💭 Predictions and Themes on UT's Mind for 2021
A look at some of the good EOY city and tech takes
Good morning! 🙌
Welcome back to Urban Tech, the best place for people thinking about innovation and its impact on cities.
Happy Urban Tech Thursday — and for those celebrating Christmas, Merry Christmas. 🎄 Hope all of you are staying safe.
It’s been a happy few days for Urban Tech. Yesterday, we broke our 2020 goal of 500 unique subscribers. 🎉
Here’s a feel for who your company is reading UT each week:
Yeah, I’m not lying when I say you are in great company! 💯
While exciting, let’s focus on today and the insights we have for you.
Initially, I would have published some thoughts on how innovation is changing urban grocery markets and food delivery, but some upcoming content getting locked in had me reconsider. Instead, that piece will run next Thursday.
The content locked in: Thursday, January 7th, we will publish a podcast conversation focused on the wild world of ghost kitchens. I’m speaking with Russ Rosenband, principal of The Lot Next Door.
Russ is an advisor and investor helping growing venture-backed companies at the intersection of real estate, technology, and hospitality.
Here’s an idea of what he focuses on daily:
He works directly with founders to help raise capital and define real estate growth / go-to-market strategies. Russ' advisory portfolio consists of companies like Bbot (Restaurant Tech), Daily Goods (Grab-and-Go Retail), and Zuul Kitchens (Ghost Kitchen Operator).
He's also an early investor in City Dumpling, a virtual restaurant & marketplace that distributes the best dumplings in New York City to the masses. City Dumpling was born mid-pandemic out of a desire to help local restaurants, and has grown to 5 locations in Manhattan with plans to expand into Brooklyn & Queens by Q1 2021.
Russ is someone I’ve been in touch with for a while. He’s going to share his many insights on ghost kitchens and restaurant tech — areas I know the UT community is extremely interested in based on your feedback.
Given what Russ and I will be chatting about, it made sense to hold the piece on grocery and food delivery tech I planned for today for next week to start setting up the conversation with some trends you should know going in. 🛒
But enough future content. Let’s live in the present content world and take a look at some of the best thoughts I’ve seen recently that have me excited for Urban Tech for 2021.
2021 Urban Tech Prediction and Insights
This time of year is a big-time for media to reflect on the past year and predicting the next year's big trends. I experienced this firsthand working in comms, hustling to get executives and leaders into pieces focused on these topics.
For today's edition, I wanted to share a few recent urban tech adjacent projections or recaps on significant trends that had me thinking about how UT will explore them more in 2021.
Here are the two goals for today’s edition:
You’ll great insights from some of the most brilliant people thinking about some of the biggest issues facing tech and cities
You’ll get a feel and sense for the road ahead for Urban Tech and the kinds of questions we will be asking
Note: Some of the below examples are from actual prediction pieces, and some are insights on trends that will be important for the next year, and likely the entire 2020s.
📦 Why Miami and Austin shouldn’t be the only apples of tech’s eye
Alex Kantrowitz, Big Technology
There’s a narrative that the tech industry’s future lies in Texas and Florida. That tech workers and executives — sick of California’s oppressive policies and sky-high real estate costs — are moving en masse to Miami and Austin this year. That these cities are building dominant talent foundations that will persist for years due to the pandemic. That narrative is wrong.
The story crumbles when placed next to new LinkedIn data showing where tech workers are actually moving in 2020. The key beneficiaries of this year’s tech migration are less buzzy cities like Madison, Wisconsin; Richmond, Virginia; and Sacramento, California. These places don’t get much play in the news, but they’re attracting tech talent at significantly higher rates than they were last year. Austin, conversely, is gaining tech workers more slowly.
Full Piece: Where Tech Workers Are Moving: New LinkedIn Data vs. the Narrative
This month I’ve been putting a lot of thought into how to cover the rise of tech in Phoenix, Miami, and Austin. This piece, and the study it focuses on, gave me an incredible amount of context to consider for when UT does deep dive it.
Madison has a very strong case now on the UT potential to cover list! Not something I thought I would have ever said to be honest.
🚝 Mayor Pete as Secretary of Transportation
Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring
Pete’s transportation record as mayor is really good. He was a complete streets guy, he improved the commuter rail connection to Chicago, he legalized ADUs, expanded missing middle housing, and reduced parking minimums.
HUD has “housing” in the title but to the extent that there is a federal agency that could push for better housing policy, it’s DOT which runs various competitive grant programs and could try to make project approvals driven by complementary land use ideas.
There is a lot of interest in mass transit in the media (including from me) but the job is not Secretary of Mass Transit and most of America is a transit desert.
Full piece: 17 theses on Pete Buttigieg and the Department of Transportation
I enjoyed the thoughts Matt offered on the news Buttigieg would be Biden’s pick for DOT Secretary.
It remains to be seen if Buttigieg was the right choice, but he is undoubtedly an interesting pick.
He has an ambitious track record with clear aims to use the post to build his credentials further. Note: this isn’t a bad thing on its face. It’s a reality of politics and the incentives people in these positions keep top of mind.
It’s pretty incredible a short two years ago, Mayor Pete was *just* the mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city and hadn’t even launched an exploratory committee yet for his 2020 Presidential run.
🚲 The Hopeful Rise of the 15-minute City Model
Feargus O'Sullivan and Laura Bliss, CityLab
Taken together, the new trees and cycleways, community facilities and social housing, homes and workplaces all reflect a potentially transformative vision for urban planners: the 15-minute city. “The 15-minute city represents the possibility of a decentralized city,” says Carlos Moreno, a scientific director and professor specializing in complex systems and innovation at University of Paris 1. “At its heart is the concept of mixing urban social functions to create a vibrant vicinity”—replicated, like fractals, across an entire urban expanse…
…With climate change, Covid-19, and political upheaval all challenging the ideals of globalism, the hope is to refashion cities as places primarily for people to walk, bike, and linger in, rather than commute to. The 15-minute city calls for a return to a more local and somewhat slower way of life, where commuting time is instead invested in richer relationships with what’s nearby. “These crises show us the possibility for rediscovering proximity,” Moreno says. “Because we now have the possibility to stay closer to home, people have rediscovered useful time—another pace for living.”
Full piece: The 15-Minute City—No Cars Required—Is Urban Planning’s New Utopia
This was in a Monday edition for UT, but I loved this piece so much and am planning to revisit the concept in 2021 to see how it’s going.
If you the idea exciting and want to learn more on the themes, check out my conversation with post-car real estate developer Culdesac from earlier this year.
🛒 The wild year for grocery spending in 2020
Dan Frommer, The New Consumer
Full piece: Unbundling the grocery cart
Okay, this one is a bit different, but these charts together paint a picture of why UT is excited to dive into these topics more in the weeks ahead.
Dan is one of the best at thinking about how the internet is changing commerce, and he is well-connected with the leaders driving innovation, so I keep any of the trends he’s watching at the top of my mind.
Urban Tech Take: While some spending will shift back to physical retail for groceries, this trend feels like one of those “once the genie is out of the bottle” things that won’t be returning to the pre-Covid state. Similar to the next theme.
🖇 Why the future of work is not all home, or all office but hybrid
Packy McCormick, Not Boring
Missing from the debate is the fact that it’s not really up to the companies to choose. Employees will ultimately make the decision. The best employees have more options now than ever before, and they’re not going to work for companies that make them shave, get dressed, hop into a car or a crowded subway, and sit at a desk in an office five days a week with their headphones on trying to avoid distractions and get work done.
Full Piece: We're Never Going Back
Urban Tech friend Packy McCormick wrote a fantastic deep dive exploring the remote work trend a few weeks ago. It’s a measured, thoughtful analysis highlighting many of the trends UT will be paying attention to next year.
The main takeaway: The power is more in employees’ hands than ever. Even the most prominent companies realize that they will need to do everything possible to build attractive work policies to get the best talent. The competition for tech talent is too high.
😞 Local Leaders and Citizens Continue To Pay Price for Federal Inaction
Jenny Schuetz, Brookings
America’s renters are facing a bleak winter. As of early November, 9 million of them were behind on their rent. Remaining COVID-19 unemployment insurance programs expire on December 26, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationwide eviction moratorium will end on December 31. And the prospects for additional federal support are uncertain.
While members of Congress are insulated from seeing the human costs of their actions—or lack of action—local governments do not have that luxury. Families unable to pay their rent will rely on services from their local government and nonprofits: lines wrapping around the block for free groceries, requests for help from neighborhood mutual aid societies, and potentially an increase in people living in their cars, vacant buildings, and public spaces.
One of the best at thinking about affordable housing is Dr.Jenny Schuetz at Brookings. I’m terrified honestly of the days ahead for renters.
Still, I loved the solutions for smarter policies she offers for local government to step up—something they have continually had to do during the pandemic in the face of gross federal inaction.
Urban Tech Take: The story that will remain in our minds for decades to come after COVID, is defined by themes of federal inaction, ineptitude, and power politics that led to the crisis being exacerbated for cities and metros.
🏡 Home Sales Surge Will Continue in 2021
Daryl Fairweather, Chief Economist of Redfin
Although the U.S. may be able to vaccinate most of its citizens by the end of 2021, many countries will struggle to distribute vaccines. Thus, the global economic recovery could take much longer, which would make U.S. mortgage-backed securities attractive to international investors, keeping mortgage rates low. Even as the pandemic hopefully nears its end, Americans will continue to buy homes that fit their new lifestyle. As a result, 2021 will see more home sales than any year since 2006. Annual sales growth will increase from 5% in 2020 to over 10% in 2021.
Rising prices for existing homes will increasingly drive more buyers to consider a new one. And because home buyers are now more eager to buy in suburban and rural areas where land is cheaper than in the cities, there will be more areas where homes can be built profitably. By the end of the year, the homeownership rate will rise above 69% for the first time since 2005.
Full Piece: Experts Predict What The Housing Market Will Be Like In 2021
This prediction from one of Redfin's top economists is directionally right. I'll be interested in seeing where this mark ends and if that 69% metric is hit in 12 months.
Urban Tech Take: While the rental market's story has been incredibly bleak during COVID, home buying has been on a tear, and there's no reason why it will slow down given interest rates and access to financing for groups who are in the home-buying demographic.
🚑 Some healthcare thoughts
Chrissy Farr, OMERS Ventures
Public health departments will be awash with cash: In the aftermath of major health crises, we tend to see public health departments get an influx of funds. Look back to the bioterrorism scare in the early 2000s. Unfortunately, this funding seems to come and go. But we suspect that there will be major investment for years to come, as we won’t want to be blindsided by the next pandemic.
Health care workers will experience record burnout - and some will retire early: Thanks to Covid-19, doctors, nurses and other health care workers nearing the end of their careers are starting to retire in big numbers. We expect that a lot more health care workers will hang up their scrubs in 2021. After more than a year battling a novel virus without sufficient support, we suspect that the medical profession at large will report record levels of burnout in 2021 (note: this was a problem pre-Covid).
Full piece: Our health-tech predictions for 2021
This good things prediction and this terrible things prediction from health tech guru, Chrissy Farr are two significant themes UT will be examining in 2020.
We also plan to explore how real estate and urban space in healthcare adapt to the new world we live in.
Based on the early conversations I’m having with folks who know this commercial real estate segment, healthcare real estate is moving towards flexible, optimized and intentional spaces.
Essentially, Healthcare real estate is embracing trends that have led to the rise in popularity of flexible space options like coworking and coliving.
💥 What Tech Company Will Blow Up
Eric Newcomer, Newcomer
What is the first company to truly implode in this cycle’s blow up? Some speculative hard-tech company? An ecommerce brand that’s seen its luster fade? Or do companies just gently fade into non-being?
Full piece: 10 Questions for 2021
When I try to answer the question, the likelihood the answer is a real estate tech, hospitality tech, or transportation tech company keeps coming back to me.
I’m not going to make predictions on a specific company because:
Kind of a dick move to pull that on Christmas Eve, and I don’t want to bring that energy to UT
There are too many unknowns on where the economy will be at in 2021
That said, with the difficulties of operating the businesses at scale, I think some flexible space companies (residential and commercial) and some transportation companies are going to be in major trouble in 2021.
🏙 Biden’s Climate Team and How They Can Support Cities
Alissa Walker, Curbed
At a press conference, Biden’s climate team outlined a future which entails nothing less than a fundamental transformation of virtually every aspect of daily life in U.S. cities. Which is really good news. Because so far, U.S. city leaders have proven that they can’t really do it on their own.
Over the past few years, as cities have become the frontlines of increasingly devastating climate disasters, U.S. mayors have tried to make the case that their executive power allows them to act faster, plan smarter, and implement climate policies more effectively than other governing bodies. In the wake of the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2017, a group of mayors formed the Climate Mayors, a network that pledged to uphold the agreement’s terms with or without federal support. The bipartisan coalition has since grown to over 400 mayors; early adopters included Transportation secretary appointee Pete Buttigieg when he was mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
Full piece: Biden’s Climate Team Is a Bigger Deal for Cities Than Any Cabinet Appointment
I like this thought from one of the best at thinking about cities, Alissa Walker. The reason I like it so much because it gets to a broader theme for the Biden administration UT will be watching closely:
After four years of an administration that used tensions and tactics against city mayors to build political support with his political base, we will have a President in the White House who will be aligned to work with city leaders to solve urban problems.
If you liked this thought, check out the first Urban Tech guest post by Micah Kotch, Managing Director of urban tech accelerator URBAN-X.
In his piece from a few weeks ago, Micah explained actionable steps the Biden Administration can take to combat climate change.
It was awesome, and Micah is one of my favorite sources for insights on innovation in climate change and environmental tech. 🌳
That’s it for the thoughts and insights in today’s issue!
Again, thank you for reading and letting me get to share what I love — innovation and cities — with you a few times a week.
With 100% earnest: Building Urban Tech is the coolest thing I’ve ever done, and it brings me more joy than anything to get to build it with all of you. You are all rockstars. 🎸
Talk to you Monday,
✌️JT
Really great insight JT! Excited to read more of your posts!