Waymo just launched a new $29.99-per-month "Premier" service in a select few of its cities. The member benefits include priority pickups, 10% cash back (sometimes more during busy times), early access to new Waymo cities, and flexible cancellations (up to five per month). Generally speaking, it feels pretty similar to Uber One, except it's 3x the cost. But if you spend more than $300 per month on Waymo trips, then the 10% cash back does pay for the service. We're now also talking about autonomous vehicles. Will that make a difference?

One of the early promises of Uber was that it was going to disrupt car ownership. People would just ride-hail. But as far as I can tell, that has not happened at scale. In the case of autonomous vehicles, one of the early promises was that if you took out the labour-cost component of ride hailing (i.e., the driver), you could then make rides really cheap and that would induce demand. But that too has not been the case thus far. In fact, riders seem to be willing to pay a premium to be in the car alone. This premium appears to be reflected in the price of Waymo Premier.

Where we got it wrong with Uber is that it ended up replacing taxis, not car ownership. But will autonomy and a nicer car experience change this? I like my car because I picked it, I use it to get where I have to go, and I store some of my stuff in it (including a fancy new car seat). But broadly speaking, I hate driving. If Waymo could fulfill my needs for, say, C$300/month, it would be in my economic interest to switch. I would have a very high willingness to pay if this is what I were replacing.

Changing consumer behaviour is hard, especially when we've built entire cities around a particular mode of transport. But sometimes products and services have seemingly subtle differences that surprise us in the way that the market responds to them. Will that be the case with Waymo? We shall see.

We talk a lot around here about the obstacles to missing middle housing and one of the key themes is that it's not a singular problem, it's a "many-things" problem. It's zoning, single-stair code requirements, elevators, environmental policy, servicing, and so much more. So we need to treat it like a multidisciplinary problem and collectively chip away at the barriers.

Today, let's focus on one important item on the list: servicing. My friend Brendan Charters from Eurodale forwarded me a letter that he submitted to City Council this week concerning Toronto Hydro policies. It does a great job outlining the issues, the impact on housing delivery, and the potential costs that new housing projects must bear. So I thought I would share it verbatim here on the blog.

The costs outlined in the letter below are just one example of the direct and indirect costs (time value of money) that get added onto every new home in the city, provided the new home even gets built. There are also too many instances of housing projects that never get off the ground because the costs are deemed too great right from the outset.

For those of you who are in the industry, or who just care about this issue, here's the agenda item. The City is hoping that the industry will use this opportunity to clearly articulate the challenges they have had with Toronto Hydro when it comes to multiplexes and housing development in general. Here's your opportunity. Write to the City and share Brendan's letter. This is how we work to solve our "many-things" problem.

Photo by Pavel Polansky on Unsplash

São Paulo is a city that’s proud of its scale. A leading entrepreneur tells us that he had returned to São Paulo from living in Paris after he struggled to make it through a grey French February. “Look, Paris is fine if you want to live somewhere provincial and eat cheese but São Paulo is a real city,” he says. Plus, in winter, you can savour 23C temperatures and big blue skies.

The above is an excerpt from a recent Monocle article covering 10 observations about São Paulo. I have only been to Brazil once, and it was to visit Rio de Janeiro. But since then, I have had São Paulo high on my list. This is partially because I'm fascinated by Brazil and partially because I love big cities — and São Paulo is one of the biggest and most frenetic.

But one of the areas where, in recent history, it has not been frenetic is signage. In 2007 a new municipal law was put into effect called the Clean City Law (or Lei Cidade Limpa). The law was simple: It introduced a near-total ban on billboards and public advertising, while imposing strict storefront limits on signage.

In the first year of the law, the city collected nearly C$30 million in fines and then, seemingly overnight, the city transformed itself from a wild west of signage into an ad-free megacity. The results were fascinating. Historic buildings that had been entombed by ads were suddenly rediscovered. Architecture became front and center.

But interestingly enough, the city is now looking to relax these laws to a certain extent and allow four buildings at the intersection of Avenidas São João and Ipiranga to be covered with LED panels and displays, akin to those in New York's Times Square or Tokyo's Shibuya Crossing. Here's the promo video.

If you watch the video, you'll see that it says something along the lines of "the world's largest cities have all transformed their streets into living experiences." It then shows clips of New York, London, Doha, and others that all have similar LED screens and brightly illuminated buildings. In other words: All the best cities are doing it, so we need to do it too.

There are naturally some people who like São Paulo the way it is today. But regardless, it raises an interesting question: Are these kinds of highly-visual urban displays just a new form of advertising, or are they something else, something more elevated? And is it really table stakes for the largest global cities to have something like it?

Cover photo by Thandy Yung on Unsplash