The new business school at Columbia University, located at the western edge of 130th Street, is a $600 million monument to the vibrancy of urban life. Its buildings are named after billionaire business tycoons in the entertainment and private equity industries, David Geffen and Henry R. Kravis, respectively.
A real estate professor with a quiet voice who has become known as a prophet of urban doom may be found at work on the seventh story of Kravis Hall, in an office that overlooks the Hudson River.
Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, who is 46 years old, has hair that is wavy and brownish-blonde, and he speaks with a Belgian accent that has been mellowed by his time spent in New York for the past 20 years. In the fall of 2016, he published two papers,
one of which was co-written with colleagues from New York University and Columbia. Together, they coined the term “urban doom loop” to describe the unsettling sensation that one might get when passing through a section of Midtown Manhattan that is only fifty percent occupied.
In his office on a dreary day in January, Dr. Van Nieuwerburgh gave the following explanation of the dread loop: Because to the rise of remote work, the value of New York’s office space has decreased, which will result in a reduction in the city’s revenue from taxes levied on real estate.
When wealthy people leave a city because their jobs no longer require them to be there, they take their tax dollars and the money they spend in retail establishments with them. When the dry cleaner and the steakhouse both close, it leaves the storefronts vacant.
The city reduces the number of hours that the library is open and cuts back on housing subsidies. Foot traffic in neighbourhoods is decreasing, with the exception of an increase in the number of individuals living on the streets.
Both crime and filth are on the rise. As a result, more individuals are leaving the city because they believe it to be unsafe, which has left more empty storefronts and office buildings. More filth, more criminal activity, and further reductions in service.
The Prophet Of Urban Doom Says New York Still Has A Chance
The new business school at Columbia University, located at the western edge of 130th Street, is a $600 million monument to the vibrancy of urban life. Its buildings are named after billionaire business tycoons in the entertainment and private equity industries, David Geffen and Henry R. Kravis, respectively.
A real estate professor with a quiet voice who has become known as a prophet of urban doom may be found at work on the seventh story of Kravis Hall, in an office that overlooks the Hudson River.
Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, who is 46 years old, has hair that is wavy and brownish-blonde, and he speaks with a Belgian accent that has been mellowed by his time spent in New York for the past 20 years. In the fall of 2016,
he published two papers, one of which was co-written with colleagues from New York University and Columbia.
Together, they coined the term “urban doom loop” to describe the unsettling sensation that one might get when passing through a section of Midtown Manhattan that is only fifty percent occupied.
In his office on a dreary day in January, Dr. Van Nieuwerburgh gave the following explanation of the dread loop: Because to the rise of remote work, the value of New York’s office space has decreased, which will result in a reduction in the city’s revenue from taxes levied on real estate.
When wealthy people leave a city because their jobs no longer require them to be there, they take their tax dollars and the money they spend in retail establishments with them. When the dry cleaner and the steakhouse both close, it leaves the storefronts vacant.
The city reduces the number of hours that the library is open and cuts back on housing subsidies. Foot traffic in neighbourhoods is decreasing, with the exception of an increase in the number of individuals living on the streets.
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Both crime and filth are on the rise. As a result, more individuals are leaving the city because they believe it to be unsafe, which has left more empty storefronts and office buildings. More filth, more criminal activity, and further reductions in service.
And this goes on. Detroit in 2013: continuing its slide into decline.
The studies that Dr. Van Nieuwerburgh and his colleagues wrote on the subject of commercial real estate values were, for the most part, regarded as being in the realm of the obscure. However, they did make a passing reference to this particular scenario as a potential one.
He stated that it has been ongoing for the past two or three months, wave after wave. “After writing papers over the past 20 years and not having it happen, you do not anticipate that happening.”
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Kravis Hall, which only opened its doors this past winter and is located ten blocks north of the main campus of the university, seems like an unusual choice for the pulpit of the end of the world.
The business school, which was designed by the architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro and dubbed the “most expensive ever built,” boasts construction costs that are more than twice as high as those of recently constructed business schools at Yale University, Northwestern University, and Carnegie Mellon University.
It has the feel of an academic Hudson Yards, a shining capitalist environment slapped down on a site of car repair shops, warehouses, and modest apartment buildings. The 17-acre satellite campus around it is part of Columbia’s development in West Harlem.
The campus, which was constructed despite objections from several neighbourhood groups in Harlem, reeks of urban expansion.
He made the statement that “what happens to New York City from here on out relies on the actions we take and the policy decisions that are made.” “It’s not a foregone conclusion. There’s a spectrum of possible outcomes when it comes to how awful something can get.
In my mind, there is a scenario in which it is not as horrible as anticipated, provided that all of the appropriate policy decisions are made. There are a lot of other possible outcomes in which we do not.”
According to what he said, his arrival to New York offers some insight into the current situation as well as how the city may moderate it. In 2003, when he had just finished earning his doctorate at Stanford, he relocated to New York City.
At the time, Lower Manhattan was still in the process of healing from the shock and exodus that followed the events of September 11.
Many people at the time predicted that a doom loop would occur, in which inhabitants and businesses would flee the city out of fear of terrorism, particularly downtown, so producing the kind of gap that we see in Midtown today.
However, after that, the government began to support the development of new homes in the downtown area as well as the conversion of commercial buildings into residential units. Lower Manhattan did not continue its downward trend but rather thrived.
According to him, taking similar actions and supplementing them with a significant amount of funding from the state and the federal government might significantly mitigate the negative effects of working remotely.
