An Heretical Question: Do Financial Districts Still Matter?
I was reviewing the recovery plans for the four major downtowns on the West Coast- Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles- and found that ...
Where CNU and Strong Towns Should Have Met: Greenville, SC
I just drove down here, and I've seen more cool urban "stuff" in one hour here than I saw in two days in Charlotte. It ...
Charlotte’s Brutal Corporate Urbanism
By deposits, Charlotte NC is the country's second-largest banking center, and it shows in the way downtown has developed, both in the scale of the ...
Why Downtown Charlotte Fails as a Place
Charlotte residents may not know it, but when in 1998 their hometown Nations Bank bought and moved California-based Bank of America (originally the Bank of ...
Will The Loss of Confidence In The Future of Downtown LA Stop Its Recovery?
What happens to downtown Los Angeles matters to the rest of us. With 40 million square feet and more than 300,00 workers, downtown Los Angeles ...
Downtown Portland’s Recovery Is Now Up To Its Citizens
Last week my post about the need for leadership in bringing back downtown went viral, prompting the head of the City's economic development authority, Prosper ...
For Younger Workers, This Article Notes Face-to-Face Work Brings Familiarity, Mentoring, and a Gain in Productivity
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/business/remote-work-feedback.html
Tourism is Now Downtown Seattle’s Primary Retail Anchor
I prepared the map below after biking downtown. Red shows occupied retail space, which is probably 1/3 to 1/2 pre-Covid. Total sales volumes are probably ...
The Biggest Problem In Downtown Portland Isn’t Homelessness or Drugs, But Leadership
As a fourth-generation Oregonian, I love downtown Portland, and when I was in town yesterday I spent three hours walking from the Civic Auditorium on ...
The New “Second Place”
This is a downer of an article, but as I pointed out in a Governing magazine article two years ago, all those people working from ...