NEW YORK CITY- Cool neighborhoods are becoming growth engines for urban renewal, expanding outside of large primary cities like New York City and San Francisco, to secondary and tertiary markets like Portland, Ore. and Charlotte, N.C., according to a recent report from Cushman & Wakefield titled Cool Streets of North America.

Neighborhoods like Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Manhattan's Bond Street in NoHo, have served as a blueprint for other 18-hour streets in different states. These so-called streets are considered hubs for restaurants and bars, or any other type of amenity that not only attracts Millennials but parents whose children have left the nest, Garrick Brown, vice president of retail intelligence for the Americas at Cushman & Wakefield, tells GlobeSt.com.

"Some think it's all millennials who are about urban living and underestimate the great number of empty nesters," he said.

Secondary and tertiary markets have become more driven toward urban living over the past several years. From 2010 to 2015, the urban population growth rate went up 21%, wherein previous years the norm had been 10%, according to the C&W report.

At the start, C&W approached the "cool streets" research from a retail point of view, but as the team dove into what was driving the growth, they realized the majority of the market preferred to locate to a live-work-play environment, free of long commutes. "The name of the report sounds like we're blogging about cool places to visit, but we were trying to figure out what's driving urban growth because it's a real phenomenon," Brown said.

Instant Insights /

New York City's Cool Neighborhoods Set-Off Nationwide Urban Renewal

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