Chapter 10
Appendix: Methodology
Shaping Tomorrow’s Cities: Fostering Resilient and Vibrant Urban Environments
5 Minute Read
Archetypes
U.S. metropolitan areas vary greatly in terms of demographics, industry mix, density, land use policies, amenities, transportation and commute patterns. The interaction between the primary city in each metro area and its adjacent cities and suburbs also varies greatly across markets. All these factors contributed to the performance of U.S. cities before, during and after the COVID pandemic, underscoring the need for unique approaches for different types of cities to thrive in the future.
To analyze and propose strategies for the markets included in this report, we grouped them in the following categories:
- Super Cities: Los Angeles and New York. The sheer size, global preeminence and layout of these powerhouse markets make them unique. They attract large numbers of international tourists and immigrants and are globally recognized as capitals of certain industries, including entertainment for Los Angeles and finance for New York. The density and urban vibrancy of New York more closely resembles that of many international super cities, whereas Greater Los Angeles’s largely suburban composition has evolved to include many thriving urban neighborhoods.
- Mixed Majors: Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The historic primary cities of these markets generally have large, traditional central business districts and are well connected by public transit networks. All have renowned educational and research institutions, providing highly skilled workforces. Many also have secondary edge cities, some of which include live-work-play neighborhoods, that grew in recent years. Population growth has been relatively slow in these established markets in recent decades compared with the Sprawling Darlings and Developing Destinations; immigration has helped to offset out-migration to lower-cost Sun Belt markets.
- Sprawling Darlings: Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Houston and Phoenix. These large markets are among the fastest-growing in the U.S. over the past few decades, attracting residents and businesses with their relatively low costs of living and doing business. These markets have ample room to expand (although some are converging with adjacent markets), resulting in thriving suburbs and smaller adjacent cities that together create a dynamic live-work-play environment.
- Developing Destinations: Austin, Charlotte, Miami, Nashville, Orlando and Tampa. These are smaller southern markets with red-hot economic, population and real estate market growth during the past decade, especially since the pandemic. Each has unique drivers but, like the Sprawling Darlings, they all have benefited from relatively low living and business costs and a temperate climate, attracting young people and retirees, as well as company expansions and relocations.
Note: Employment and GDP data are for metro areas; population and commute data are for market areas as defined by commute zones.
Sources: CBRE, Oxford Economics, IPUMS NHGIS, University of Minnesota, Data for Good at Meta, US Census LEHD LODES, Texas A&M Transportation Institute, 2024.
Geographies
Each city’s size and importance to its greater metropolitan area varies greatly. For example, the core city of each Mixed Major is generally the primary economic driver of the market, whereas economic power is more dispersed in most of the Sprawling Darlings. Rather than focusing only on each city’s core area, we also look at the broader market and use more granular data if available to analyze successful and challenged areas within each metropolitan area. We define these areas as follows:
- Market: Following NYU economist Alain Bertaud’s influential view that “cities are primarily labor markets,” we use Commute Zone boundaries from Meta’s Data for Good initiative to define our broadest geographies. Atlanta, for example, covers the full area of where people live and work in and around the city. We use these much broader boundaries because the extent of development and economic activity may differ from traditional municipal boundaries, especially over long periods of time. When available, we aggregate smaller geographical units (e.g., census tracts) into these geographies.
- Metro Area: the compilation of counties and other jurisdictions that comprise a market area, as defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. We use this definition instead of our market definition for certain analyses when granular data is not available (e.g., metro area GDP).
- City: the core city of each market, synonymous with the market names used in this report.
- Urban Area: Within each market, we define areas with at least 7,000 residents per square mile as “urban,” following the work of U.S. Federal Reserve economist Stephan Whitaker. These are mostly at the census tract level.
- District: Within each market, we use U.S. Census Bureau and CBRE data to classify small areas by the attributes of commercial and residential property present there. We utilize the Uber H3 Hexagon library, with each hexagon about as wide as a five-minute walk. This is small enough to capture nuanced differences within submarkets like “Downtown” that traditionally are the smallest segment of real estate analysis. The district types in our framework include:
- Vibrant Residential: Clusters of urban residential density with walkable retail, dining and entertainment.
- Vibrant Mixed-Use: Vibrant Residential with the addition of prime office, setting the standard for dynamic districts.
- Prime Business: Predominantly commercial district with prime/trophy office buildings.
- Non-Prime Business: Commercial district with no prime office space, commonly suburban office parks and aging downtowns.
- Mixed Use: Areas with a mix of office space and housing, commonly at the edges of commercial districts.
- Urban Neighborhood: A contiguous grouping of the Vibrant Residential district type. We use this definition to track the growth of specific neighborhoods.
- Downtown: The term “Downtown” represents the sum of all submarkets associated with the primary Office business activity area of a city. This designation in most cases will have a significant number of high-rise office buildings that represent the majority of the square footage of these submarkets.
- Central Business District (CBD): The largest contiguous grouping of districts containing office space in each market. This definition may differ from that of other CBRE Research reports.
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