Category Archives: Places

The American city with nearly 40% vacant office space

Posted on by

Denver has a lot of vacant downtown space:

Photo by Noel Aph on Pexels.com

According to CBRE data cited by the Journal, nearly 40 percent of office space in Denver’s central business district now stands vacant, creating concerns that the city could become trapped in the same urban ‘death spiral’ facing other struggling downtowns…

Denver’s economy historically benefited from growth in technology, telecommunications, finance, energy and professional services. Those sectors, Odell said, have also proven among the most receptive to hybrid and remote work arrangements.

As workers stopped commuting into the city center five days a week, demand for traditional downtown office space evaporated…

The question now is whether Denver can transform itself quickly enough to avoid becoming a permanent symbol of urban decline.

Big city downtowns are important for a number of reasons with the foremost in the last century or so being the center of office-based activity. Could they still be influential with less office activity (such as the housing-based mixed-use activity suggested in this article)?

Maybe. Upon rereading Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities again this semester, I was reminded of her suggestion that cities are networks of neighborhoods. She speaks of Downtown and Midtown Manhattan but is more interested in somewhat dense neighborhoods connected to other similar places.

Or many places in the United States are already used to sprawling places where there are not centers but nodes of activity scattered across the landscape. Not one major center, many smaller centers that suburbanites travel to for work, entertainment, school, and more.

I cannot imagine downtowns as we know them from recent decades disappearing soon. The buildings still have some value to someone. But it is also hard to picture a different kind of center to regions with millions of residents.

Whether Charlotte wants to grow more or not

Posted on by

An Axios piece suggests many in the growing city of Charlotte in the surrounding suburbs do not want the rapid growth to continue.

Photo by andres Nino on Pexels.com

As Charlotte barrels toward a population of 1 million, the city of transplants and unicorn natives is uniting behind a common phrase:

  • “We’re full.”

But are there arguments made on both sides, some for growth and others against?

Charlotte built a reputation as a place to escape more crowded, costlier cities. Now, residents fear rapid growth is recreating what they fled, from the Atlanta-scary traffic to the New York sticker shock…

“There’s really no equilibrium for a city,” says Andrew Blumenthal, a real estate broker and vice chair of Charlotte’s planning commission. “Either you’re growing, or you’re not.”

  • But Charlotte is playing catch-up on infrastructure…

Regional leaders this week shot down multi-billion-dollar plans to add toll lanes to I-77, the commuter route between ballooning Fort Mill and Charlotte.

It sounds here like rapid growth has led to some concerns. Charlotte’s population has more than doubled since 1990. This puts pressure on roads and local services. This affects housing supply and demand. This changes the experiences of particular neighborhoods and communities.

But American communities tend to see growth as good. Growth means there is new construction, more business activity. A growing population means the city and region is more visible at the national level.

What do leaders and residents in Charlotte want the city and region to be? Growth is not inevitable and leaders and residents can help steer it in particular directions. They can make decisions that affect future growth and what people experience in the next few decades.

It would be nice to have some data about what people in the region want. How do they feel about the growth beyond the typical American NIMBY responses of how their properties and lives might be affected or the excitement about new opportunities growth might ring. Should Charlotte keep sprawling? Who do they envision living there? What might happen when the growth slows down?

Arlington, TX is where the American Dream lives?

Posted on by

I don’t know how I missed that Arlington, Texas is the American Dream City:

This campaign apparently started a while back. here is what local leaders said contributed to developing this slogan:

“Arlington is multi-dimensional with a lot to offer families, businesses, consumers and visitors,” said Jay Warren, Arlington Marketing Communications Manager. “When building this brand, it was important that we approach it by looking at the entire community. We wanted to make sure it represents all of Arlington.”

With an excelling education system (four independent school districts, the University of Texas at Arlington and Tarrant County College), a strong entrepreneurial business community and diverse neighborhoods where the housing dollar stretches further than most cities, Arlington is a direct reflection of how the American Dream thrives when citizens have a can-do, independent spirit and city pride.

Throughout its history, even when faced with those who said it wasn’t possible, Arlington has become home to a host of international brands, including:

  • The nation’s first regional theme park of American family fun, Six Flags Over Texas
  • American manufacturing with the General Motors plant
  • America’s pastime with the Texas Rangers and the iconic Globe Life Park
  • America’s Team with the Dallas Cowboys and its world-class AT&T Stadium
  • And, the United States Bowling Congress, celebrating the most participatory sport in the world

Located between two major cities, Arlington is a large suburb of over 400,000 residents. It is a racially and ethnically diverse city with a household median income of over $75,000. The homeownership rate is over 54%.

Using “American Dream” implies two things about the city. It is possible to achieve upward social mobility in Arlington. It also signifies reaching a certain level of success, particularly the middle class status of suburban homeownership.

I do not know if these features are more true in Arlington than they are in other suburbs. The Opportunity Atlas suggests Tarrant County, TX, the county in which Arlington is located, may not have provided much mobility over the decades. Four other Texas suburbs are in the Top 10 of the recent US News & World Report list of best places to live (and Arlington ranks at #56 in Texas). At the same time, having multiple major pro sports stadiums would be noteworthy to sports fans.

Now this gets me thinking: what suburbs have upward social mobility and a middle-class lifestyle? This might preclude places that have people who all already made it or are not doing much better than their parents or previous generations.

The scale of New York City in an American perspective

Posted on by

As a sociologist who studies places, this always stands out to me when I visit New York City: its scale and size. Other American cities and places have small aspects of what New York has but NYC has more. Density, skyscrapers, mass transit, large parks, commercial activity, waterways, sidewalk life, a variety of neighborhoods, and history going back to the mid-1600s.

This might be most visible from up above. Coming in via airplane over New York City, you see the reach of the metropolitan region even before you get to the five boroughs. You see the tall buildings, not just in one location, but in multiple settings (midtown Manhattan, downtown Manhattan, along the rivers, in Brooklyn, in Jersey City, etc.). Development and human activity is evident everywhere. Standing at the top of the Empire State Building (picture above), you can hear some of the street noise even as you observe people and vehicles moving around.

But this is also evident at the street level. There is a level of activity across the city. Denser residential buildings and close-together single-family units. Tons of small businesses and restaurants as well as multinational corporations. Street traffic and overlapping mass transit systems that mean you can traverse the city without cars. Busy outlying neighborhoods in addition to the activity of Manhattan.

There is an argument that larger cities are scaled up versions of smaller cities. (See this book for an example.) I am more familiar with Chicago than New York City and for the Midwest, Chicago is the big city. But then travel to Los Angeles or New York – and I have been to both numerous times – and Chicago looks and feels smaller (even as LA and NYC are very different places). New York City is the big city for the United States. It is the leading global city in numerous lists and studies. Other big cities have their own unique features or have smaller versions of what New York has. As one quote says, “America has only three cities. New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”

I have been in even larger cities like Tokyo and Hong Kong. From above and on the ground, both of these cities are on a different scale compared to New York City. But that is a possible story for future posts. For now, New York City is the big American city.

Las Vegas quickly on the (sports) map

Posted on by

It is rare for a city to add professional sports teams at the rate at which Las Vegas is going:

Photo by Masood Aslami on Pexels.com

With the potential for a city to add an NBA franchise in time for 2028, Vegas could go from no Big Four teams to become the 13th city with an MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL team in the span of 11 years.

Several things may have happened in a relatively short amount of time:

  1. The city has grown rapidly in recent decades. The city had 125,787 people in 1970 (too small to have 4 sports franchises), 258,295 in 1990 (still on the smaller side), and 583,756 people in 2010 (a big city).
  2. It is a new market. This presents a chance to have new fans.
  3. Gambling is now okay with every major sport because of the revenue generated. That obstacle is gone.
  4. The city and other governments are willing to provide public money for stadiums. Owners and teams really like this.

At some point, Las Vegas will not grow like it has in the past (it already slowed between 2010 to 2020 to 10%). At some point, a team might want to leave Las Vegas for greener pastures. But for now, Las Vegas is a shiny new sports city. If the NBA does indeed start a franchise there in the next few years, the teams in the four major sports help give the city and region a certain status.

Carving a full balsa wood model of New York City

Posted on by

One man made a full model of New York City:

Three quick thoughts:

  1. Cities can fascinate people. The scale, all the activity, the density of people. This is one way to express this fascination.
  2. I appreciate the ability to see the city from above. There is something about this perspective that helps take in the whole city at once. Maps offer some of this but do not have the 3D angle or this size. Observing this model would provide a very different experience compared to being a pedestrian at street level.
  3. Does this fit into the professionalization or side hustle of hobbies? It is one thing to enjoy carving wood; it is another to keep going to create this size of a product that can be in a museum.

Would you put a “Museum for the Middle Class” in Schaumburg, Illinois?

Posted on by

A 2004 Onion article imagined a “Museum for the Middle Class” in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg:

Photo by Tom Fournier on Pexels.com

“The splendid and intriguing middle class may be gone, but it will never be forgotten,” said Harold Greeley, curator of the exhibit titled “Where The Streets Had Trees’ Names.” “From their weekend barbecues at homes with backyards to their outdated belief in social mobility, the middle class will forever be remembered as an important part of American history.”

Museum guests expressed delight over the traditions and peculiarities of the middle class, a group once so prevalent that entire TV networks were programmed to satisfy its hunger for sitcoms…

During the modern industrial age, the middle class grew steadily, reaching its heyday in the 1950s, when its numbers soared into the tens of millions. According to a study commissioned by the U.S. Census Bureau, middle-class people inhabited great swaths of North America, with settlements in the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific Northwest, and even the nation’s urban centers…

One of the 15 permanent exhibits, titled “Working For ’The Weekend,’” examines the routines of middle-class wage-earners, who labored for roughly eight hours a day, five days a week. In return, they were afforded leisure time on Saturdays and Sundays. According to many anthropologists, these “weekends” were often spent taking “day trips,”eating at chain family restaurants, or watching “baseball” with the nuclear family.

If there were such a museum, would it make sense to have it in Schaumburg? Here are a few pros and cons for doing so:

Pros: Schaumburg is a postwar suburban community incorporated in 1956. It is home to nearly 80,000 residents today. It has a large shopping mall within village limits and it has plenty of office space. (More on this in the Cons section.) It has access to multiple major highways and a train station on a line to Chicago, facilitating travel throughout the region. Locating a museum about middle-class life in a successful suburb makes sense given that suburban life is often associated with middle-class life.

Cons: Schaumburg is a particular kind of suburb, an edge city, with lots of retail and office space next to major highways. It is less of a bedroom suburb full of quiet single-family home neighborhoods and more of a suburban commercial center. It is less about a bucolic suburban lifestyle and more about easily-accessible stores and entertainment options. If a middle-class American life was about providing opportunities for their kids and having a single-family home, plenty of other suburbs could showcase this.

Perhaps the 2004 Onion was correct: the American middle-class of the turn of the twenty-first century might become a relic. If it does, where it is commemtorated will be interesting to see.

Will there be another Colorado Springs/”Jesus Springs”?

Posted on by

In recently reading Jesus Springs by historian William J. Schultz, I was reminded of the social factors that contributed to the city becoming an evangelical center by the 1990s. As Ben Norquist and I found about Colorado Springs and several other evangelical centers in Chapter 6 of Sanctifying Suburbia, these centers could come together over time – and the evangelical center could change over time. For example, some of the evangelical organizations that ended up in Colorado Springs came from other places with lots of evangelical organizations like Wheaton and the suburbs east of Los Angeles.

Photo by Jacob Moore on Pexels.com

Since multiple evangelical clusters have arisen, will another place become the Colorado Springs of the 2030s? Could a similar process happen in another location?

There are several ways to think about this. What places now have conditions that evangelical organizations would find favorable? Perhaps it is a particular political climate or an influential local evangelical institution or an offer for land or a building.

Or what might occur in Colorado Springs that would prompt organizations to leave for somewhere else? A new evangelical center could emerge from organizations leaving a place they no longer consider hospitable.

Or maybe this is about whether physical proximity matters as much in today’s world. Technology enables organizations to be located all over or employees to be located all over. Will organizations continue to value a possible face-to-face interaction and synergy with like-minded people and organizations?

Or this might be connected to broader religious patterns. What happens to the number of evangelical Americans in the coming years and what effect does this have on evangelical organizations?

A lot would have to happen for another a Colorado Springs like place to emerge as an evangelical center.

Changing a college’s name from referencing a region (North Central) to pointing to its suburban home (Naperville)?

Posted on by

Would changing the name of North Central College to instead reference Naperville help the institution? Here is why a change might work:

Photo by Beate Vogl on Pexels.com

Historically, North Central College’s location has not always been at the center of its identity, according to Gòkè-Paríolá. When a survey from 2019 showed the university had low name and brand recognition from people outside of the Naperville area, the institution started to reconsider how it markets itself.

Now, as the third largest city in Illinois, North Central College’s location in Naperville is increasingly advertised as a major part of the student experience…

Naperville has made national headlines as it garners attention for such things as safety and quality of life. In 2025, Naperville was named the best city to live in America by online rating database Niche for the second consecutive year. It also consistently ranks as the best city to raise a family in America by Niche…

“If they are in Maryland and you try to recruit them and say, ‘Come to North Central College,’ well, you got your work cut out for you,” Gòkè-Paríolá said. “But when you tell them, ‘Where is it?’ ‘Naperville.’ (They say) ‘Oh, Naperville. I know Naperville’ or ‘I read something about it.’”

As someone who has studied Naperville, my sense is that it is generally well regarded by residents and outsiders. The rankings referenced above help (see posts from recent years here, here, and here) but so does (1) population growth, (2) white-collar jobs, (3) wealth, and (4) a vibrant downtown.

Additionally, the current name hints at a broader region. The college was initially located in and named after the small town of Plainfield, a community southwest of Naperville and one that was small until growing from 4,557 residents in 1990 to over 44,000 in 2020. Before moving to Naperville, the college’s name was changed to “North-Western,” referencing the Northwest Territory from which Illinois and several other states were founded. In 1926, the name became “North Central,” which more accurately reflects the location outside of Chicago with the United States spanning from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

There are numerous colleges that reference suburbs in their name. I wonder how many of these names were selected prior to mass suburbanization in the postwar era. How many are named after sizable suburbs today? How about University of Santa Ana or Plano or Aurora (Colorado – the large Illinois suburb has Aurora University but it was renamed for the community prior to World War Two) or Hialeah?

Related to this, is there a sense that a certain kind of learning or college experience happens in growing, wealthy suburbs compared to what is available in big cities or smaller communities? Research universities are often in big cities or college towns, not necessarily suburbs.

Pushing back against the housing plans of the wealthy in suburban Palo Alto

Posted on by

One elected local government official wants to limit what wealthy residents can build in suburban Palo Alto:

View Palo Alto, California Eadweard by thegetty is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

The proposed legislation would apply to people who buy three or more homes within a radius of 500 feet, roughly the length of a city block. Any construction project expected to last more than 180 days would need a detailed daily schedule of construction work to prove it can be conducted without double-parking vehicles or blocking driveways or bike lanes.

After finishing one construction project, homeowners would need to wait three years to begin another unless a major emergency occurred. Homes could not be vacant for more than six months in any given year.

The proposal relies on neighbors for enforcement, leaving it up to another homeowner or tenant living within 500 feet to file a lawsuit.

The proposal would place new restrictions on private security guards across Palo Alto, not just those serving wealthy homeowners. All security vehicles would have to be marked and permitted by the city. Security guards would have to identify themselves to the public when asked. They would be prohibited from harassing or intimidating passers-by on public property…

The full Palo Alto City Council is likely to take up Mr. Stone’s proposal in January or February. Mr. Stone said he is confident that a majority of the seven-member council, which has taken a keen interest in housing affordability, would support the general framework but could send it to a committee or city staff member for refinement. It could take six months or longer to reach a final vote, he said.

Three things strike me about this proposal:

  1. It is clearly aimed at particular residents. Not just people with some wealth, who might be found across American suburban communities, but people who are truly wealthy and can afford this kind of construction and property ownership and all that goes with it.
  2. Communities often deal with these concerns at the zoning level. How big can a structure or house be? Are the guidelines in particular areas or in regards to property lines? The proposal above seems to deal with other matters that come along with regular approval of megahouses and properties.
  3. The regulations are about property but local conversations often have to do with local character and community life. Do such homes (and people) fit in the community? Who can live in a place where such properties are common? Who is Palo Alto for? Suburbs often implicitly or explicitly have these discussions while considering development.

Now that this proposal is out there, how do wealthier residents respond and what will the final local regulations be?