Reimagining Cities-Disrupting the Urban Doom Loop

KEY FINDINGS FROMOUR STUDY:

WalkUPs are significant economic drivers. We found that the 208 WalkUPs in the 15-city sample 2 represent, on average: 3% 26% 37% 57% of the land mass of these cities of the city budget tax revenues

of the real estate valuation

of the city GDP (41 times the GDP/acre of the rest of the land mass of the 15 cities)

One could argue that the economy of the WalkUPs is why the city exists.

The pandemic-induced doom loop is episodic and has shown signs of a reversal. In the 15 cities studied, population losses were for two years only (2020-2021), and have reversed, increasing in 2022 and 2023. So, while visitor and (non-resident) employee return to WalkUPs is still below 2019 levels, there has been a more than complete recovery in residents across cities and WalkUPs.

LIVE multifamily rental, student housing and for-sale

PLAY retail, hotel, sports and entertainment, etc.

Portfolio theory applies to cities’ real estate inventories. Real estate valuations in these WalkUPs were lower over the four-year time period of the research (between 2019 2023), largely due to an over-inventory of office space (62% of the reduced WalkUP valuations is due to declining office valuations), especially in the Downtown WalkUPs. For-sale housing boomed in valuation during this time, but WalkUPs tend to have less of this product type in their inventory.

14.3%

33.5%

CURRENT PORTFOLIO OF WALKUPS

52.2%

WORK o ce, GSA, owner-occupied, university

2 15 cities include six Gateway cities (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Manhattan, San Francisco, Washington, DC), five large secondary cities (Atlanta, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, Seattle), and four moderate secondary cities (Austin, Denver, Phoenix, Raleigh).

Reimagining Cities: Disrupting the Urban Doom Loop 5