'Urban Doom Loop' Hits Midwest

'Urban Doom Loop' Hits Midwest

TYLER DURDEN

The ongoing economic impacts of 'work from home' policies implemented during the pandemic aren't just affecting major coastal cities like San Francisco and New York.

Last year, NYU economist Arpit Gupta used the phrase "urban doom loop" to describe a decline of foot traffic in central business districts, which "adversely affects the urban core in a variety of ways," including lowering municipal revenues, and making it more challenging to provide public goods and services without increasing taxes.

Now, as Insider's Eliza Relman writes, the 'Urban Doom Loop' has hit the heartland, as Midwestern states are facing a crisis of their own; struggling to attract workers, residents, and visitors to their downtowns - a problem which predates the Covid-19 pandemic.

According to economists and urban planners, Midwestern cities need to make major changes in order to boost quality of life in their downtowns, instead of just being a place where people are forced to go to work.

"What I really think it comes down to in these places is that there's nothing special about any of the downtowns in any of these cities that would be attractive to new residents," said Ball State University economist, Michael Hicks. "The cities just don't have the fundamental amenities that would attract people."

A good way to gauge just how much trouble Midwestern cities are in is to take a look at how many people their downtowns are actually attracting. Standing in the middle of the city square and counting people can be a bit tough though, so researchers at the University of Torontohave been analyzing anonymized cellphone data for the past few years to track the number of people physically present in central business districts each day. The granular, individual-level data provides a fuller picture of downtown vitality — both before and after the pandemic — than other measures such as office vacancy rates and mass-transit ridership. The conclusion the study draws for the heartland is bleak. Five of the bottom 10 cities in the tracker's most recent data, which measured the period from December 2022 to March 2023, were in the Midwest: St. Louis, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Cleveland, and Kansas City, Missouri. Nine of the 13 Midwestern cities tracked in the study were in the bottom half of the rankings. -Insider

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