Won’t You Be My Neighbour?

The landscape of cities and where people choose to spend their time and money is shifting. As the experience economy rebounds, there is renewed emphasis on transforming established areas into vital, animated, mixed-use hubs. Speaking with Chris Fair, CEO of Resonance Consultancy, we explore the challenges, opportunities and unintended consequences of coming closer together.

photo credit: "jane jacobs" by colaborativa.eu is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In recent years, places like Nashville and Austin, fueled by an exciting, vibrant and affordable lifestyle, have benefited from migration patterns swinging towards emerging cities and away from global centres. With flexibility in employment arrangements on the rise, it follows that the urbanization of smaller centres and edge communities may continue to rise as well.

Chris Fair, CEO of Resonance Consultancy predicts a flatter future, where suburban areas benefit from a renewed influx of people and consumer spending, fuelled by millennials and flexible work opportunities:

What we’re seeing now isn’t a decline of cities, but a new city order that benefits so-called second-tier cities and a reorganization of how people live, work and play within them.

In terms of people’s preferences, it appears that while the pandemic may have caused people to put a greater emphasis on parks, outdoor activities and healthcare than in the past (see Resonance’s Best Cities Report), things like jobs and exciting entertainment and nightlife are still among the top things that people aged 25-34 look for when finding a city to live in.

Resonance observes that for US cities, the number of recommended nightlife experiences for a city on TripAdvisor has one of the highest correlations with the number of jobs created by foreign-owned enterprises – second only to the number of Fortune 500 companies.

The other nine to five

It seems that people still crave places that have an after-hours vibe. Despite inflation rises pushing up prices, Yelp data shows that there is pent up demand. There is now a surge of new business openings in nightlife, travel and hotels. But the nature of those experiences is changing.

The night-time economy of many cities has been dealing with a public relations problem for some time. Noise complaints, crime, intergenerational conflicts – all the things that city planners typically look to eradicate – are by-products of urban concentrations of entertainment zones.

The pandemic certainly took its toll on the leisure & hospitality industry. In New York, businesses closed and half a million people lost their jobs. But, pre-pandemic this was also beginning to be the case. Across the UK, 44% of night clubs shut between 2005 and 2015 and 25% of pubs closed from 2001 to 2016. The Royal Town Planning Institute cited the causes as new development, lack of safeguarding measures in the planning system, business rates and changes of use by landlords.

But of potentially bigger concern is the fact that night-time activities are often perceived negatively by residents.  London’s night-time mayor Amy Lamé says the biggest complaints received are from neighbours complaining about each other, whereas a relatively small amount of crimes (4%) happen on the Night Tube, according to British Transport Police.

“Imagine what our real neighborhoods would be like if each of us offered, as a matter of course, just one kind word to another person.”

Fred Rogers

There is now a shift in emphasis from a pure night-time entertainment culture to the creation of hospitality zones that appeal to different ages and demographics and incorporate other uses. Beyond the young, unattached singles crowd that might be active after 10pm, there are also ‘mingles’, who enjoy socializing in more of a laid-back lounge culture or food venues, as well as families, whose lives are oriented around children. Add to that, empty nesters and seniors, and you are now thinking about complete communities.

Chris’s agency is involved with a number of projects looking to rebrand existing urban areas as multi-use entertainment hubs, including Granville Street in Vancouver and the new Culture and Entertainment District in Calgary.

For instance, Granville Street, once a nightlife hub and seen as purely a stretch of entertainment venues, is now seeking increases in permitted density and encouraging alternate uses, such as residential and office to keep the place alive day and night. In Calgary, the new Culture & Entertainment District is being portrayed as a mixed-use neighbourhood, not just an entertainment district. Chris recounts:

If we learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that mono-purpose oriented developments and districts are less vibrant, less valuable and more vulnerable to external shocks. Mixing more uses together than we have traditionally allowed for in the past will be key to restoring and maintain the vibrancy and resiliency of our main streets and downtowns.

photo credit: "Granville Street" by CaseyYee is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

The value of being good neighbours

City planning is hard at the best of times. Getting everyone on-side is not an easy task. The drive towards multi-use zones that incorporate a range of uses to suit people’s lifestyles and the desire for 15-minute communities introduces the challenge of integrating diverse uses into established areas. Like densifying older, mono-use entertainment areas into buzzing, vibrant residential, office and hotel districts. Even locations that seem ripe for redevelopment can experience some headaches along the way.

As per Jane Jacobs, the adage goes that providing round-the-clock uses and continuous “eyes on the street” is a formula for success. Supporters of densification suggest the effect will be to reinvigorate areas of the city, creating new economic stimulus, affordable accommodation and spinoff benefits for the local community.

But density alone will not solve the problem. Jacobs is clear on this. In fact, in the immediate term, it may highlight current issues which will take time to resolve. For instance, Toronto has passed ‘Agent of Change’ principles in its policies to ensure that builders, buyers and renters of residential units adapt to the existing uses (like soundproofing for loud music performance) of established buildings and uses already in the vicinity.

This is part of an effort to ensure that new developments consider how they can peacefully co-exist alongside existing venues. It is a delicate balancing act between meeting the needs of the new population and the risk of losing smaller, unique, local enterprise and venues. From London to Mexico City to Toronto, urban gentrification has been a constant threat to the local authenticity and neighbourhood character of the city entertainment venues, which local industries like the music sector depend on.

To preserve or not to preserve

Another associated challenge is the choice to preserve (or not) existing heritage assets. The transformation of established communities into new mixed-use quarters creates many questions about what ought to be retained and what parts of history will need to make way for new uses. Some planning authorities may fall victim to facade preservation - attempting to keep some semblence of history as a visual record by preserving fragments of the historic fabric such as the facade, rather than pushing for more wholsale revitalization through a program of adaptive re-use.

Taken too far though, neighbourhood preservation has frequently been adopted by NIMBYs as justification as to why neighbourhoods should never be changed, even if that change would benefit many. This is highlighted when discussing issues such as the affordability crisis. Densification is often touted as a solution to what is essentially an issue of housing supply, but in practical terms, it is much more difficult to implement in established areas.

“In the absence of a pedestrian scale, density can be big trouble”

Jane Jacobs

A version of the same issue arises whether we are seeing gentrification of older areas of the inner city or the urbanization of outer-lying zones. We are talking about convergence – new and old, different generations, demographies, lifestyles and uses. We want livable, walkable, safe, healthy cities. We also want unique urban experiences and authentic culture. We know that density alone cannot solve the problem and is not by default, conducive to creating thriving communities. It requires a more nuanced, attuned understanding of human-scaled activities and the urban form. It is about how we create environments that are inclusive and encourage interaction as well as respecting boundaries. It’s time to get neighbourly.

Chris Fair is the CEO of Resonance Consultancy, providing global expertise in strategy, branding and communications for cities and communities.

Will Craig is a Principal and the global chair of the Lifescape team for architecture and design firm Kasian and founder of Placeonomics.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this piece, please share it and subscribe to my newsletter.