Do people live where they work?

I don’t mean “work from home” (the red herring of the post-COVID economy). I mean the question more generally—and the answer is increasingly “no”. There’s a growing spatial disconnect between where productivity and living happen, at both ends of an increasingly polarized (American) economy. And that’s a problem.

I realized the significance of this trend as Adam Weinstein kicked off BloxHub’s ideation workshop in Kirkland. Speaking as the city’s Director of Planning & Building, Adam was orienting us to the City of Kirkland, a suburban enclave of beautiful homes with waterfront views, a short distance from Seattle’s tech giants. His presentation included a diagram so striking I had to copy it (inelegantly) into my notebook.

The diagram tells a story that may sound familiar: service workers (including the trades, teachers and more) are unable to afford to live where they spend their days, while knowledge workers (many working from home) spend their days working for companies that are based elsewhere.

This results in three distinct types of places—where service workers live, where service workers work and knowledge workers live, and where tech companies operate. The three-way stratification of place is fracturing our cities*. As the seams become more pronounced, there are serious implications for urban vitality, small business viability, and socioeconomic diversity.

Adam and his colleagues in Kirkland (Councilor Penny Sweet and Deputy Director Allison Zike, AICP among them), are asking big questions about how to reverse these trends and increase the social and economic integrity of Kirkland. For them, it’s not abstract—there are specific parcels that can be activated to help strengthen the connective tissue in their city, and they’re taking bold steps to create new models of real estate development.

I had the pleasure of thinking through these issues alongside them, together with Henning Larsen’s Santiago Orbea (who brought ideas to life architecturally), Beta Mobility’s Johan H?g?sen-Hallesby (whose attention to transportation highlighted the potential in a greenway), SHL’s Enlai Hooi (who tied strategic ideas together with enthusiasm), and many other BloxHub delegates.

This was all made possible by thoughtful facilitation by Martine Reinhold Kildeby , Lotte Christina Breengaard , and others.

Thank you for a vibrant workshop!

—Matthew

*A trend propped up by the US tax system, real estate market, and urban planning… an unholy trinity far too vexing for this post.