Episode Summary

  • Commercial real estate continues to be a dynamic space as offices look to repurpose or downsize their space. These changes could lead to a resurgence of coworking spaces or some sort of..forgive me...hybrid...that focuses on serving businesses rather than freelancers...
  • Reduce and eliminate parking minimums but don't think about commercial/residential here. Reduction across the board can help incentivize development, increase the supply of housing allowing you to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
  • Be careful with last-mile infrastructure. While the benefits are clear to consumers in the community there are noticeable impacts to citizens: noise, air quality, and traffic are all risks that need to be mitigated when considering this type of business.

The future of the office is co-working (3 min read)

A list of parking mandate updates in North America (graphic, rich source to additional links)

The flip side to ecomm. How to build last mile infrastructure responsibly (6 min read)

In-depth look at impacts of ecomm in Massachusetts communities (64 page pdf)

Transcript

Hey. What's up everybody it's Kyle. Where, on this podcast, I share and discuss urban planning, architecture, and real estate development patterns. My goal, my mission, is to deconstruct what's going on around us in our built environment, in our business environment, in our political environment and figure out how we can recognize patterns and replicate the success and maybe more importantly avoid the failures of others.

A smart man learns from his experience. A wise man learns from the experience of others. That starts with building awareness and so here we are to talk about the latest news, things that I've found interesting and related to previous topics, and break them down into our patterns.

First up a look at the commercial real estate world. Offices continue to be...weird. We're back. Kind of. Companies are keeping an eye on case count what's going on right now in Europe isn't good and many speculate we have a rough winter in store for us. What does that mean for the office?

An article in Axios by Erica Pandey shares some insights. Quoting the article, "As hybrid and remote work becomes more common, the office is transforming from a place of focused work to a destination for collaboration. Meeting rooms and open plan cafe-like seating areas are replacing private offices."

According to CBRE, a "global leader in commercial real estate" -- their words, not mine -- they found that 63% of those they surveyed are redesigning their space, 80% are focusing on how to make more collaborative spaces.

Susan Wasmund from CBRE observes, "people are choosing to their heads-down work at home. They want to come back to collaborate or participate in team events."

In my newsletter I wrote one sentence, "the future of the office is coworking." I think that's where we're headed. Everyone doesn't need an assigned seat and the total footprint needed is probably less. But how do we create a flexible team meeting and collaborative space? That...sounds like WeWork. Right? Open offices, collaborate, cool furniture, host events. If this is the future of the office, how many companies will choose to outsource their real estate to some sort of coworking or event firm? That's a fun one to speculate about.

Next up, a well-documented pattern on this show and elsewhere in planning and architecture circles, reduce and eliminate your parking minimums.

Of course, easier said than done.

What you might be looking for is case studies and examples to point to. Who has done this before? How did they do? How's it going now? Maybe that would help get adoption in your community? I stumbled across the parking reform network and they have a parking mandates map. Their map of North America shows over 200 cities that have begun to reform their parking requirements and they offer a couple of key takeaways for the casual listener:

  • When it comes to parking codes, simplicity is the exception. Most parking codes have many layers and provisions making it complicated to reform. Even with reform, it would appear that cities add additional provisions rather than eliminate words in the rule book.
  • A large number of cities have eliminated minimum parking requirements for a small portion of their communities. This would indicate that municipalities still aren't bought in and are looking to experiment before they apply the new policy city-wide.
  • Where there is parking reform, it heavily leans toward commercial land uses. This would seem to indicate that people realize the big parking lot around Walmart isn't necessary but still haven't determined how to approach residential parking. This would also indicate a disconnect between how parking affects affordable housing likely affecting these cities.

The last piece this week, I've been extremely curious and talked about it quite a bit here, about last-mile infrastructure. Specifically how ecomm warehouses might need to be considered in our urban fabric. I want to present the flip side because what's good for Amazon might not be good for your town...

An article at planning.org by Alison Felix and Travis Pollack covers the challenges a warehouse/last mile type facility presents to a community. While the economic benefits might be clear, and advantages to the everyday consumer, the article covers what planners should think about before changing their zoning code and placing a last-mile facility in their town.

Last-mile infrastructure will generate a lot of traffic with all the delivery vehicles moving in and out. A challenge here is that last-mile operations are different from more normal types of traffic partners. All the extra traffic of course generates pollution. Noise pollution and air pollution.

In the show notes, I share a 64-page pdf, which at the time of this episode I have not read all of. This document titled Hidden and in Plain Sight: Impacts of E-Commerce in Massachusetts also by Alison and Travis cover in detail the economic impacts as well as strategies to use if this type of development comes to your town.

This leads us to the patterns of the week:

  • Commercial real estate continues to be a dynamic space as offices look to repurpose or downsize their space. These changes could lead to a resurgence of coworking spaces or some sort of..forgive me...hybrid...that focuses on serving businesses rather than freelancers...
  • Reduce and eliminate parking minimums but don't think about commercial/residential here. Reduction across the board can help incentivize development, increase the supply of housing allowing you to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
  • Be careful with last-mile infrastructure. While the benefits are clear to consumers in the community there are noticeable impacts to citizens: noise, air quality, and traffic are all risks that need to be mitigated when considering this type of business.

That's all for this week.

And I'll talk to you soon.