Making the case for the return to an office

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As employers and employees embrace working at home, how hard will it be to convince people to return to an open office? There are physical solutions as well as a larger underlying issue:

There’s a deeper question that needs to be solved at the heart of this effort to virus-proof the open office. What, exactly, is so valuable about working together in the same physical space? If the goal is to again nurture in-person collaboration, office design will have to find ways of making such face-to-face interactions feel safe and comfortable again.

The article has a lot of interesting suggestions about how the spaces can be altered to space people out or separate people. But, I think the larger question is more important: what will be appealing about the open office going forward that employees need a good answer for? If they can be productive from home, why do they need to go to the office?

There is a good argument to be made here for physical space. Social interaction builds up trust and familiarity. People talking with each other in informal settings can exchange ideas and spur creative thinking. Managers and companies may be better able to see what employees are doing and provide help and resources when needed. In general, good spaces matter.

It will be interesting to see how different organizations and sectors tackle this. I would imagine those that already have a looser corporate culture or different expectations pre-COVID-19 – think creative industries, some white-collar places, high concentrations of younger workers – will be more open to avoiding the office. Public health and perceptions of it will also play a role as employees and employers consider the risks of traveling, congregating in one place, and anxieties about all of that.

Argument: COVID-19 cases not necessarily because of density but denser housing and work arrangements

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Cities may not be the issue when it comes to COVID-19; rather, the larger issue might be density of homes, work, and travel experienced by some.

The inequalities of cities intersect in the rooms where people live and work. “The densest blocks in New York are in Manhattan, and that is not where cases of coronavirus are most frequent. They’re most frequent in Brooklyn and Queens, and in poorer neighborhoods,” says McDonald, lead scientist at the Nature Conservancy and author of the Nature of Cities analysis. “In Manhattan you might have only two people in a studio apartment, and in parts of Brooklyn or Queens you might have a family of five or six people in a room that size.”

An analysis from the housing-focused Furman Center at New York University lays out this answer more starkly: Mortality rates were higher in neighborhoods with lower incomes and less density across the geographic space but more density in a given home. That is, more people sharing a room or an apartment. Parts of the city with more renters living in overcrowded conditions had higher levels of infection, even though they had lower population density. And where more people had college degrees, fewer people got sick—possibly because people without college degrees are less likely to be able to work from home, and more likely to be riding public transit and working with other people, all potential points of exposure to the disease.

Class and race differences manifest in differing risk. “For some people who have been exposed, or are experiencing symptoms, staying home is not always the obvious course of action,” says Molly Franke, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. People who don’t have sick leave, who might lose their wages or jobs if they don’t show up, don’t have the option of sheltering in place. They’re out in the world, with more chances to encounter the disease and bring it home to the people they live with. And then, Franke says, things get even worse: “For a patient with Covid-19 to successfully isolate, there must be a separate bedroom and at least two weeks worth of supplies.” Who can afford all that?

On May 18, statistics finally confirmed what the Furman Center analysis had implied. The New York City Department of Health released numbers on deaths from Covid-19 by zip code, and the accompanying map is clarifying: The death rate has been higher in poorer neighborhoods where more people of color live. When Covid-19 came to New York City, rich people threw their Rimowa rolling bags into their Audi Q8s and decamped. But people who are less likely to have access to health care, less likely to have jobs they can do from home, more likely to share housing—as usual, they’re the ones who bear the brunt of the disease. Population density hasn’t been the issue, except on the spatial scale where it’s a proxy for inequality.

The logical next question to me is whether these patterns hold across other cities and communities. Are the unequal outcomes among blacks in Chicago and Latinos in the Chicago suburbs due to the same factors? Do the same patterns hold in Los Angeles where car travel is more common? Would the spread of cases in food processing plants also fit within this explanation (denser working conditions, lower-wage workers living in different conditions)? And if people have resources, they have more space and ability to avoid other people. It would be worth seeing if this applies across the board as well or if working in certain jobs or settings would limit the advantages.

Thinking long-term, I am sure there is more to come on the differential effects of COVID-19.

Finding uses for the “big empties” in the Chicago suburbs

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When businesses move their headquarters from sprawling suburban campuses to the city center, they leave behind a lot of building space and land:

Inside the sprawling, 2.4 million-square-foot headquarters — composed of seven interconnected office buildings — there is an almost eerie ghost-town quality, former employees describe. The bank, dry cleaners, hair salon, coffee shop and small sundry shop that once lined the corridor of the main atrium have all closed. Gone, too, are the Sbarro’s and Panda Express restaurants.

Over the years, Sears has hired leasing agents to bring in sublessors without much success. Today, with the economy uncertain and Sears’ days seemingly numbered, the building has become an even harder sell. Only about 3% of the complex is leased to outside tenants…

If Transformco tried to sell the campus, it would face long odds, local real estate experts said. The large complex, custom-built for Sears, is nearly 30 years old. Suburban business parks are as outdated and obsolete as fax machines…

The entire region is a buyer’s market, burdened by other big empties. Right down the road from Sears headquarters are two such examples.

Perhaps the easiest answer to filling these properties is to bulldoze them and build housing on the land. In the suburbs in which these suburban headquarters are located (Hoffman Estates, Oak Brook for McDonalds, etc.), there would be demand for housing.

But, bulldozing buildings adds costs as would changing the infrastructure for the site. Plus, as the article notes, housing would not bring in the same kind of revenue or status that a large corporation did. Additionally, more housing might even lead to a bigger tax burden for the rest of the community if there is more demand for schools and other local services.

Thus, suburbs often hope to find corporate partners for such properties. Finding someone to take over the whole property would be ideal. Or, perhaps create a mixed-use community with some residences but also businesses and restaurants. See more on efforts in Hoffman Estates to transform a former AT&T campus into a “metroburb” (also mentioned in the article).

Side note: this does not bode well for large tech campuses amid a possible shift to more employees working from home.

Disproportionate COVID-19 cases among Latinos in the Chicago suburbs

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The disproportionate impact of COVID-19 includes suburban Latinos in the Chicago area who have more cases than their percent of the population.

They are factory, service and restaurant industry workers; meatpackers; cashiers; grocery store clerks. They work in health care as housekeepers, nurses and doctors at hospitals and nursing facilities, increasing their risk of exposure. Close-quarter living in extended family groups also prevents proper social distancing, contributing to the virus spreading within poor families.

Many essential workers like Guerrero must go out “to earn their daily bread to feed their families,” as she said through a Spanish-language interpreter…

State data shows 54% of Latinos tested are confirmed to have the virus ­– the highest percentage among all racial and ethnic groups. The proportions are 14.4% for whites, 31% for blacks and 30% among Asians, as of Sunday…

Experts also say many low-wage earning Latinos delay seeking medical care when symptoms arise, possibly due to fears over immigration status, lack of access to health care and having poor or no health insurance.

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COVID-19 data from DuPage County in early April hinted at this based on which zip codes had higher rates of cases.

I wonder if the findings about more cases among blacks in Chicago and Latinos in the Chicago suburbs are connected to more consistent patterns across places in the United States. The hypothesis would be that those who are more economically disadvantaged in a community or area have higher rates of infection. If true, this would suggest social class is a key factor in COVID-19 or heavily intertwined with race and ethnicity. I have not seen much about social class and COVID-19 exposure, rates, and death. At the same time, there are plenty of stories about people with means leaving New York City as well as statistical evidence that more wealthy residents left their neighborhoods.

Michael Jordan embodied the American value of winning at all costs

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An interview with Todd Boyd, featured in ESPN’s “The Last Dance,” included this answer regarding evaluating Michael Jordan’s competitive fire:

I would say it’s American, that’s what I would say. I wouldn’t characterize it as positive or negative, it’s American. I think what Michael represented was an especially American desire to win at all costs, to dominate.

Sports have the ability to both reflect America and lead to social change. Jordan’s example could serve both. He was wildly successful in American terms on and off the court as a winner and earning oodles of money. He helped usher in a new era of global superstars, taking a third-place American sport (behind football and baseball) to global heights, and a lasting brand built around shoes. He is still successful today as an NBA owner.

It can be easy to chalk up his success to his legendary work ethic and a quest to become better when others who had similar skills or athletic gifts took it easier. But, it would also be helpful to place Jordan in his context. He came along at the right time for multiple reasons: he built on the NBA stars of the 1980s, he was around at the spread of hip-hop (also discussed in the interview), he succeeded during an era of capitalist growth (“the end of history” and the demise of communism), and technology helped spread his play and brand (even down to the crying Jordan meme of recent years).

All of this means that Boyd’s answer is two-fold: Jordan exemplifies America (work hard and you will get ahead!) and what it considers success (become a winner and global icon!). Is this what Americans want to promote for their children or in schools or in politics? That is a much bigger debate.

What will happen to those large, all-encompassing tech headquarters if employees can now work from home?

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Employees in the tech industry may have more ability to work from home in the future:

Now that a large company like Twitter has announced the option to not return to the office, it will likely “drive momentum across the industry,” says Aaron Levie, the CEO and cofounder of Box. “Other companies look to those events as a signal for what they should do in their organization.”…

Not all companies are so eager to extend the work-from-home life. Employees at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino have been told they will start returning to Apple Park in phases, starting in late May. Apple’s security policies, meant to protect the company’s internal work, have reportedly made it difficult for employees to do their jobs while at home, especially if their jobs are related to building hardware….

Of course, Twitter is not abandoning the office altogether. In the wake of the pandemic, Box CEO Levie thinks bigger tech companies are more likely to take what he calls a “hybrid approach,” blending remote teams with in-office ones. “We’re still far from saying, ‘We’ll shut down entire offices,’” Levie says, adding that the realities of childcare would make it difficult for all employees to enjoy working from home permanently. “There’s a lot of power in people coming together, certain types of functions being able to collaborate in person, but there’s equally power in the flexibility and convenience of no commute and being able to work in a more efficient way.”

But other companies may reconsider the expense of office space, or at least downsize it, if enough employees choose to work remotely going forward. In 2017, Automattic—the company that owns WordPress—decided to give up its sprawling 15,000-square-foot office in San Francisco, because its employees never came in. For some smaller startups, this massive work-from-home experiment has made it obvious that they don’t need offices at all.

What does all of this mean for offices and headquarters and big campuses? The big office or work campus, such as those for Facebook, Apple, and Google, offers multiple advantages: the ability for people to meet, gather, and interact formally or informally face-to-face or in the same room; the company can know where everyone is; the ability for the company to control the work environment; and they are status symbols both for the companies and their communities.

But, working from home or away from the office also offers advantages: the employee is more in control of their immediate surroundings; there is limited commuting time; workers can connect via technology when needed and shut that off or limit contact when needing to focus; and expenses related to a big building are reduced.

And, as the article notes, the implications are huge for how organizations operate, what it means to be an employee, and for communities where businesses use land and pump money into the local economy. A more decentralized landscape for companies might reduce the need for cities to compete for headquarters (Amazon example) or even make the competition more cutthroat fighting over scraps. What happens to all that office space and how can communities fill vacant space in an era of budget issues?

For the record, I do not think the big offices will go away. At the least, they provide a physical reminder of the company and social interaction is different in-person than through technology. But, if a significant number of companies allow more employees to work from home, this could transform many physical locations.

Looking for data reporting and presentation standards for COVID-19

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As the world responds to COVID-19, having standardized data could go a long ways:

All in all, information made available by state health departments has been more timely and complete than information coming from the CDC, especially from a testing perspective, for which the CDC only offers a national aggregate not counting private labs. However, there is no overall standard when it comes to the information that has to be made public at the state level, which has led to a large variation in data quality across the country…

The COVID Tracking Project has assembled what the “ideal” Covid-19 dataset should look like. It includes the number of total tests conducted (including commercial tests), the number of people hospitalized (in cumulative and daily increments), the number of people in the ICU, and the race and ethnicity information of every case and death. Few states check all the boxes, but the situation is improving…

Some kind of standard as how to present the data to the public would be helpful. Health departments do not all have the resources to put together custom elaborate data visualizations of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most health departments have adopted geographic information system mapping programs from companies like Tableau and Esri — similar to the John Hopkins University dashboard — but there is no standard and no guidance explaining what should be put in place.

Organizing actions in a variety of sectors – from healthcare to the economy to social interaction to political interventions – relies heavily on statistics about the problem at hand. Without good data, actors are reacting to anecdotal evidence or acting without any basis at all; this is not what you want when time is of the essence. Of course, you can also have good data and then actors can choose to ignore it or draw the wrong conclusions. At the same time, we tend to argue “knowledge is power” and having good information could lead to better decisions.

Hopefully this means that all of the various actors will be better prepared next time with a process in place that will help everyone be on the same page and have the same capabilities sooner.

 

Chicago’s rail and intermodal facilities, pollution, and COVID-19

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One of Chicago’s advantages is its transportation sector, particularly the railroad and truck traffic that passes in and through the region. But, the railyards and intermodal facilities where rail and truck traffic converge can cause a lot of pollution, even during COVID-19:

But for reasons that have yet to be fully explained, people in Chicago and its suburbs aren’t breathing dramatically cleaner air during the pandemic…

Likely culprits include buildings, factories and diesel engines that burn coal, oil or natural gas. Diesel emissions in particular remain a chronic problem in Chicago, a racially segregated freight hub where rail yards, warehouses and intermodal facilities are concentrated in low-income, predominantly African American and Latino neighborhoods.

“We already have roughly double the amount of heavy-duty traffic than other major cities in the country,” said Zac Adelman, executive director of the Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium, a group of state officials from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota and Wisconsin…

During the past decade, scientists at the U.S. EPA have discovered daily spikes of soot pollution near intermodal facilities in Chicago and other cities that far exceed average urban concentrations.

The article primarily focuses on Chicago where intermodal and railroad facilities tend to be located near poorer residents. Leaders have sought to move traffic away from the center of Chicago and more to the edges of the region, but this means this is also a problem for the entire region. With numerous facilities far from Chicago, such as in Will County or as far as New Rochelle near Rockford, the air quality for millions is affected. It would also be worth looking at where the suburban and exurban facilities are located; what residents are most affected? How far away are these facilities from wealthier communities?

The article also suggests new regulations mandating cleaner locomotives and trucks would help. How this would play within a region that relies on the transportation industry – Chicago was not only the convergence center for Midwest commodities, it also developed the capacity to move those goods throughout the United States and world – would be interesting to watch. Suburbanites would not like the pollution if they knew about it or were concerned about it in their own neighborhoods or elsewhere nor do they like the inconveniences of a lot of rail and truck traffic. Yet, they like cheaper goods and jobs, perhaps even more so if the immediate problems of pollution are borne by other residents of the region.

The budget gap facing Chicago area suburbs due to COVID-19

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An online forum with House leaders provided details on how suburban budgets in the Chicago area are affected by COVID-19:

Not only are sales taxes plunging but costs of preventing the respiratory disease are mounting, suburban leaders explained to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer at an online forum hosted by U.S. Rep. Sean Casten Monday.

Glen Ellyn expects a 20% to 25% reduction in revenue over the next three to six months in the general fund, half of which goes to the police department, Village President Diane McGinley said…

Algonquin Village President John Schmitt said not only is the village shelling out for items like face masks but so far there’s been a 26% reduction in sales taxes revenues…

He noted Hanover Park is facing about $242,000 in COVID-19 expenses and a drop of almost $5.6 million in taxes.

If a retailer or business cannot open or sell at the same level as prior to the pandemic, this affects all sorts of outcomes. As noted above, communities have limited numbers of ways to fill this budget gap. They can look to governments above them – states, the federal government – but that puts their fate in the hands of others and that money may not come quickly or in sufficient amounts. In the short-term, this likely means putting off projects. Longer-term, it could mean some hard decisions about services and local amenities that suburbanites enjoy or think are essential.

The tax revenues might just be the tip of the iceberg; if retailers have to close (already an issue from urban shopping districts to shopping malls), this puts pressure on landlords as well as on communities to fill vacant space (already an issue in suburban communities whether filling big box locations or office parks) both to generate revenue and avoid the appearance of economic loss or blight. Local jobs are affected.

It will be interesting to see if these budget issues widen the gap between suburbs with a lot and those with less. There is already a bifurcated suburban landscape: some communities really struggling and some with a lot of resources, amenities, and status (and many somewhere in between). Those who have more can likely weather this storm better than the suburbs already struggling.

Data from Washington, D.C. does not suggest people are fleeing for the suburbs

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A new analysis from Brookings Institution suggests real estate sales are down in both Washington, D.C. and its suburbs during COVID-19:

In the Washington, D.C. metro area, there’s no sign so far that residents in the urban core are more anxious to sell their condos and rowhouses than suburbanites are to ditch their McMansions. Home sales for the entire metro area dropped in March 2020, very similar to the pattern in the District. (Washington, D.C. accounts for less than 15% of the metro area’s population and home sales.)

Breaking out the year-over-year change in home sales for each local jurisdiction in the metro area shows similar patterns in the urban core (darkest gray), inner suburbs (medium gray), and exurban jurisdictions (light gray).

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Other items of note:

  1. Prices have not dropped (similar to elsewhere).
  2. As I noted a few posts ago:

In the U.S., large cities have been hit earliest—and hardest—by the coronavirus pandemic, spawning a cottage industry of speculation over whether city-dwellers will flee to low-density suburbs.

Without seeing the data from a lot of major metropolitan areas in the United States, it is hard at this point to conclude much of anything. Perhaps New York City is an outlier where people want to go to the suburbs to escape all of its density. Are transportation patterns in Washington D.C. where a majority of residents drive daily more like Los Angeles than New York City?

Analysis from Moody Analytics suggested Washington D.C. is one of the metro areas more likely to rebound from COVID-19. Would such a recovery help the city and region move toward being the true second city in the United States?

Maybe Washington D.C. is another outlier in all of the possible data. That leads to another question that often comes up when talking about urban theory: what is the modal American city, particularly in the time of COVID-19?