Urbanexus Update - Issue #70
Urbanexus Update - Issue #70
Please scroll down for the weekly compilation of analysis, reporting, and opinion about real estate and community development. Some links may lead to items that are behind a paywall.
The economy
How the economic machine works,
In this timeless animated video from 2013, billionaire hedge fund founder Ray Dalio eloquently explains how the world economy works in just 30 minutes.
Housing
Housing starts and permits remain soft in the USA
By nearly every metric, single-family housing markets remain significantly undersupplied. Household formations outpaced new housing starts by more than 100k in 2018 as the vacancy rate for both owner-occupied and renter-occupied homes reached multi-decade lows in the fourth quarter. The United States has been under-building homes since the early 1990s, and that trend of under-building has intensified dramatically since the housing bubble burst in 2008. A shortage primarily rooted in sub-optimal public policy at the local, regional, and national levels, the US is building homes at a rate that is less than 50% of the post-1960 average after adjusting for population growth.
Middle-income seniors provide major housing challenge, opportunity — rebusinessonline.com
Middle-income seniors — those with too much money for government assistance, but not enough to afford luxury rents — may be the single biggest growth opportunity for the seniors housing industry over the coming years, according to research by the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing & Care (NIC).
Metropolitan trends in the USA
Where the Creative Class is growing
“The rise of the rest” may soon becomThe low creative-class growth rates for established tech hubs like San Jose and Boston simply reflect the fact that the creative class already makes up such a large share of employment. It’s much easier for places like Pittsburgh or Las Vegas to post a faster growth rate because they started out with a much smaller share to begin with.e a reality as once-lagging cities see growth of creative class employment. The low creative-class growth rates for established tech hubs like San Jose and Boston simply reflect the fact that the creative class already makes up such a large share of employment. It’s much easier for places like Pittsburgh or Las Vegas to post a faster growth rate because they started out with a much smaller share to begin with.
Why midsize areas struggle to catch up to superstars For decades, smaller metropolitan areas closed the income gap with bigger, richer ones, but no longer. So places like Winston-Salem, N.C., are trying to lay a new foundation for prosperity.
The Future of the city Is childless
America’s urban rebirth is missing something key—actual births. Cities were once a place for families of all classes. The “basic custom” of the American city, wrote the urbanist Sam Bass Warner, was a “commitment to familialism.” Today’s cities, however, are decidedly not for children, or for families who want children. As the sociologists Richard Lloyd and Terry Nichols Clark put it, they are “entertainment machines” for the young, rich, and mostly childless.
Transportation
How not to be a transit supervillain — www.sightline.org
King County Metro has become a national hero of good transit. It could take the next step: letting riders pay for parking if they want to do so.
Design
Unesco adds Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture to World Heritage List — www.nytimes.com Fallingwater and the Guggenheim are among eight of the architect’s major works that were added to the conservation list.
Environment and resilience
How hot your places in the USA will feel by midcentury Without climate action, up to a quarter of the U.S. could feel hotter than 127 F at least one day a year.
Why urban landscapes are a linchpin for climate resilience Replacing grass with climate appropriate plants (and irrigating those plants properly) can reduce a landscape’s water needs by 70-80 percent. During the last California drought, we saw homes across the state doing this, a trend significant enough to be clear on Google Maps. This was a big part of why California’s urban communities were able to meet, in fact exceed, the emergency drought mandate of reducing water use by 20 percent.