To Break the 'Urban Doom Loop,' Build Housing and Transit - Bloomberg

As superstar cities struggle to fill vacant offices and pandemic boomtowns try to contain rising costs, both must double down on density, argues Bruce Schaller. Downtown San Francisco has struggled with a soaring office vacancy rate. Subscriber Benefit Subscribe As pandemic-era migrations and behavioral shifts continue to play out, the precarious condition of America’s downtowns has emerged as an increasingly urgent refrain. Office attendance and transit ridership in many cities remain stalled at severely diminished levels, fueling much talk among urban scholars and pundits of an “urban doom loop” — a cycle of unstoppable collapse whereby tumbling property tax revenue forces cities to slash spending, speeding the flight of residents and businesses and triggering a rise in crime and disorder. As dynamism has shifted from unaffordable coastal “superstar cities” to inland insurgents in the Sun Belt, many have speculated that an entirely new geography of the American economy is taking shap

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• Stephanie Y.