Archive for November 24, 2009

Your most outragious examples of “urbany”

November 24, 2009 / Wendy Waters / 7 comments

Urbany — Trendwatching.com’s new word for the urban experience lifestyle.

100 years ago, less than 5 percent of the world’s population lived in cities.  Today over 50% call urban areas home and that number could reach 70% within a few decades.

What’s the significance? Urban culture is taking over.  As explained by Trendwatcher:

A forever-growing number of more sophisticated, more demanding, but also more try-out-prone, super-wired urban consumers are snapping up more ‘daring’ goods, services, experiences, campaigns and conversations.

So, what are your examples of the most extreme “urbany” you’ve seen?  Put another way, what daily happenings in cities would most shock a time traveler from the 1950s?

Here are mine (in no particular order):

  • The widespread daily $5 Latte habit
  • Dozens of people sitting in a cafe, all texting on their cel phones but not talking to each other
  • Ordinary people having personal trainers
  • How busy a restaurant patio is on a warm day, with both men and women (in the 1950s these people would all have 4 kids at home)

What else?

Category: urban history, urban lifestyles /

American cities facing challenges

November 18, 2009 / Wendy Waters / One comment

As the United States grapples with the worst job losses since World War Two, the nation’s cities need to be centers of solutions and incubators of private sector jobs.  Yet, with government bank balances at all levels in the red, finding the resources to provide infrastructure and even maintain basic services will be challenging.  Municipalities may be forced to cut payrolls, which will make it that much harder to provide a fertile place for employers and employees.

The Brookings Institute will be hosting a forum on November 19 2009 at 9AM– that will be live streamed (and re-playable)– related to this issue, involving mayors, the Wall Street Journal and even VP Joseph Biden.

The discussion will focus on the deepening fiscal challenges many cities face, the  adjustments that will be required in 2010 budgets, and the and the tough choices on city services and payrolls that may drag down national jobs numbers and economic recovery.

In the meantime, here are my thoughts on the big issues for American cities:

The US is facing the need for structural economic change, finishing the shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge and experience based one.  The latter requires dynamic, vibrant cities filled with talented people and clusters of different companies doing innovative things.

But, how to get there from where so many cities are — that’s a big question.  I look forward to hearing what the Brooking’s Institute’s forum participants come up with. But I can’t help but think the challenges here generally cannot be solved at the municipal level alone — it’s a national economic structural shift that needs to happen, and will require a devalued currency, inflation, and perhaps a decline in living standards for millions of Americans.

Category: economic development, national politics, urban history /

Apartment living and women’s empowerment

November 17, 2009 / Wendy Waters / 6 comments

Back when North American metropolitan areas were laid out, in suburbs connected by freeways, women typically stayed home to raise the 3.9 children that was typical for a woman to have in 1961.

The entire metro area design evolved interconnected with this dominant idea about womanhood as motherhood.  Suburbs detached from work areas; malls and shopping detached from home, such that it was a full time job to drive around to provision a home and get kids to and from activities.

Today, suburban living requires almost the same commitment — one parent must devote herself (or himself) to keeping up a suburban home, even if there are no longer 3.9 children there.  It is still, at minimum a significant part time or full time job.  Leaving one child in extended daycare or with a nanny in order to commute 1 hour each way and then work an 8.5 hour day is not most parents’ preferred option and thus suburban living creates stress for families where both parents enjoy their jobs and want to remain in the workforce.  Although working from home is sometimes possible with today’s technology, for many people it’s just not as satisfying as with face-to-face interaction.

Indeed the suburban style of metropolitan organization seems anachronistic and out of place with today’s realities, which creates a lot of stress on families.   61.9% of families with children have both parents working, in Canada.  Yet the housing stock and our housing assumptions — that we need to live in a house with a yard if we have children — evolved from a time when many fewer mothers and fathers both worked.

Moreover, today, a woman in Canada typically has only 1.6 children in her lifetime.  Having a house in the ‘burbs is hardly necessary as a “space” issue.  How much room does a family of 3 need?

Female labour force participation has grown steadily in recent years, and it’s no accident that so has apartment and condominium living in Canada’s larger cities.  Given women now earn the majority of university degrees, and the economy is increasingly knowledge based, I expect that urban living close to workplaces will grow in the coming decades.  Look for demand for apartments and condominiums to grow.

Living and working in close proximity saves time, allowing time for work and for children, particularly if an employer is somewhat flexible (an increasing pattern as well) — or if the woman or parents create their own businesses.  High density areas close to business districts offer lots of potential customers.

Your comments welcome .. are you seeing apartment living as a force that is supporting women in professional careers?  does it support you?

What about in the USA where the fertility rate is 2.1 children per woman (much higher than Canada) — is this a cause or an effect of continued suburban lifestyles?

Category: demographic stats, sprawl, urban families, urban history /

Changing urban jobs, new urban lifestyles

November 9, 2009 / Wendy Waters / 4 comments

How is the changing nature of urban employment changing our cities?

Many cities, particularly in North America, emerged as centers for manufacturing, primary industry and some natural resource processing and trade.  In recent decades, manufacturing finished products has become more automated and global.  Making primary products like steel has undergone a similar transformation.  And many of North America’s resources are gone, and those that remain are often more costly to harvest than comparable products in other countries (forestry and the fishery being good examples).

That has changed.  Urban jobs increasingly are based in the knowledge economy or urban experience economy.   The former often  involve engineering, accounting, financial or other analytical work.  The latter involve providing others with experiences, whether that perfect morning latte, a spa treatment, a personalized workout, retail service or the presentation of fine food to name a few.

There is still construction employment and jobs driving containers of Cherrios or designer clothes to warehouses will not disappear.    But so many other jobs often considered masculine and male dominated are gone.

Our cities are changing along with attitudes about gender.  Most women today have less than 2 children (1.5 children per woman in her lifetime is the current fertility average); women earn 55% of bachelor and masters degrees, often needed (or an advantage) in the knowledge economy and skilled experience-service economy positions.

As women take skilled positions in the knowledge economy, it creates positions for child care workers (a skilled, service economy role) and perhaps more demand for lower maintenance apartment living rather than suburban single family home ownership.

Immigrants to Canada come with higher education levels than the typical native born person (50% of immigrants to Canada over the age of 24 have degrees, in comparison to 20% of Canadian born in the same age group).  This is making Canada’s major cities more multi-cultural than ever.

With many of the resource and manufacturing companies gone, there seems to be fewer large employers and more smaller ones.  Does this empower talented people or is it a loss to job security? or both?

What other ways do you see changing employment patterns in cities affecting the look and feel of urban areas, or the way people live in them?

Category: economic development, urban history /

Urban jobs – tale of two countries

November 6, 2009 / Wendy Waters / No comments

Want to compare urban employment across all major North American cities? and with historical perspective?

Here:‘s a graph that allows you to see, on a monthly basis since 2002, the year-over-year job gains or losses.

If you look at the most recent month, across North America, what a “tale of two countries.”

Category: economic development /

Trick or Treat for a Community

November 6, 2009 / Wendy Waters / 2 comments

Zillow released a “Trick or Treat” Housing Index last week for Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago.  Their goal was to assess where a child could score the most candy with the least amount of walking and in a safe place. As they explained:

 [We used] four equally weighted data variables: Zillow Home Value Index, population density, Walk Score, and local crime data. Based on those variables, this Index represents neighborhoods that will provide the most candy, with the least walking, and minimum safety risks.

Pricey, wealtheir neighbourhoods generally didn’t score that high because of the amount of walking involved between houses and up lengthy drive ways.  By contrast, higher density neighbourhoods with older housing stock tended to do better.  For Seattle:

Wallingford offers the most bang-for-the-knock on Halloween night. The quirky neighborhood full of old Craftsman bungalows is home to residents of all ages, from retirees and college students, to young families with children. Wallingford has easy access to many restaurants, grocery stores, and theaters along 45th street. The ‘hood scored in the top ten percent for both walkability and density.

Would the Trick-or-Treat index be a great measure of “community” as well.  A safe place that contains a wide swath of the population that is highly walkable sounds like a great urban neighbourhood.

Maybe the Trick or Treat index, more than just walkability, could become something house hunters look for.

Category: communities, urban families /

H1N1 manufactured panic inconsistent with urban living

November 2, 2009 / Wendy Waters / 5 comments

Back in the late spring when the “swine flu” migrated out of Mexico, public health officials and the media quickly told the story of how it was proving to be a widespread, yet reasonably mild influenza virus.  Other than people with certain pre-existing conditions, most who contracted it only had mild-to-moderate flu symptoms.

Flash forward to October and November 2009, and the story has changed — yet the virus hasn’t.  Some media and even public health agencies are claiming the same H1N1 virus is more deadly than the seasonal flu.   The facts simply don’t support this.  In British Columbia, for example, the Centre for Disease Control (BC CDC) has recorded 12 deaths from swine flu so far since April, whereas with a typical seasonal flu, up to 800 deaths would be common during a flu season.

The panic to get vaccinated combined with the paranoia about being exposed to the bug could reach levels that will start to shut a city’s economy down.  The world’s urban residents, their media and public health agencies need a more balanced message if we’re going to: live in closer quarters, work less in private offices and more in small groups collaborating and innovating; spend more time and money on experiences like restaurant dining and latte sipping.  We can’t stop being urban every year during flu and cold season.

Viruses and bacteria are in many ways part of human society.  They have always been with us.   Fighting them makes us stronger — both our immune system and the scientific community, vaccine producers, information communication, etc.

But this time, our arsenal may be overkill.  If we get people panicked such that they take days off work to line up for vaccines, if we get society so panicked that everyone with a mild sore throat some fatigue and muscle aches feels they can’t go to work, city services, businesses, and other aspects of urban life will cease.  This can’t happen every year — and there is a new flu strain every year, usually more deadly than H1N1!

This isn’t just a “national” health policy issue — it’s also an urban issue.  If over half the world’s population is going to live in cities, they can’t be shut down with a manufactured panic.

***

As a disclosure: My family and I are just getting over H1N1 (or the full list of symptoms consistent with it — you can’t get tested unless you’re critically ill here).  Other than about 24 hours of the bug, it’s been one of the mildest set of symptoms I’ve ever stayed home from work for or kept the kids home from daycare for.  Before we caught it, I was someone scrambling to get a vaccine, believing some of the scaremongering.  Now I’m wondering why I wasted the time.

Category: economic development, urban lifestyles /