1. Some quick comments to contextualize this piece on the evolution of urban downtowns or central business districts.
https://twitter.com/Richard_Florida/status/1453359450174238728
2. This is yet another example of COVID-19 as accelerator (not disruptor).
3. The CBD was evolving in this direction before the pandemic.
4. The CBD was spreading. In many cities, additional CBDs were cropping up in other locations. And not just in cities. Edge cities like Tysons Corner outside DC. Poly-centrism has been on the rise, esp in younger SunBelt cities ...
5. And urban CBDs were adding much more amenity and housing as many urbanists and downtown types have pointed out.
6. We have also seen the rise of Central Social Districts & Central Recreational Districts ... in, around or adjacent to CBDs.
7. The big trend here is to decentralization or disaggregation or spreading of work. Co-working is also part of this.
8. One of the big impactr of the industrial revolution was the separation of the home and work into separate spaces. And those spaces were stretched further & further apart on mass production of Fordist capitalism
9. The shift to remote work - one of the biggest trends in the organization of work - accelerated by the pandemic allows for some reunification of the spaces for home & work, albeit *just* for very advantaged workers.
10. This ongoing "reunification" of living and working is a key feature of the evolution of advanced capitalism, at least for the knowledge workers who make up a new kind of labor aristocracy.
11. This shift also frees up key locational spaces, often at the very center of the metropolitan area for HOUSING, which given the housing affordability crisis faced by most advanced nations, is much more needed than locations for office work.
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