Curbed – August 1, 2017

By | August 1, 2017

Corporations’ flight from the suburbs to cities can play out like a bad breakup: One party has moved on and found someone new, while the other puts on a brave face and pretends it doesn’t matter. Each may even be seen hastily courting others to show their previous partner that they’re okay. But there’s no way to avoid it. A once-promising relationship has ended.

It’s a situation many American suburbs find themselves in today. After decades of matching up with the country’s largest corporations and providing the prime highway-adjacent real estate they needed for massive office parks, suburbs are being abandoned for office space in urban centers and the pursuit of something younger and more exciting: millennial workers.

“It’s all about one thing: talent,” says Tom Murphy, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute. “For the first time in history we’re seeing jobs move to where people are, rather than vice versa. For companies, it’s all about being where talent wants to be.”

Source: Patrick Sisson, “Corporations are leaving suburbs: Can anything reverse the trend?,” Curbed