Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal.

Joining me on the show today is

Mene Ucaburuwa. He's an editorial board member at the Wall Street Journal, a former

associate editor of City Journal. He writes about politics, economics, education, and lots more.

He's been on the show before, and we've published a number of his pieces in City Journal.

His work has also been featured in National Review, New Republic, New Criterion, and

other prominent publications.

Today, we're going to discuss his recent writing for the Wall Street Journal on city's

efforts to convert unused office space into apartments, residential apartments.

So, Mene, always great to talk with you. Thanks for coming on.

That's great to be back, Brian.

So, yeah, this is, you know, a looming problem post-pandemic for cities.

Urban business districts, really nationwide, have yet to regain pre-pandemic activity.

I saw one study that was looking at foot traffic and tracking cell phone use.

And I think the best cities we're doing were sort of two-thirds return to pre-pandemic highs.

You know, New York and Chicago's office buildings are estimated to be around 20 percent empty.

And San Francisco is in a bigger crisis.

Their vacancy rate, I think, is over 30 percent.

And that was noticeable when I was out in San Francisco

recently. So as Hugh detailed in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, many cities are looking

to adjust to this new reality to transform all of this empty office space into residential

apartments.

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