Episode Summary

  1. Live work 2.0. You heard it here first. I just googled live work 2.0 and I get some stuff about work 2.0 (related to remote working) but nothing related to the next version of city planning. Live work 2.0...an urban planning and economic development strategy that developers should consider. Don't think central business district think dispersed hubs of activity. Nodes. Internet infrastructure and spaces that can scale up and down for big groups/small groups.
  2. Walkable Gems. Where does cost of living blend extremely well with walkability. The 15 min neighborhood is a key concept to be blended with a Live work 2.0 strategy.
  3. Don't mess with Texas

Population patterns in a post-covid world (44 page pdf)

Crowd sources walkable US gems (reddit thread)

When road diets get reversed (5 min read)

Episode Transcript

Implications, Gem, Reverse

This is patterns of development.

Hey everyone. I’m Kyle Gulau and on this show, patterns of development, we take less than 10 minutes each week to deconstruct what's going on in real estate, architecture, and urban planing.

We're looking for case studies, data, and peer reviewed work, to consider and and inform conversations in your community. My own personal goal is that I'll build some pattern recognition, and apply some of this experienced thinking in my own backyard.

I want to pick up where we left of last week. I don't normally do this but it's happening.

Remote work and patterns of population in a post-covid world. A study done by Future Place Leadership. The group identifies as a Nordic management consultancy specializing in development, innovation, and the marketing of places. Cool.

Anyway they've produced this 44 page pdf report.

What are the implications of Covid? According to Future Place:

  1. There will be new relocation patterns
  2. Workers can and will be multi-locational
  3. Emergent communities
  4. New investment patterns
  5. Reinventing of places

Of the 5 points highlighted in their executive summary I think the first two are self-explanatory. We've covered them in depth on this show. We've been flooded with theories, data, speculation about the future of work. So yes...people are moving..and people are working and living and working across multiple locations.

Let's talk about emergent communities. What does that even mean?

And I'll quote the report now, "New movement patterns have allowed the emergence of, and increased the need for, strong communities. Nomads benefit from advice,
support and company from others in a similar situation.

Individuals looking to permanently move often also benefit from advice given by those who have already been through the experience. Communities can be enabled through spaces such as co-living hubs, or through policies such as talent attraction schemes with networking events in a region.

What does this mean as a developer? As a planner? As a real estate agent? Is there a support system for remote workers?

This leads us to points 4 and 5 on the list. New investment patterns and reinventing places. Hubs like Silicon Valley have become expensive for companies and talent. The dispersion of that human capital creates a dispersion - a spreading out of those hubs and centers.

So now instead of one Silicon Valley...maybe there's the same total scale of activity spread across 10 smaller places. This creates opportunities for smaller places. Then you reinvent places for these people. If you can retain these workers invest in these activities centers, now you have to reinvent places. Create attractive places that PEOPLE want to hang out in. Key word. People. People. People.

People to Live and strategies for them to do remote work. I didn't intend for this to come out but it's almost like live work 2.0.

We're not worried about commutes. We're thinking about how people can walk outside their door and enjoy their place. They just spent all day on a computer, they probably don't want to spend another hour in the car. This elevates things like walkability, and the 15 minute neighborhood. This is a whole rethink of the strategy. Attract and retain remote workers? Or recognize that remote workers are more digital nomads so be ok with turn over but create a system that supports that? It's like ...rethinking your central business district. You don't need 100s of thousands of square feet of cube space. You need 10 coffee shops that have private conference rooms for rent.

Just crazy Kyle ideas. That all just popped out.

On to the next article and I guess related. It's all related isn't it? A thread on social media platform, Reddit. Titled "walkable hidden gems."

The original post by user ZutaraBaraka:

"Hi all. My husband and I need help, we are currently suffering in the urban sprawl of outer Dallas. Honestly there’s nothing more depressing than living in a bedroom community when you can’t afford a house. We’re looking to totally switch things up and find a walkable city to move to. Anywhere in the US is an option. I’ve googled every list, and they all mention entire large cities that have walkable and non walkable neighborhoods…not very specific or helpful info. I want to hear your favorite lesser known walkable neighborhoods. We’re open to areas of big cities or smaller towns. Walkable doesn’t always mean a downtown area with millions of people..sometimes it’s a smaller city with a great little mix of retail and residential. Any suggestions are much appreciated"

Top upvoted responses included the following:

  • Philly and Boston, as bigger towns but more expensive\
  • Fort Collins, CO as a smaller town but getting expensive

Underdogs include:

  • York - PA
  • Lancaster - PA
  • Reading - PA
  • Bethlehem - PA
  • Central West End St. Louis, MO
  • Pittsburg, PA
  • Large university towns (Athens, Ann Arbor, Madison, Eugene) likely expensive but worth a look
  • Deadwood, SD
  • Lanesboro, MN
  • Pullman, WA
  • Moscow, ID

Just fun to think about a list of "under the radar walkable cities" and how would I get my own city on that list? Something to think about there.

And finally a lot of those places probably have small streets 10' each lane. Which naturally slow down traffic and make walking and biking more comfortable. I don't have that data but I'm willing to bet that's the case.

What happens when you have wide streets, you start to do a road diet (aka limit the access for cars and make it better for bikers/walkers), but then the road diet gets reversed?

It's unfortunately playing out in Texas. An article titled. And I'm not making this up, "When Road Diets get Rolled back Part 1: The Texas Road Diet Massacre"

Yes. That's the title.

Article of Kea Wilson tells the story about the unfolding bureaucratic drama in San Antonio Texas.

Here's the set up from the author of the article published in Streetsblog USA, "On Jan. 27, the Texas Transportation Commission made the shocking announcement that it would invalidate a 2015 decision to grant ownership of a 2.8-mile stretch of Broadway to city authorities — in the process, halting an overwhelmingly popular plan to reduce the thoroughfare from seven lanes to four while expanding sidewalks, adding protected bike lanes, and cultivating street trees."

The state claims that authorization was never officially approved. So unfortunately the road diet is off, the tree lined street scape is no more. And the 7 lanes of traffic remain. There's more drama here but the point I want to make is that this is a common challenge for cities. They don't actually have control or ownership over the roads that go through their community. Which is fine when you don't want to pay to maintain them but is a problem when you want to do something about changing them.

Ironically, in 2014 the state had to balance their budget and forced cities to pay to maintain the state roads in their community. So you're essentially renting the roads from the state. Yikes. Which of course makes the 7 lanes even more painful. The state was paying for it. Now the city is paying for it. But you don't have any control over what type of road it is...

Which leads us to our patterns of the week:

  1. Live work 2.0. You heard it here first. I just googled live work 2.0 and I get some stuff about work 2.0 (related to remote working) but nothing related to the next version of city planning. Live work 2.0...an urban planning and economic development strategy that developers should consider. Don't think central business district think dispersed hubs of activity. Nodes. Internet infrastructure and spaces that can scale up and down for big groups/small groups.
  2. Walkable Gems. Where does cost of living blend extremely well with walkability. The 15 min neighborhood is a key concept to be blended with a Live work 2.0 strategy.
  3. Don't mess with Texas

That's all for this week...talk to y'all soon.