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taylorvich [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-donut-effect-persists-major-cities.html [phys.org]

What is the shelf life of a freshly baked donut? Two days, tops. But when it comes to an entirely different kind of donut—one that Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom described early in the pandemic when he measured the exodus of people from city centers to city suburbs—there appears to be no expiration date.

That's the key takeaway of Bloom's research of the "donut effect," a term he helped coin that refers to the hollowing out of big-city financial districts, the rising attraction of surrounding areas, and the impacts on local economies.

Since the pandemic, the country's 12 largest cities have cumulatively lost 8% of their downtown dwellers. Three-fifths of the households that left moved to nearby suburbs, according to the study, which was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Bloom also finds a steep drop in the number of businesses located in the business centers of these major metro areas, which include New York, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Meanwhile, the donut effects for other U.S. cities have either been much smaller or haven't happened at all.

For policymakers and business leaders in large urban centers, the study results may come as a surprise given widespread perceptions that their downtown economies are bouncing back to pre-pandemic health.

But Bloom and his co-authors—using rich data on real estate demand, migration flows, commuting patterns, public transit use and consumer spending—conclude that's not happening. And the flight from city cores promises to reshape America's largest cities in the long run, they say.

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