I spotted an illustration of this undertone trend within the NYTimes article on the DUMBO (Brooklyn, NYC) neighborhood developer/owner Two Trees. it might be a little bit of a reach, but it’s still worth noting.

Reading between the lines, the article plants a flag, marking an interesting trend, the two-year cycle as a structure to plan, evaluate, and process business plans, rental agreements, job positions, and careers, has replaced what used to be the five-year cycle. I’ll need more than a blog post, but in general it’s a cultural trend that seems to be derived from rental lease length, and the escalating costs of life in a big city, the true engines of our economy.

In my professional lifetime, standard biz leases in up-and-coming neighborhoods (where start-up and creative biz’s start out) went from five year as a standard, to one and/or two year leases. The landlords giving themselves two years to either turn the place around into condos, ask for higher rents, or sell the place. This has led to businesses that rent to follow a similar path; we have two years to make money or we have to stop. I look over the resumes of my peers, they seem to change positions every two years. I think of my favorite restaurants, if they don’t make it after two years they’re gone. I think of how often I’ve moved, or my friends, just about once every two years.
I remember a time when this was five-years, we had five years to make it, five years at a job, five years in an apartment or office, five years for the business to survive. I think this is history, it’s now two-year cycles. People might say it’s the internet, that the speed of business has increases, pulling the rest along with it. Maybe, but as this article points out, the leading edge of the economy, the creatives, are dealing with rents in two year terms, and that is influencing a lot.

Thoughts?