City Planning 642-001

Spring 2026

University of Pennsylvania
Thursday, 8:30 am – 11.30 am (First class only Wednesday January 15, 2025)                                    
Graduate School of Education 3700 Walnut Street, Room 120
Paul R. Levy, plevy@centercityphila.org                              

Rethinking and Restructuring U.S. Downtowns: The events of 2020-2021, the pandemic and mandated shutdowns of workplaces, visitor destinations, retail and entertainment zones triggered more than a normal cyclical business downturn. Existing trends toward remote or hybrid work and on-line shopping dramatically accelerated, emptying office buildings and retail premises. Attitudes towards policing were also altered by a series of high-profile incidents. Six years after the shutdown, few American downtowns have restored the number of workers who were present in 2019. Most cities are focused on converting vacant office inventory to other uses. Many are dealing with falling commercial real estate values,

City Planning 642 starts with a focus on how downtowns are responding to challenges lingering from 2020-21: changed work patterns, more quality-of-life challenges, vacant older office buildings and calls for more affordable housing. We will briefly look at the historical origins of American “downtowns” and how in last decades of the 20th century America's cities had rebounded from decades of de-industrialization, disinvestment and suburbanization by diversifying land-use, evolving from 9-5 office districts to 24-hour, mixed-use business, hospitality, entertainment, retail, institutional and residential places with well-managed parks and plazas and some with major sports venues in or adjacent to downtown. The events of 2020-21 represented a major setback.

The course approach is pragmatic, recognizing the significant disengagement by the U.S. federal government from urban programs, we will focus on what can be done by local governments, private developers, and private-sector led organizations like business improvement districts (BIDs).  Some cities are capitalizing on this crisis to restructure and make substantial changes; others are mired in unresolved policy and political differences. We will use Philadelphia's Center City and several other cities as laboratories to explore strategies that work, contrasting it with trends in cities in Europe and Asia, seeking to highlight what may be uniquely North American cultural and metropolitan development patterns and lessons that might be drawn from other global cities.

REQUIRED READING:

  • Enrico Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs, 2012
  • Patrick Sharkey, Uneasy Peace, 2018
  • Other readings noted each week with links for downloading.


SUGGESTED HISTORICAL BACKGROUND READING: FACTORS THAT SHAPED U.S. CITIES:

  • Robert Fogelson, Downtown: Its Rise and Fall 1880-1950
  • Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier
  • Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

 

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING: RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF CITIES IN CHINA:

  • Zhongjie Lin, Constructing Utopias: China's New Town Movement in the 21st Century.
  • Dan Wang, Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future

 

(1) Course introduction and overview: Downtowns: Declining, Rebounding or Being Transformed? (1/15/26)

READING:

  • CCD Report, Downtowns Rebound: The Data Driven Path to Recovery, October 5, 2023 | LINK
  • Work from Home (WFH) Research, May 2025 Survey Results | LINK
  • Nellie Bowles, “They Can’t Leave the Bay Area Fast Enough,” New York Times, January 14, 2021 | LINK
  • Joe Rennison & Julie Creswell, “Office Building Losses Start to Pile Up & More Pain Is Expected”  New York Times, June 6, 2024 | LINK
  • Joe Barrett, The $500 million Fight over who over who pays Chicago's property tax bill, WSJ, December 22, 2025 | LINK
  • Cushman & Wakefield, Reimagining Cities: Disrupting the Urban Doom Loop | LINK pp 1-31
     

First assignment: Due January 29, 2026

Class presentation: January 15, 2026 | LINK 

(2) The city experienced on sidewalks & public places: (1/22/26)

READING:

  • Elijah Anderson, Chapters on the Reading Terminal Market and Rittenhouse Square, The Cosmopolitan Canopy | LINK
  • Sharkey, Chapters 1-3
  • Jan Gehl & Birgitte Svarre, How to Study Public Life | LINK
  • Center City District Retail Report, November 2025 | LINK 
     

(3) De-industrialization, Decline & Post-industrial Revival of U.S. Downtowns; The Great Divergence (1/29/26)

READING:

  • Moretti, Introduction & Chapters 1-4
  • Gene Balk, “Will the last middle-class person leaving Seattle turn out the lights?” Seattle Times, April 14, 2017 | LINK
  • Sifan Liu & Joseph Parilla, “Are Large Global Cities Pulling Away from their surrounding Regions,”  Brookings Institution, July 23, 2018 | LINK
  • Richard Florida & Joel Kotkin, America’s Post-Pandemic Geography, City Journal Spring 2021 | LINK
  • George Packer, How America Fractured into Four Parts, Atlantic, July 2021 | LINK 


First Paper Due

(4) The Revival of U.S. Downtowns after 1990; the Role of BIDs (2/5/26)

READING:

  • Bruce Katz and Florian Schalliol, “The Return of New Localism,” Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University.  November 15, 2024 | LINK
  • Plan & Budget for Center City District 2023-2027 | LINK
  • Paul R Levy, “Rebound or Transformation: What’s next for business Improvement districts after 50 years” Journal of Urban Regeneration and Renewal, February 2025 | LINK
  • Sharkey, Chapters 4-6
  • Cushman & Wakefield, Reimagining Cities: Disrupting the Urban Doom Loop, pp 32-53 | LINK
     

(5) Comparisons, contrasts and lessons from the development of cities in China (2/12/26)

READING:

  • Ross Douthat interview with Dan Wang, author of Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future | LINK
  • Introduction to Zhongjie Lin, Constructing Utopia  | LINK
     

Guest Speaker: Zhongjie Lin, Professor of City & Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania.

(6) Office Recovery: Restructuring the Workplace & Remote Work (2/19/26)  

READING:

  • Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui, The Downtown Office District Was Vulnerable Even Before Covid., New York Times, July 7, 2021 | LINK
  • Patience Haggin & Peter Grant “Dallas Is Booming—Except for Its Downtown”, WSJ, 12.28.25 | LINK
  • Cushman & Wakefield, Reimagining Cities: Disrupting the Urban Doom Loop, pp 32-53 | LINK
  • Andy Cohen, ”How Desire for Experience is Driving the Flight to Quality,” Gensler, November 2022 | LINK 
  • Cushman and Wakefield, Office of the Future Revisited | LINK
  • JLL Roundtable, “RTO/Future of Work” Summer 2023 | LINK
  • Chip Cutter, “Companies Calling Workers Back to Office 5 Days/Week” Wall Street Journal, 1/30/2024 | LINK
  • CBRE report, 2025 Life Sciences Outlook | LINK
     

Guest Speaker: John Grady, Senior Vice President, Chief investment officer, Wexford Science+Technology, 

(7) Downtown Living & Office Conversions: Can Cities Make Room for Affordable Housing? (2/26/26)

READING:

  • Paul R. Levy and Lauren M. Gilchrist, Downtown Rebirth: Documenting the Live-Work Dynamic in 21st Century U.S. Cities, prepared for the International Downtown Association, October 6, 2013 | LINK
  • CCD: Housing Report 2025 | LINK
  • CCD: Who’s Moving to Center City | LINK
  • Gensler, What We've Learned by Assessing More Than 300 Potential Office-to-Residential Conversions | LINK
  • Emily Badger and Larry Buchanan, “So You Want to Turn an Office Building Into a Home?” NY Times March 11, 2023 | LINK
  • AECOM, “Downtown Houston Office Conversion Study” | LINK
  • Jennifer Scripps, CEO Downtown Dallas; “Housing Conversion Plan, presentation September 2025 | LINK

 

(8) Growth & Equity: Causes & Solutions for Income Disparities: Housing or Jobs? (3/5/26)   

READING:

  • Moretti, Chapters 5-7
  • Timothy Egan, “Down and Out in San Francisco on $117,000,” New York Times, July 6, 2018 | LINK
  • Richard Shearer & Alan Berube, “The Surprisingly Short List of US Metro Areas Achieving Inclusive Growth” Brookings Institution, April 27, 2017 | LINK
  • Ben Hitchcock, Camille Preel-Dumas, “Supply Skepticism Revisited: What New Research Shows About the “Impact of Supply on Affordability” NYU Furman Center Blog. Nov. 28, 2024 | LINK
  • John D. Landis, “To Build More Housing, Cities Must Be Smarter in How They Use Land” Planitizen, December 11, 2024 | LINK
  • Jake Blumgart, “Center City affordable housing project to break ground in 2026”, Phila Inquirer, December 20, 2025 | LINK
  • CCD Report, Getting More Philadelphians Back to Work: Business Density and the Role of Black and Minority Owned Businesses, August 2020 | LINK
  • CCD Report, Firing on All Cylinders: Growing Jobs & Small Business by Expanding the Traded Sector, July 2022 | LINK
  • Mayor Mamdani, day one executive orders on housing | LINK


Guest Speaker:  Mohamed (Mo) Rushdy, Managing Partner, The Riverwards Group, www.riverwardsgroup.com

No class 3/12/26  

(9) Rethinking Public Safety (3/19/26)

READING:

  • Patrick Sharkey, Chapters 7-10
  • Ezra Klein interview with James Forman Jr. is a professor of law at Yale Law School and the author “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America” | LINK
  • “Is Police Reform Possible?" Interview with Police Commissioners Michael Harrison and Charles Ramsey, Penn PAIDEA program | LINK
  •  Paul R. Levy, “Rethinking Public Safety Strategies for Cities” The American Downtown Revitalization Review, July 2021 | LINK
  • Responding to Homelessness, Panhandling & Quality of Life Issues, Hanna Love and Tracy Hadden Loh, “Homelessness in US cities and downtowns; The perception, the reality, and how to address both”, Brookings, December 7, 2023 | LINK
  • Patrick Sharkey, Chapters 6-7
     

Guest Speaker: Leo Addimando, Managing Partner & Co-Founder of Alterra Property Group, LLC, alterraproperty.com

Second Paper Due

(10) 250th Anniversary Celebration: the role of destination marketing (3/26/26) 

READING:

Guest Speaker: Angela Val, President & CEO, Visit Philadelphia

(11) BIDs Financing and Managing Park Improvements (4/2/26)

READING:


(12) Philadelphia’s Rail Park (4/9/26)

READING:

  • New York’s Highline | thehighline.org
  • Atlanta’s Beltline | beltline.org/visit
  • “Can Anacostia Build a Bridge Without Displacing Its People?” New York Times, 8.9.22 | LINK
  • Rail Park, Phase 2 | LINK
     

(13) Activating Public Spaces: Street Closures and Park Programming (4/16/26)

Guest Speaker: Prema Gupta, President & CEO Center City District, https://centercityphila.org

(14) In-Class Presentations (4/23/26)

Final Paper Due