In Triumph of the City, Harvard urban economist Edward Glaeser argued that dense cities were still important even in the age of telecommuting and the Internet because of the importance of face-to-face contacts. For this reason, while Glaeser didn’t support subsidies for density, he still expected to see dense cities well into the future.
The Antiplanner disagreed. “Thanks to the automobile, we can have such face-to-face contact with far more people, and a greater diversity of people, than those who are within walking distance of a Manhattan high rise. Thanks to the Internet, we can dispense with face-to-face contacts when doing such routine things as shopping and many types of work. In other words, the economic forces that built dense cities such as London and New York are far weaker today.”
In this light, it was interesting to read yesterday’s report in the Wall Street Journal that New York banks are moving many employees well out of Manhattan (if this link doesn’t work, Google “New York Banks Cut and Run”). After the financial crisis, the city’s ten largest banks reduced their Manhattan rental space from 38 million to 32 million square feet. Property owners hoped that they would pick up that space as the economy recovered, but instead they are moving people to lower-cost areas such as Florida.
“The new reality is that you do most of your work by phone,” says an employee of Deutsche Bank who works in Jacksonville (if this link doesn’t work, search for “Deutsche Bankers Warm Up to Florida”). “Why can’t we do that in a location with a better cost of living?”
Apparently, for many workers in the financial industry, face-to-face contacts are not as critical as Glaeser imagined. While some may still depend on such contacts, I suspect the number will steadily decline in the future, allowing more people to work in low-cost areas or telecommute.
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If this is true, then Manhattan, the densest county in the United States, is becoming obsolete. (New York’s five boroughs are each a county, with Manhattan being New York County.) Between 1910 and 1980, Manhattan population densities declined from more than 101,000 to 62,000 people per square mile. Then, thanks in large part to reduced crime, the population grew until densities reached just under 70,000 people per square mile in 2010. Although the data are not as accessible, job densities probably followed a similar pattern.
If Manhattan jobs decline, however, the population is likely to decline as well. That means that high-cost projects such as the Second Avenue Subway and Long Island Railroad East Side Access, each of which are costing more than $2 billion per mile, could be an even greater waste of money than they appear to be at current densities.
Manhattan densities probably depend on subways; while I haven’t done an analysis, it is unlikely that the streets could move that many people on buses unless taxis and other personal automobiles were banned (which would alienate many of the high-income executives who wouldn’t want to rub shoulders would ordinary transit riders). While fares cover a higher share of New York City subway operating costs than those of most transit systems, they don’t cover maintenance costs. If population densities are declining, it may make more sense in the long run to abandon the subways as they wear out rather than build more.
Many planning advocates have an obsolete view of what a city is. They think that “real cities” have high-density urban cores surrounded by lower-density housing. That hasn’t been realistic at least since Henry Ford’s mass-produced automobile if not since the development of the electric streetcar. For that matter, cities didn’t look like that until the industrial revolution led to the creation of the factory system in the early nineteenth century.
Yet planners of older cities spend an inordinate time “revitalizing” downtown (meaning subsidizing downtown property owners), while planners in newer cities try to create high-rise downtown areas. These efforts are misguided. Politicians may be pressured to respond to special-interest groups, but instead of enabling this dependency, planners should let cities evolve to be the way they want to be considering new transportation and communications technologies.
I found out part of the reason for the interest in downtowns, executives like to see the company name there. That could be accomplished easily with small office for VIP’s, while a larger cheaper space on the outskirts for the underlings. I look at downtown Eugene and Springfield, and wonder why would anyone want to go there. Seems cities will do anything, but provide free parking to increase interest.
How do you explain New York City’s (and other dense cities) apparent renaissance since the 1980’s? If everything you said is true, shouldn’t New York City have simply continued its decline from the 1970’s onward? If it’s so obsolete when will we see its employment and population decline? Haven’t the telecommunications and mobility advances you mention been around long enough by now to have their impact reflected in a mass exodus of jobs and population from the dense cities?
I agree that New York City is not essential–but neither are most of the things and places we have today. While New York is not essential, it continues to thrive because:
1. The national media is there (for better or worse).
1. The Guiliani/Bloomberg reductions in crime and improvements in quality of life.
2. New York (like DC) benefits from the FED adding $85 billion a month to the money flow–most of the $ flow to NY and DC. (the rest of us pay for it)
3. The wealthy tend to clump together in a few places and New York is one of them.
4. Infrastructure built a century ago – most irreplaceable at any affordable cost.
5. Location.
If the subways were abandoned, New York would become a nightmare for all but the very rich, despite all of the above.
I think this kind of over-simplification in the forces behind development patterns is why one would be confounded at the strength of demand for places like NYC. As someone who grew up in the suburbs for most of my young life, I think it’s hard to full appreciate the benefits of living here in New York without spending a serious amount of time here.
There may be a base of business that was built on face-to-face conversations that historically gave New York its critical mass to grow from, but that’s not why people want to live here. The density of this city, and other cities, affords a proximity to countless amenities in every direction at virtually all hours of the day. Some could say that’s a perk they wouldn’t use, but for those who do use it, it is irreplaceable. The beauty of density is the reflexive benefit of proximity for both people and businesses.
If I have to choose between being able to walk to 4 groceries stores, 5 cafes, dozens of restaurants, parks, the doctor’s, the dentist, off broadway theatres (add on most of what one needs) all within 2 blocks of my apartment vs. having the “mobility” of a car, I’d choose the former every day of the week. I have also come to find that there are few luxuries in life greater than walking to work. It is phenomenal. I would rather live in a house 1/3 of the size with no need for a car and be able to walk to work rather than get the lawn, the formal dining room I’ll never use and the headache of an auto-centric lifestyle.
I don’t think that density is just a business decision. Today, it’s a lifestyle decision that happens to produce a development pattern that business can thrive in for obvious reasons. There is also nothing “essential” about suburban living either. Similarly, it’s just a lifestyle choice.
I’m curious where you’re getting this. According to most sources, New York State contributes more in taxes that it receives in benefits, largely because of New York City (I can’t find the source, but I’ve read that if NYC were its own state it would give even more back to the Feds).
A couple of thoughts.
Companies that locate anywhere besides a central downtown are making a conscious decision to limit their potential workforce. Most people don’t want to commute over a certain time and distance in their car, and most people don’t want to move houses with every job.
Therefore, companies that locate on one side of town are giving up the ability to attract most potential employees from other areas of a region. In large cities, this may require the company to open up multiple offices.
Suburban offices often are not rationally located either. Many companies make a decision on where the office should be located based on where its top executives or owners live, not its employees, and not based on convenience of reaching the location.
Industries have been relocating headquarters, offices, staff out of NYC since the early 1970’s when multiple companies like JC Penney and American Airlines headed off to Dallas, so Deutsche Bank exiling a few bankers to Jacksonville is hardly a new trend. However Manhattan has never been stronger, more desirable in relation to the rest of its region, or more expensive. The same thing goes for the downtowns of the other major transit oriented cities – Boston, Philly, Washington, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Seattle, and San Francisco, and in Canada Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.
What really remains to be seen is not whether these cities have a successful and staying model in dense development, a large percentage of centrally located jobs, and the use of rail transit to move the masses – there is too much money tied up in their current real estate pattern for it to be otherwise. What is really of interest is whether any other city can transition over the next 30 years from a southern/western auto-centric development mode to this model – say a Portland or a Denver.
I will say, I recently visited Houston, TX on business for the first time and was blown away by the contrast of how they had chosen to use their land vs. what I see in my native Philadelphia. For two metros of relatively similar size, Houston had freeway and tollway systems with 14-20 lane highways including side arterials and local roads that are mainly 6-8 lanes, two radial beltways, and of course no rail system to speak of, while Philadelphia has almost all 4-6 lane highways, 2-4 lane local roads, one incomplete beltway, and an extensive rail system. Hoston’s road system is clearly more expensive than Philadelphia’s, while Philadelphia obviously has to pay for a rail system.
Planners spend their time on downtown because it makes sense to centralize jobs and companies that have the ability to be elective in their location.
When people look at downtowns and declare that the percentage of jobs located there is “small”, they never clarify how many jobs actually can be reasonably located there. Many jobs of course cannot. Some of those that cannot move:
1) Local government jobs, especially schools
2) Suburban retail and storefront businesses
3) Suburban hospitals
4) Suburban universities/colleges
5) Factory, warehousing, and logisitics jobs
6) Utility, mining, and construction jobs
Etc.
Local government by itself is 15% of the workforce, and local retail/storefront is another large percentage. We can’t have all the barbers, gas stations, car repair shops, grocery stores, bars, dry cleaners, drug stores, bank branch, department stores, etc. located downtown, nor could every hospital, doctor’s office, and retirement home.
What is really of interest is how many office jobs are located in downtowns vs. being located in suburban corporate office parks or suburban mini-downtowns, because these are the types of jobs with complete flexibility in location.
It is great that some people love living in a dense urban area like Manhattan. National governments should certainly not work against forming dense cities where the locals want that, nor should it try to force cities to become more dense just to make federal transit subsidies work better.
But for every person who walks to work in Manhattan, there are two or three or four others that must live in the outer boroughs or further and must travel an hour or more per day to get there. Those Manhattan restaurant cooks, waiters and dishwashers aren’t living anywhere close to Manhattan.
^Good point. However, it’s not just low-wage earners commuting to Manhattan. When I lived on Long Island 35 miles from the city, many people I met took the LIE or LIRR to work, including firefighters, real estate brokers, traders, and small business owners. Price played a factor, but so did suburban amenities, like proximity to barrier islands, the Sound, the Great South Bay, and having a yard where their children could play.
I enjoyed visiting the city, but it was draining in terms of both money and energy. The total lack of privacy and space and constant cacaphony was hard for this national park dweller to handle.
One person I met showed me her tiny tiny closet studio in Chelsea; I literally had to walk over furniture to move around and had use a nasty shared toilet in the hall. For the same money, I got a massive two bedroom, which was the entire second floor of an 1872 Victorian on half an acre a block from a Long Island village and all its amenities.
NYC has its purposes, and to echo Sandy, it’s cool that people want to squeeze into it. But don’t think that it could exist without less dense places like Long Island.
Cars help for face-to-face, planned conversations. What about people running into each other?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvYtO4owp2k