– Your Bright Brothers Team
David Romako / Josh Yeager /  Brandi Walsh

…that 17 percent of businesses in one east coast major metro have stated that “…they’ve had prospective employees turn down job offers that didn’t include options for fully remote work,”? Remote work is just one of the genies that COVID-19 let out of the bottle that will impact downtowns for decades. This crazy insightful piece from Governing.com provides a solid snapshot of where the world sits today during the current omicron downturn, as well as some of the major trends we’re going to deal with as place management practitioners for years to come. In particular, we really glommed onto this tidbit from Brookings Metro policy director Mark Muro, who noted that  “Downtowns may become more focused on entertainment and amenities and less on shopping because of e-commerce competition, Muro suggests. But placemaking is clearly going to be one of the great post-pandemic challenges,”.  What’s your placemaking plan, and how prepared are you to turn on a dime if/when subvariants flare up? Need professional help? We’re a people-first, data-driven consultancy with chops.

Photo credit: Alan Greenblatt, Governing

Trend setters and trend watchers have an impact on our culture, but how much brain space do you give to these sort of ephemeral things?  Most of us want to be acceptably stylish without causing too much of an eye-grabbing stare — while then again, everyone loves to be noticed. ¿Que no?  A bit outside of our standard fare, this piece from Allison P. Davis for New York’s The Cut recently hit our tablets and intrigued us. The article is a more on the superfluous to aesthetic tip, but an interesting read nonetheless. And it pairs nicely (as apparently do platform shoes and low-rise, boot-cut True Religion jeans, but we digress…) with this piece on “geriatric millennials” (Davis’ term, not ours), from Governing that explores how Sun Belt metros are hot spots and “have it all hubs” for the “unlucky generation” that’s now having kids, buying houses and acting in pretty much the same manner that their parents did (minus the religion) — and with added jadedness. Plus there’s an interesting snippet about walkable, mixed-use main streets  that you may want to explore.  Read on! Just don’t forget your Von Dutch trucker hat and smudged eyeliner. It’s coming back, ya know?

We’re back at it with our new section POINT | COUNTERPOINT with two interesting articles highlighting the economic disparity that exists in this country through the lens of development.

• On one hand, you have this entertaining and insightful piece from Strong Towns asking excellent questions about “luxury” mixed-use developments; built for, accessible to and frankly only made for the affluent and aspirational. Interspersed with comedic value, and inspo from TV’s famed South Park (the sarcastically brilliant SoDoSoPa advert had us rolling), the article also attacks one of our most loathed collections of vacuous, four-letter words that are typically used to define these “LIVE. SHOP. DINE.” destinations. And spot on, say we!

• Then conversely, and more sobering, is the fact that Los Angeles County is considering re-purposing some 1.4 million square feet of rooftop space atop 22 county-owned parking structures as affordable housing. Speed of implementation and comparatively low price-point are driving factors in this somewhat off-the-wall (or on-the-roof, as it were…) build-outs. The fact is hardly anyone likes parking on the top level of these structures, so they provide a municipally-owned asset, just begging to be reimagined to address our nation’s growing, and California’s consistent and pernicious issues around affordable housing.

Philadelphia is a city of firsts, so it’s not surprising to see that the City of Brotherly Love may have another new accolade to pin to its scout sash — that being the first “municipal public bank entity”. By design, the financial institution is intended to serve historically underserved communities, including BIPOC businesses that have lacked access to credit. While Philly isn’t the only place in the nation to explore public banks, it’s a good thing we wanted to share.

Remember life before the pandemic? Remember spending untold hours commuting in your car listening to outrageous morning radio or drive-time disc jockeys powered by an artillery of canned sound effects relaying the latest gossip and celebrity sightings?  Well, according to many cities, they’re seeing near-record levels of return to the exhaustive (ahem, see what we did there?) automobile — albeit during different dayparts. Our “new normal” WFH culture now allows plenty of people to grab mid-day Starbucks’ boosts, run errands or even catch a quick afternoon nap. The fact of the matter is we as a nation still spend plenty of time in our cars, and this TOMTOM Traffic Index allows you to stack cities worldwide, side-by-side, to see how any hours are lost to commuting and compare Y-O-Y against 2019 and 2020.  Search data from 404 cities globally, or drill down by continent or country for a disheartening snapshot of the top ten most congested metros. Fascinating stuff for visual learners! Speaking of visual and automobiles, we’d like to sneak in this piece from Reuters Graphics about EVs.  It’s a long and winding road ahead, my friend.