The Works in Progress Newsletter
Notes on Progress are pieces that are a bit too short to run on Works in Progress. In this piece, Ben Southwood and Phil Levin come up with ways to get more of the bits we love most about cities.
A lot of what we find interesting about cities is the retail within them. We lean on retail – shops, cafes, restaurants and so on – to make cities what they are. Urban economist Ed Glaeser called this the rise of the consumer city, showing how consumption agglomeration was becoming increasingly important, as well as production agglomeration, in driving up urban rents.
When people say Hayes Valley in San Francisco or Williamsburg in Brooklyn are interesting neighborhoods, what they often mean is that they have interesting retail. Hayes St is Hayes St because of stores and restaurants - rather than something inherent about the streetscape. Williamsburg is Williamsburg because of its wine bars, taco trucks, and fancy coffee shops.
Yet the retail operating environment is as hard as it’s ever been. eCommerce continues to capture share, remote work reduces foot traffic, and crime eats into already-small margins. Almost half of stores shuttered within 4 years in one San Francisco shopping district.
