Urban Underpinnings
An undeniable truth about mobility in cities is its interconnectedness with infrastructure. This discussion with Cindy McLaughlin, CEO explores this topic further.
How is everyone getting around these days? According to Transportation During Coronavirus in NYC, a report recently released by The NYU Rudin Center for Transportation and Sam Schwartz Engineering there was a decline of most commuter travel, reductions in subway and bus usage, commuter rail ridership, Citi Bike usage, and pedestrian activity following the closing of non-essential activities in New York City in March. Additionally, subway ridership had dropped 96% to 213,424, its lowest point during the pandemic, and likely the lowest number in 100 years on April 12th, 2020. As we consider ways to create safe and secure options for mobility in light of COVID-19, I’m thrilled to highlight CEOs, experts, and thought leaders in the mobility space for my next few newsletters.
An undeniable truth about mobility in cities is its interconnectedness with infrastructure. This is why I was ecstatic to chat with Cindy McLaughlin, CEO of Envelope, a leading provider of technology-enabled professional zoning services. The company merges cutting-edge technology with deep zoning expertise. I had the pleasure of working alongside Cindy for some time and am consistently impressed with her work and Envelope’s unique solution creating exciting opportunities for how we design the future of cities.
Through that work and other efforts to support startups navigating the complex world of zoning and land use in a place like New York, it became evident that a large part of how we move through cities, relate to neighborhoods and explore future uses of land has to do with what is made possible through urban planning.
Cindy and I connected to talk about the story of how Envelope came to be, how the technology is transforming zoning, how COVID-19 is impacting the way we move around cities, and plans for the company.
Can you share what inspired the start of Envelope and how is it changing the way we look at zoning in New York City?
The Principals of SHoP Architects had the idea to create an automated 3D zoning model for NYC because they answer zoning questions daily for their developer clients. They collaborated with the inimitable Sarah Williams from MIT to build a "massing" prototype between 2008-2015. I came into the picture in early 2016 as a general-purpose tech CEO to figure out how to commercialize the technology. I knew nothing -- truly nothing -- about NYC commercial real estate, zoning, architecture, any of it. What I did know how to do was come up with a creative business model, paint a vision for the future, fundraise around it, hire a great team, build partnerships, etc. I now know just enough about zoning, real estate, and urban planning to have vehement and half-baked opinions.
NYC real estate professionals understand that the 4300-page legal document that is the NYC Zoning Resolution is a mystical source of surprising limitations and incredible opportunities. But because of its complexity, nobody engages with it until they're looking at a specific site. At that point, they need to know "what can I build here?" and hire someone to haul it out and look up the rules (and exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions) that apply to that specific site. This takes time and money and often uncovers more questions than answers.
Now that Envelope has codified these myriad rules into software, we can start to ask urban-scale questions that nobody has been able to ask before -- including our City Planners. We can understand things like:
Which districts are starved for development rights? Which districts have a surfeit? Is there enough of a mismatch between supply and demand that a special purpose district should be developed to allow transferability from one to the other? Is an upzoning or downzoning in order?
What would happen if District X were rezoned? How many more square feet of which use would be made available? What are the implications for the community? Where are the new opportunities for the industry? How should the city think about the required level of schools, etc?
Which district is primed to undergo a rezoning in the future based on its profile relative to other successful rezonings?
How can the City think through the disposition of its development rights to raise much-needed funds?
Which are the areas of the zoning code that need reform because they're hindering flexibility and innovation?
What has been an unexpected or big win since you became CEO of the company?
Cindy: In true startup fashion, we have big wins and big losses every day. The roller coaster is real. But I am proud of many things about this company. I have a second-to-none team, and they continue to amaze me with their competence, their grace under pressure, their humanity, and their work ethic. I'm also very proud of the business model we created, which - as far as I know - is the first of its kind. It now has had validation from some of the biggest, most respected names in real estate, and - increasingly - city agencies.
In one of your most recent Medium articles, you discuss the idea of villages throughout the City and what it would look like to encourage workspace development in residential neighborhoods. What do you think we can learn in light of COVID-19 about how people move throughout the City? What are your hopes for future mobility options that align with these learnings?
Cindy: One of the things I love most about this city is that it has pre-industrial, pre-car roots. Most of its neighborhoods feel more European, with vibrant, walkable commercial streets baked into the fabric of the residential neighborhoods, so anyone can step out for a quick bite or a coffee or a last-minute shop or access to services within a short stroll from home. Robert Moses did a number on the city in the mid-1900s when he designed the network of highways that tore through many of these communities, caused Revolutionary Road-style white flight to the suburbs, and encouraged cars to come into, and park for free in, our urban core. The resulting decades of car-centricity have made our neighborhoods less walkable, less diverse, and far more congested and polluted.
COVID-19 forced a bunch of things at once to reverse that trend.
A breath. It showed us what it felt like to live in a city without car pollution, without the constant honking of horns and roar of motorcycles and rumbling of trucks, without the physical dangers associated with traffic. It was marvelous and gave us a snapshot of what we should be aiming for.
A new workstyle. It took a minute to adjust, but much of the new workstyle being forced by COVID has been long-overdue and should be preserved.
For many non-essential employees: It meant we needed to find ways to get work done from home. For most tech-enabled white-collar workers, productivity has been OK, and the loss of the 1-2hour commute has been a revelation.
For many employers: It has shown them that the central HQ office they've always relied on may be less important than they assumed. Especially in a down-economy, nobody wants to be paying more than necessary in overhead.
More family time. For two-parent families, both parents now experience and (ideally) share the burdens of child care and house-cleaning. This is a great thing for our kids, a great thing for gender parity and gender-empathy, and a good way to establish the value + expectation of workday flexibility for the future.
What we now know is that we don't HAVE to commute every day to the office to be productive and that we don't want to re-invite the same levels of pollution and congestion brought by our daily commutes. We also know that 100% work-from-home isn't ideal. There's a middle ground, which is to encourage satellite offices to come to our communities, so we can walk or bike to work, and be able to pop home quickly to be with the kids or accept delivery or take out the dog.
On mobility, if most of the 1-2m white-collar workers in the City work from their neighborhoods most of the time, and they're using scooters and bikes and AV pods to zoom around, it relieves an enormous amount of commuting pressure on mass transit lines like subways and buses and frees them up to take the longer-haul commuters that require work in-person. The City should certainly invest in mass transit for humans, but in protected, high-speed, no-emissions buses and vans that mesh the City together so that it's not so hard to go from one borough to the other without having to go through Manhattan. Then, a good chunk of its innovation dollars should be spent on mass transit for cargo. We need to rethink how goods are coming into the city and being distributed once they're here. This may sound heretical, but if we can relieve some of the subway burdens through smarter human transit, maybe we can use some of it for borough-to-borough cargo transport so we're not so reliant on delivery trucks crawling through the city,
Building on the momentum of Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, championing a 15-minute-city, how can this concept that calls for access to the things that create a good quality of life within a 15-minute walk of residents' homes inform the way we think about developing future neighborhoods?
Cindy: If you were going to build a 15-minute city or a City of Villages that works for everyone, you'd first need to outline the kinds of activities that make a balanced life. Mayor Hidalgo, its most public champion, and Carlos Moreno (who came up with the idea in the first place) talk about the six essential urban social functions: living, working, supplying, caring, learning, and enjoying. These should be available to everyone, no matter how rich or how poor, within a 15-minute walk (or bike ride) from every home.
Living: residences that serve the lifecycle of families, from dorm-style housing for recent grads, to single-family homes or apartments, to senior housing.
Working: small office spaces, wifi cafes that allow all-day work, R+D labs, light and artisanal manufacturing, enough local businesses to be able to keep the majority of the neighborhood reasonably well employed, if they're not already working remotely.
Supplying: grocery, pharmacy, shops, bakeries, butchers, flower shops, post offices
Caring: doctor's office, child care centers, senior centers, salons, spas
Learning: schools, libraries, workforce training centers houses of worship
Enjoying: parks, gyms, cultural centers, restaurants, bars, cafes, movie theaters
The city's primary jobs would be to:
Ensure that our public streets are no longer used to house private cars, but are opened up and made safe for walking, biking, and scootering, so we can get to our nearby destinations safely.
Invest in (or form public-private partnerships to invest in) the public goods, like parks and schools.
Make sure zoning allows for buildings to be flexible and easily used for any of the uses below, and incentivize neighborhood development on a district by district basis with development bonuses and tax credits.
measure progress toward ensuring 15-min access for all citizens with mapping tools.
The good news for NYC is that our neighborhoods are already largely structured like this!
How do you see Envelope's role evolving or growing over the next 1-2 years in informing how developers, planners, and government think about New York City?
Cindy: Envelope's massing technology and data infrastructure have evolved such that we're able to understand the true potential of different zoning scenarios at a district or urban scale. This allows us to work with private companies, City agencies, urban planning organizations, or community boards as they try to understand the impact of larger-scale actions, or as they look for meaningful acquisition opportunities. We also know what's possible to build at a lot + block level, which enables us to work with the same groups at a more detailed level. Finally, we’ve incorporated a host of new data - demographic, financial, transit, tax zones, etc. - to help us understand the trends in demand, desirability, and other factors that inform real estate and urban planning.
Stay tuned for my discussion with Henry Lawson Greenridge which will be released next week. Thanks for subscribing to Urban Underpinnings, I’m glad to be here!
Thank you! It was great speaking with you about this.