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The Future of Urban America

Empty office buildings. Workforce changes allow for more remote work. American downtowns are struggling. The pandemic-led changes in where and how we work and live have weakened and withered many urban cores. The office vacancy rate in Houston is some 26 percent; in Phoenix it is above 20 percent. This shift means fewer workers, fewer businesses to serve them, less tax revenue, and hollowed-out neighborhoods.

Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh of Columbia University coined the term "urban doom loop" to describe the cycle now taking hold in American downtowns, and he believes the biggest challenges are yet to come. But we are not without hope. Can urban America be saved? The O'Connor Institute welcomes Drs. Van Nieuwerburgh and Tracy Hadden Loh of the Brookings Institution to discuss.

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Featured Panelists

Tracy Hadden Loh | Brookings Institution

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Tracy Hadden Loh is a Fellow with the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Center for Transformative Placemaking at Brookings Metro, where she integrates her interests in commercial real estate, infrastructure, racial justice, and governance. She serves on the boards of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority and Greater Greater Washington. Her most recent writing includes two co-authored chapters in Hyperlocal: Place Governance in a Fragmented World and a series on the future of downtowns, including what to do about public safety and adaptive reuse.

Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh | Columbia University

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Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. He has served as an advisor to the Norwegian Minister of Finance and has been a visiting scholar at the Central Bank of Belgium, the New York and Minneapolis Federal Reserve Banks, the Swedish House of Finance, and the International Center for Housing Risk. He has also contributed to the World Economic Forum project on real estate price dynamics.

Moderator

Liam Julian 

Liam Julian is director of public policy for the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy. He was previously managing editor of Policy Review magazine in Washington, D.C. His writing and commentary on public policy topics has appeared in a variety of publications such as The Washington Post, The Atlantic, City Journal, and National Review and on programs such as NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Mr. Julian also spent time working with the College Board, where he oversaw development of Advanced Placement curricula, including the redesign of the AP U.S. Government and Politics course. From 2006 to 2013, he was a Hoover Institution research fellow at Stanford University.