The “urban doom loop” could be coming to a city near you
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 October 2023
⏱️ 23 minutes
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Summary
The Post’s Rachel Seigel takes us on an economic journey through the “urban doom loop” and explores this threat to midsize cities. Then, Teo Armus shows us a creative way we could try to avoid it.
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According to Columbia economics professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, cities across the country could be heading for an "urban doom loop" that starts with vacant office spaces and spreads through downtowns. Later, Rachel Seigel joins The Post’s Teo Armus in Northern Virginia to experience a place that is creatively using vacant office space to escape the doom loop fate.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rachel Siegel. I'm an economics reporter here at the Post, and I'm with producer Bishop |
| 0:15.2 | Sand. We're standing out in front of an office building in Alexandria, Virginia, about |
| 0:21.4 | a 20-minute drive away from our newsroom in DC. |
| 0:24.8 | Okay, so the building is definitely giving off the vibe of suburban office park. It's flat, |
| 0:32.9 | looks kind of like two stories, dark, dark windows that you can't even see through, and then a layer |
| 0:39.8 | of red brick. You wouldn't really know it from standing on the street right here, but this place |
| 0:48.0 | is really at the heart of something that's got economists and real estate owners, city planners, |
| 0:54.9 | mayors, banks, in a state of dread, maybe even doom. |
| 1:03.2 | Outside of this office space, I see an old sign printed on the window. The United States |
| 1:09.4 | Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC. The government agency responsible for enforcing laws |
| 1:16.9 | against financial market manipulation. This isn't only an old office building. It's an old |
| 1:23.3 | government office building. The US Securities and Exchange Commission. I mean, that does match what, |
| 1:29.5 | you know, like an image of an old government building. |
| 1:35.5 | Office buildings like this are standing vacant, and there's so many cities that are trying to |
| 1:41.2 | figure out what to do about it, what to do with this space. This isn't just a emergency pandemic |
| 1:48.1 | remote work situation. This is something that could bring a major change to cities all over the |
| 1:53.7 | country. Some people are even calling it the urban doom loop. |
| 2:04.0 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. It's Tuesday, October 10th. |
| 2:10.8 | I'm Rachel Siegel. I'm your guest host. Today, we explore the urban doom loop and whether there |
| 2:18.0 | could be a way out. We just saw an empty office building firsthand. We did. |
| 2:29.4 | And, you know, I see them all over the city. So do I. |
| 2:32.4 | So what's going on with them? You know, in this reporting, I called a bunch of people to |
... |
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