Reimagining Cities-Disrupting the Urban Doom Loop

including their surface parking lots. The size of these WalkUPs varies widely, ranging from the Columbus Avenue WalkUP, which spans 5.5 acres along both sides of the avenue, to North Carolina State University, which covers 1,953 acres, including athletic fields in Raleigh. 80 The total amount of land in WalkUPs averages a mere 3% of the total land mass across the 15 cities. This research categorizes the 15 cities into three size/investor groups: gateway cities, large secondary cities and moderate secondary cities. The land mass of WalkUPs varies across these categories, with a greater share of land mass in WalkUPs found in gateway cities (4.4% of city land mass) compared with large secondary cities (3.4%) and moderate secondary cities (1.4%). According to agglomeration theory, the size of a city matters and influences its layout and performance. As this research shows, larger cities have more land dedicated to WalkUPs and a greater number of place management organizations. For a place management organization to carry out various creative placemaking activities, it needs a sizable budget. An informal poll of place managers across the country suggests that a minimum annual budget of $2 million (in 2024 dollars) is required to make an impact. The operating budget of BIDs typically result from a ballot measure or a petition that raises property taxes by an average of 5% to 10%. Larger budgets often reflect a combination of higher real estate inventory and valuations, the strength of the business environment and the level of service demanded. The average budget of the place management organizations in our study is $5 million, with 53 (25%) of the WalkUPs having an organization with a budget exceeding $2 million. The largest budgets belong to WalkUPs like the Midtown Alliance in Atlanta (Downtown Adjacent), which has a $23 million annual budget, and Center City Philadelphia (Downtown), with a $32 million annual budget. Some WalkUPs are

AVERAGE BUDGET PER BID (Millions)

$10

$9

$8

$7

$6

$5

$4

$3

$2

$1

$0

Downtown Downtown Adjacent Urban Commercial Urban University

Source: Places Platform, LLC; Cushman & Wakefield Research

managed by multiple place management organizations, such as Midtown Manhattan, where four BIDs manage different areas (i.e., Fifth Avenue, Grand Central Terminal area, Bryant Park and the Diamond District). It is important to note that Urban University place management is usually the responsibility of the university itself (i.e., it is self-managed). Urban universities have security departments and maintenance staff that provide essential services, host and manage sporting events and festivals, oversee park-like campus spaces and control parking assets. Since urban universities own most of the property, it is rare for an Urban University WalkUP to have independent place management or a BID.

80 Technically the smallest WalkUP is Marymount Manhattan College (5 acres) and the largest is the U.S. Government Core in Washington, DC, which includes the National Mall, Capitol Hill, Federal Triangle and the White House. It has 2,920 acres. These are obviously outliers and are one-of-a-kind. They are included in our dataset but are not typical of the other 206 WalkUPs in size, respectively 2% the average size and 10x the average size of all WalkUPs.

Reimagining Cities: Disrupting the Urban Doom Loop 57