Houston Strategies

"I lived in the tri-state area for four years. We had a chance to live in New York City and politely passed. The subpar public schools, the insane competition and cost of non-diverse private schools, the constant noise, the grime, and hassle to do normal things were completely unappealing. Not to mention the (over) price of real estate. I went to an event at a $10M Soho loft apartment. It was beautiful, but the owner couldn’t escape the constant noise from the street below. And for what? Access to a new craft cocktail speakeasy that I would never go to anyway? A Michelin star restaurant that’s booked up months in advance? You get the most efficient value of a city like that by living in a close in suburb. We lived in Montclair, NJ where you could get high quality restaurants, bars, independent theaters, unique shops and boutiques, and even concert venues walking distance from your house. A friend lived in Park Slope and we talked constantly about the respective quality of our lives. Most of the things he talked about he never actually enjoyed. Once big cities got gentrified, they lost their edge anyway. The urban suburban town is the city of the future. All of the shops/bars/restaurants in very close proximity, easy access to the city for the weekend/occasional cultural immersion, quality public schools and an overall easier life. Big cities ask too much and return too little in terms of how people actually live beyond the young, single professional or retiree years."

• NYT: Why the Path to Reopening New York City Will Be So Difficult - The factors that made the city one of the hardest hit on the planet — its density, mass transit and tourism — complicate a return to normalcy.

"Top state and city officials are already contemplating the need for radically different routines, including transit systems with limits on occupancy for trains and buses. That could require staggered shifts for millions of workers. 

“I don’t know that it’s going to be possible to have rush hours,” said Rick Cotton, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates commuter trains to and from Manhattan.

My thoughts: I just assumed they would do the Asian protocol with masks and cleaning, but if they’re truly going to cut down the occupancy of the trains (which, to be safe, they do), I’m not sure NYC really works anymore.  You can talk about staggered shifts all you want, but office workers already do that naturally, with many spreading out arrivals from 7am to 9:30 or even 10am. Yes, you can stagger shift workers, but I just don’t think there is any reasonable set of shifts that will reduce the crush of office workers. They’ll just have to work remotely for the foreseeable future.  And if that’s the case, how many will stay in the city vs. move elsewhere? And then when there is a vaccine, what are the odds they’ll move back? 

Try to imagine this in a couple of months: most of the country is operating back to semi-normal with some distancing, but NYC is still in lockdown.  Will large employers start to seriously explore moving?  Which employees really have to be in NYC? And has that definition of “have to” changed in a video meeting world and electronic trading markets?  And if they do move, do they go to the suburbs of NYC, or elsewhere in the country? 

Just as Texas has been preying on California companies for a while, you could get a feeding frenzy of cities and states across the country trying to lure companies out NYC.  And who wins that game? Florida? North Carolina? Texas?

• This is a pretty crazy stat - correlation or causation?

“The New York urban area (roughly New York City plus Nassau, Suffolk, and Westchester counties in New York plus Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex, Monmouth, and Union counties in New Jersey) provides 45 percent of all transit trips in the United States and, not coincidentally, has seen about 45 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the United States.”

• Americans are starting to drive again, but still staying away from public transit
• NYC transit loaded people up with the virus, then they traveled around the country.
• Antiplanner: What happens after the pandemic? (transit scenarios)
• CityLab: A Post-Pandemic Reality Check for Transit Boosters

“For many years we have a lot of aspirations for transit: We want it to beat traffic, fight climate change, and revitalize communities,” he said. “But the two things it has demonstrably done in last half century is provide mobility for those without — whether that’s due to age, income, or disability — and allow highly agglomerated places function. My educated guess is that we will see the rise of transit as a social service.”