico interview with Thomas Sugrue

Politico has an interview ("Trump Doesn't Understand Today's Suburbs—And Neither Do You") with NYU Professor Thomas Sugrue about "the suburbs" in response to President Trump's overturning of a HUD funding rule that was supposed to encourage the production of more affordable and lower income housing in the suburbs.

I know about Professor Sugrue's work about Detroit, but haven't kept up with his writing and research otherwise.

The discussion is particularly good on how most people take for granted the various federal policy preferences and actions that subsidized the building of the suburbs and their racial demographics.

As an example, the massive developments by William Levitt, the Levittowns, were pretty much whites only.  See "A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America," NPR, and "Memories of Segregation in Levittown," New York Times.


I know that I was really surprised when I learned about this more directly, but not til about 20 years ago, in a book of papers published by the Brookings Institution.

(Recently, when the U of Michigan Alumni Magazine sent out their e-letter about recent writings about "anti-racism" I wrote an email back about segregation of dorms at the school, which I never learned about while enrolled, but uncovered a few years ago in an NYT obituary, "Jewel Plummer Cobb, 92, Dies; Led a California Campus."  They never responded.)

The basic points, besides the subsidy and creation of the suburbs as white enclaves:

• that suburbs aren't monolithic
• that the wealthy and most concerned about whiteness keep moving farther out more at the exurban edge of metropolitan areas
• that inner suburbs in particular are more diverse as they decline relative to newer areas farther out
• that immigrants increasingly are drawn to the suburbs for job opportunities, rather than first living in the city, etc.