District of Columbia scrambles as pandemic comeback proves elusive

Residents of the nation’s capital have been hearing a drumbeat of difficult news – not just about congressional gridlock but about their own neighborhoods.

Two of the city’s signature sports franchises, the Capitals in hockey and the Wizards in basketball, want to move to Virginia. A major employer, mortgage giant Fannie Mae, announced its own plans to do the same. The White House has been waging an uphill struggle for federal workers to make a post-pandemic return to their offices, many of them in the District of Columbia.

All this as violent crime has increased, Metro ridership remains well below pre-2020 norms, and the city is gaining dubious honors in the realm of office vacancies.

It’s not that the district has become an urban wasteland. People here are still living, lounging, and lobbying. But on any given day or night there seem to be fewer of them. Evening crowds are now small groups, and homeless people sleep under storefronts advertising vacancies. The atmosphere is more listless than booming.

In short, the nation’s capital city is facing some significant challenges that are very local, not the stuff of national TV broadcasts. But many of these same challenges are visible, too, in other U.S. cities that are still struggling to find their footing on the other side of the pandemic.

Some experts say it’s becoming a test of how to reinvent urban areas for the next stage in their future. While the solution isn’t yet clear, scholars say cities need to think beyond the pre-pandemic norms contingent on a corps of downtown commuters. 

“In many cities, the arenas are what’s propping up the downtown,” says Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto. Meanwhile, she adds, “the remote-work cat is out of the bag.”

For now, Washington may get some breathing room because the proposed move of the Caps and Wizards by owner Ted Leonsis has been blocked in the Virginia legislature. That has revived hopes that the teams – and the resulting consumer spending near their downtown arena – may remain in the capital after all. 

The City Council has also pivoted to counter the image of unsafe streets. After overriding Mayor Muriel Bowser to reduce penalties for certain crimes a year ago, the council last week passed a measure designed to reverse course to curb retail theft and carjackings. Ms. Bowser signed it Monday. 

Outdated models?

But while Metro ridership has been improving, this still leaves a city with fewer daily commuters. The district has rebounded faster than Chicago and New York, but ranks 46th out of 66 cities in a study by Dr. Chapple and colleagues on post-pandemic recovery.

“The first thing to realize is that what’s happening in D.C. is certainly pretty dramatic compared to what it was before, but it’s not a unique story in terms of office occupancy,” says Charly Porcher, an assistant professor of economics at Georgetown University. He began monitoring remote work rates before the pandemic, when only about 5% of the labor force was working remotely in some form.

The differences between cities can hinge on whether their key industries are ripe for remote employment, he adds. In Washington, about 19% of downtown commercial real estate is currently vacant. One of the city’s biggest industries is tech – which happens to be conducive to remote work. 

The changes brought and accelerated by the pandemic only underscore the need for a shift in thought around urban planning, says Joel Kotkin, an urban studies fellow at Chapman University in Orange, California. 

In particular, he argues that the long-standing idea of an “urban core” is outdated, as people forgo the Monday-through-Friday commute. Instead, cities should shift their resources and focus to the revitalization of a broader network of smaller urban centers in neighborhoods. 

“[Washington has] to come up with some sort of plan for the downtown that isn’t reliant on huge numbers of people working there five days a week,” says Mr. Kotkin.

When residents – not statisticians – discuss the state of downtown, crime is the focus more than office occupancy. And that’s not just the case in Washington. Voters in San Francisco are indicating support for expanding police powers in the face of the city’s crime and drug crisis. And New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently deployed the National Guard and state police officers to New York City’s subway to patrol and check bags, in response to a large spike in crime.

And as a measure of a city’s overall revival or stagnation, crime statistics are not the most informative piece of the larger puzzle. “It’s really quality of life and overall public safety,” says Dr. Chapple.

Rebuilding safe and vibrant neighborhoods

Still, many residents report feeling unsafe. In Washington, some restaurants have shortened their hours, relocated, or closed entirely, citing high crime rates. And residents in neighborhoods throughout Washington are concerned about the frequency of carjackings and violent crime. Recently, recall petitions were organized against Councilmembers Brianne Nadeau and Charles Allen over what critics say is support of soft-on-crime measures.

Nationwide, police departments are struggling to solve crimes. And while homicide rates are falling in most big cities across the country, they have risen in Washington and some other large cities such as Memphis, Tennessee. 

“There’s no question that the increase in violence that was directly associated with the COVID pandemic, we’re still suffering from,” says David Muhammed, executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. 

The larger challenge for cities like Washington may be economic. The premise used to be that high-value industries had to be centered in cities. But the office economy – the percentage of jobs in downtowns and the amount of office building construction – has been weakening for decades, says Mr. Kotkin. Whereas many urban planners focus on density and transit as the future, he argues that this no longer aligns perfectly with what people want – which for many, as they reach their 30s, is more space and to own property. 

“Cities are, in many cases, collections of villages that grew into each other. If we go back to the idea of cities as an archipelago of villages, then we should give more power and control to those villages,” he says. “Safe, urban neighborhoods – that’s what they have to provide.”