SJ offices largely deserted, but retail foot traffic close to pre-pandemic stats

Silicon Valley office vacancy rates hover around 17%, while pedestrian activity across the whole of SJ has recovered by 99% overall (acc to Placer.ai). What's more, some retail chain types like spas and gyms have seen increased traffic compared to 2019. The Wall Street Journal untangles the strange phenomenon of downtown city center collapse, but action in the 'burbs—observed in metropolitan neighborhoods across the nation post Covid.

While office towers sit empty and nearby businesses struggle to pay their bills, residential neighborhoods in America’s biggest cities are bustling again.

The pandemic and remote work have done little to dent the overall appeal of cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, foot-traffic and rent data show. Instead, the pandemic has shifted the urban center of gravity, moving away from often sterile office districts to neighborhoods with apartments, bars and restaurants.

“We’re now back to what cities really are—they’re not containers for working,” said Richard Florida, a specialist in city planning at the University of Toronto. “They’re places for people to live and connect with others.”

At the height of the pandemic, some analysts predicted that big cities would enter a downward spiral as remote workers sought more space and cheaper places to live. That happened to some degree early on, but it didn’t last. While big metropolitan areas lost population during the first year of the pandemic, partly because of a drop in immigration from abroad, the losses have since slowed or reversed, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of census data.

This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Read the whole thing here.

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