Month: August 2015

• It’s too cold for that

  

  This past Sunday I spent part of the afternoon in Kensington Market (Toronto) for Pedestrian Sundays. 

  If you’ve never been to a Pedestrian Sunday, you’re missing out. The entire neighborhood – which happens to be a National Historic Site of Canada – gets closed to cars, and filled with street vendors, musicians, bands playing on roofs (see above), and so on. It’s pretty wild. And it feels very Toronto to me.

  It happens the last Sunday of the month from May to October. But every time I go I wonder why the area isn’t this way more often or even all the time. It’s a natural candidate. But after 12 seasons of Pedestrian Sundays, it still hasn’t happened. It’s only 6 days throughout the year. 

  I remember being in a meeting early on in my career when I brought up the idea of a pedestrian mall in Toronto for a project I was working on. And I got completely shut down. I was told they don’t work here in our climate and that we should just forget about it. I was told to look at the failure of Ottawa’s Spark Street Mall.

  But I’m still not convinced that’s the case. In fact, I feel even stronger at this point that it could and would work in Toronto. I’ve been to the Distillery District in the dead of winter for the Toronto Christmas Market and I could barely move because of all of the people. 

  Acknowledging climate is important. But it shouldn’t become an excuse for not doing things.

  2015.08.31

• The Starbucks Effect

  

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  This afternoon I was chatting with some friends about Toronto real estate (which is something that happens a lot in this city), and we started talking about “The Starbucks Effect.”

  Basically, we were talking about how this neighborhood just got a Starbucks and how that neighborhood already has one. We were, like a lot of people, using Starbucks as a proxy for neighborhoods that are emerging and neighborhoods that have already arrived.

  There’s been a lot of discussion about the correlation between home prices and the presence of a Starbucks. But the big question is what comes first: the home prices or the Starbucks?

  Earlier this year, the CEO, Spencer Rascoff, and Chief Economist, Stan Humphries, of Zillow.com argued that the mere presence of a Starbucks can cause gentrification. 

  They argued that Starbucks knows the next hot neighborhood before anyone else does and that they are “the fuel, not the follower.” And through their data they demonstrated that homes (in the US) near a Starbucks appreciated significantly faster than homes not near a Starbucks, or even homes near other coffee shops such as Dunkin’ Donuts.

  But I – as well as others – wonder if this isn’t an oversimplification.

  I certainly believe that Starbucks could help fuel home prices in a neighborhood. I think it gives people a comfort level that the neighborhood has arrived and that there are people in the area who are willing and able to spend money on discretionary items.

  But I suspect that for Starbucks it’s a balancing act. They would never want to be late to an emerging neighborhood (and miss that prime corner property), but they also don’t want to be in the business of placing bets on neighborhoods with very few vital signs.

  So I think it’s both. I think Starbucks is analyzing the data and watching home prices like a hawk (the follow) and when it reaches a certain point, they move. And that likely causes a further acceleration of neighborhood change (the fuel).

  What do you think? I would love to learn more about their site selection process.

  2015.08.31

• Uber, commuting, car ownership, and the future of urban mobility

  Earlier this week I wrote a “Tech Tuesday” post talking about Uber’s new Smart Routes functionality, which it is currently testing out in San Francisco. At the end of the post I ended by saying that it’s not just the taxi industry that should be thinking about Uber, it’s also public transit authorities. 

  And that’s because many people in cities rely on multi-modal forms of transportation (I know I do) and in my mind it is clear that Uber is trending away from just “Everyone’s Private Driver” to a service that is starting to look and feel a lot like urban mass transit.

  Then today my good friend Evgeny sent me a post called, “Public Transit Should Be Uber’s New Best Friend.” And it’s one of the best pieces I’ve read on Uber and its impact on urban mobility. I highly recommend you give it a read, particularly if you’re in the city building arena.

  The article does a deep dive into how New Yorkers commute. Here’s how they broke it down.

  

  It then talks about what it will take for a company like Uber to make a meaningful dent in car ownership (which is one of the company’s goals) and how the truly big opportunity for Uber is to go more mass market and tap into the public transit market – either by interfacing with or by building its own version of it.

  Here’s their concluding paragraph:

  But there’s a much wider potential audience if Uber can also reach middle-class customers who want to save money. Perhaps in the distant (or even the not-so-distant) future, Uber can build its own version of “public” transit, making rides so cheap that they cost less than the $4 or $5 that Americans now pay, on average, to make a trip in their personal cars. In the meantime, it might have more success among “car-cutting” customers who can use Uber along with public transit. That might mean Uber’s growth is concentrated more in cities like New York, San Francisco and Chicago — and in Europe and Asia — that already have reasonably strong public transit networks.

  It’s definitely worth a full read. Thanks again for sending this over Evgeny.

  2015.08.29

• 2 years of Architect This City

  

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  On Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 at 8:33am, I wrote and posted this.

  And that started a 2 year tradition of writing something on this blog, every, single, day, no matter how long or short it might be and no matter how insightful or not insightful it might be. It kick started a discipline.

  For the most part, I tend to write about city building and everything that feeds into that, whether it be design, planning, transportation, technology, or real estate. But I also write personal posts, especially when I go snowboarding. And the longer I write this blog, the more comfortable I feel writing those sorts of posts.

  Sometimes I feel guilty about those posts though, since I assume most of you are here to learn and talk about city building things. I assume you don’t want to hear about me. But at the end of the day, ATC is a personal blog. It’s not a business or corporate blog, and I like to think that the personal touches help make the content more engaging over time.

  Regardless, a big thank you to everyone who reads, subscribes, and follows Architect This City. There are few things more gratifying than hearing someone say they love this blog and that they read it every morning when they wake up. 

  That’s a huge commitment on their/your part and I am grateful for that. Because my commitment (writing this blog) wouldn’t be nearly as fun if you weren’t all around to engage with and learn from. And in the early days of writing this blog, there truly was nobody around.

  So for today’s 2 year anniversary post, I thought I would share some readership stats. Last Friday I posted a map of all of this blog’s email subscribers (in anticipation of today’s post). But today we’re going to get into some hard numbers (from Google Analytics).

  Here are the high level stats from the past year.

  

  Here are the number of visitors (users) over the last year. It feels great to see it increasing. The spikes are posts that, for whatever reason, really took off.

  

  Here’s how people discovered this blog. Almost half of the visitors to this blog are just searching around online and stumble upon it.

  

  And finally, here are the demographics. I only turned this feature on a few weeks ago, so the data set isn’t as large as above. Still, it’s probably pretty accurate. I need to work on correcting the gender imbalance here.

  

  

  And there you have it. Thanks again for reading. If you have any suggestions for the third year of Architect This City, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below. Here’s to another year!

  2015.08.28

• Cities with the most single men and women

  There are thousands of people who read this blog via email or by following on Tumblr. The rest of the readership just stops by on the web and visits periodically.

  But of the thousands of regular readers, I know that many do not click through to the comment section. And that’s a shame. Because oftentimes I find the comments more interesting than my actual post.

  Take for example yesterday’s post on The Millennial Dream. 

  The initial post was about Millennial housing choices (and some stats on marriage and fertility rates). The comments provided some additional color on the trends, but they also got into mobile dating apps and whether or not it’s easier or harder to meet people in cities, today. It was a fun discussion.

  This got me thinking and reminded me that people come to cities not only because of labor markets, but because of dating markets. 

  So for today’s piece, I thought I would post the following diagram from Richard Florida’s book, Who’s Your City? It shows how many more singles (aged 20-64) there are – according to gender – in the largest US metro areas.

  

  I couldn’t find an equally detailed map for Canada, but based on this, it looks like Toronto is slanted towards single women and Calgary is slanted towards single men.

  Does the above look right to you?

  2015.08.27

• The Millennial Dream

  This evening I was interviewed for a documentary called The Millennial Dream. It’s all about how Millennials – people like me – are rethinking or even rejecting some of the traditional notions of The American Dream. It’s being produced by Hemmings House.

  My part was all about housing. 

  So a lot of it was about how housing preferences have (or have not) changed for Millennials. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’d already be familiar with many of the topics I covered.

  What’s most interesting to me though, is not what Millennials are doing today. We already know that there’s been a return to cities and that many young people prefer walkable and authentic communities. Everyone is talking about it and it’s no longer novel.

  What’s more interesting to me is what Millennials are going to do in the next 10 years when the majority of the cohort is in their 30′s. What percentage will be married? What percentage will have kids? And, where and how will they choose to live in cities?

  Because there are some structural changes happening. Marriage rates in the US have been declining since the 1960s (see New York Times).

  

  And fertility rates are at their the lowest in US history. So in theory, and unless things change, Millennials should on average demand different types of housing. Fewer of them are likely to marry and they’re having fewer kids.

  But at the same time, I also believe that there have been changes in consumer preference that are not going to completely reverse as Millennials age. So city builders will need to come up with new and creative forms of housing for families who want to stay in urban centers. And that’s an exciting challenge.

  I’d be curious to hear thoughts in the comment section below. The documentary won’t be out until the end of the year, so you still have a chance to influence its direction. More voices are better than one.

  2015.08.27

• Tech Tuesday: Uber testing out “Smart Routes” in San Francisco

  Uber is currently testing out something called “Smart Routes” in San Francisco.

  Basically it works similar to UberPOOL (where you carpool with strangers to bring the cost down), except that your pickup location (and trip?) is confined to a specific route. 

  This means less detours and more rides for drivers, as well as even cheaper fares for passengers. But just like public transit, you’ll likely have to walk a few minutes to get to the closest route. 

  Here’s a screenshot of what that looks like (via TechCrunch):

  

  The green line is the “Smart Route.” So all you have to do is select a pickup location somewhere along that green line, and you’ll save a bit a money. Currently it’s “$1 or more” off your fare, but who knows what it might be when this feature actually rolls out.

  This is fascinating to me because it’s starting to look and feel a lot like a conventional bus route. But in this case, the routes can change and new routes can be easily created as demand changes. 

  So it’s not just taxis that need to be thinking about Uber. It’s public transit authorities as well.

  2015.08.25

• Japan’s disposable housing

  

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  As further evidence that real estate is a local business, let’s take a look at the housing market in Japan today. It’s a very unique market.

  According to this Freakonomics podcast, 50% of all single family houses in Japan are demolished by the time they reach 38 years old. That’s their half-life. By contrast, in the US, this number is 100 years.

  The reason for this is rapid depreciation. Real property typically consists of two things: land and the building. Land doesn’t depreciate. But the structure sitting on the land does.

  In Japan, the building or structure is thought to be fully depreciated (and therefore worth nothing) after about 30 years for a single-family home and after about 40 years for an apartment/condominium.

  The result is that there’s virtually no resale housing market. When somebody buys a house, it is usually torn down and completely rebuilt. It’s a uniquely Japanese phenomenon.

  So why does this happen?

  The Freakonomics podcast presents a couple of hypothesis. Some believe that it’s caused by a Japanese fixation with newness. New is seen as pure and clean. 

  Others believe that it has to do with a building code that is constantly changing due to the high frequency of earthquakes in Japan. 20% of the world’s earthquakes with a magnitude of 6.0 or greater happen in Japan. And so there appears to be a belief that newer homes – with the latest seismic technologies – are the safest.

  Whatever the case may be, the fact that there’s virtually no resale housing market in Japan, not surprisingly, produces some interesting outcomes. For one, maintenance and DIY home projects are uncommon. Why invest in your home when it’s not viewed as an asset, but as a disposable good?

  At the same time, people worry very little about marketability when they are building new. And this is a big reason why Japan is so famous for its radically designed homes. When you’re building only for yourself, you just do what you want.

  But most importantly, some (such as Richard Koo, who is interviewed in the podcast) believe that this approach to housing is a huge “obstacle to affluence.” Without a functioning resale market, the Japanese don’t get the opportunity to build wealth/equity in the same way that other countries do.

  Do you buy that?

  2015.08.24

• Interview with Brad Keast of Osmington

  

  Given yesterday’s post about Times Square in New York, the timing is perfect to talk about the revitalization of Union Station here in Toronto, its new public spaces, and the programming that’s now happening in and around the station.

  Perhaps the most noticeable is something called Front Street Foods @ Union Summer, which is an outdoor food market set up along Front Street. It’s on this summer from July 6th to September 27th, 2015. 

  However, Front Street Foods is only one part – the food part – of a larger events and programming strategy known as Union Summer. I recently had a quick chat with Brad Keast of Osmington, who is involved in a lot of what’s happening right now at Union Station.

  I found it interesting to learn about how organic the process was. And I thought you all might find it interesting as well.

  ————————————–

  Tell us a little bit about you and your company’s involvement with Union Station. 

  I’ve been with Osmington for over 4 years now and Union Station is a major focus of my waking life. 

  The company won a public RFP with the City of Toronto in 2009 to be the City’s retail partner in the redevelopment. What this means is that while the City owns the building and is doing base building construction, we are overseeing all the retail, advertising, and special events and programming. We are finding all the tenants, doing a bit of overshell work and then turning it over for fit-up.  

  We think the real special part of the project comes in through the special events and programming. We really want to make the station a destination in itself and you’re starting to see that with some of the programming we’ve done this year, be it a contemporary art event like Villa Toronto or something more community-focused like Union Summer – the current animation of the area in front of the station.

  How did the idea for Union Summer come about? 

  This really was a collaborative internal effort. We started by thinking ‘hey, let’s put a bunch of tables and chairs on the new plaza in front of the station and see what happens.’ Then we added in the idea of food. We knew it had to be accessible but didn’t want traditional food trucks, rather something less mobile but still not permanent. 

  That’s when we reached out to Toronto Market Company and they started rounding up the vendors. Then we layered on entertainment – daily music be it live or DJs, as well as a movie night with the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). We even have some kids programming on the weekends. Then we worked with the Farmers’ Market being displaced from Nathan Phillips Square due to Pan Am this year to have them here on Wednesdays.

  What was involved in making Union Summer a reality? What was the biggest surprise and/or hurdle that needed to be overcome? 

  There was a tremendous amount of coordination needed. First we weren’t sure when the construction was even going to be finished, all that was certain was it would be before Pan Am started. 

  Then the infrastructure required for the event itself was an exercise in creativity – power, water, and grey water disposal in particular. There was a lot of meetings with City officials for things like building permits, fire code, council approval to apply for a liquor permit, and health and food safety measures. Operationally things like loading in, coordinating with the installation of the Pan Am banners between the columns, interim furniture when our original order didn’t make it onto a ship in Antwerp, and then the first week was so busy that some vendors started losing staff because they were burnt out. 

  Like all things with this project we have to be mindful that this is an operating train station. In fact it’s the busiest building in the country with over 250,000 people per day passing through so we can’t impede those operations. We’ve done our best and have learned some lessons along the way and the reception has been overwhelming. 

  One of the best things about having that many entrepreneurs in close proximity is that some vendors have been pairing up to try experiments. Frozen custard-stuffed churro?

  Toronto is getting much better at designing and programming its public spaces. Given your experience with Union Summer, is there something the city could and should be doing to encourage more of these kinds of urban activations?

  Well, first of all, our contacts at the City, in particular Denise Gendron and Scott Barrett in Real Estate Services have been incredibly supportive of our efforts and we couldn’t have done it without them. If I could make one recommendation it would be to build in the supportive infrastructure for services. Of course that’s only beneficial if there is someone to take charge of the space and program it appropriately. It’s not a part time job.

  What’s next for Union Station?

  Right now the focus is on getting the first retailers open on GO’s new York Concourse. On the programming side we will host art for Nuit Blanche (October 3rd, 2015). That promises to be exciting. And then opening November 30th, 2015 is the Holiday Market. It was a huge success last year so we’re bringing it back for 3 weeks this time.

  2015.08.23

• What should Mayor de Blasio do with Times Square?

  Under the Bloomberg administration, public space in New York went through a dramatic transformation. A transformation that I believe was for the better. Here’s a quick video showcasing the changes:

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  But now Times Square is filled with topless women in body paint (as well as other characters) looking to get paid for a photo with them. Here’s what that looks like (photo source):

  

  And this is making some people very grouchy (including the current mayor, Bill de Blasio). Though to me it doesn’t feel all that different than the Naked Cowboy, who has long been a fixture in Times Square.

  In any event, Mayor de Blasio is now floating the idea of reversing one of Bloomberg’s biggest legacies and removing the pedestrian plazas in Times Square. Not surprisingly, lots of people, including myself, think this is a terrible idea. Here’s a snippet from NY Magazine:

  I understand that the mayor doesn’t care for the carnival atmosphere at Times Square — neither do I. But eradicating a pedestrian plaza because you don’t like who’s walking there is like blasting away a beach because you object to bikinis or paving a park because you hate squirrels. It represents such a profound misunderstanding of public space that it makes me question the mayor’s perception of what counts as progressive.

  Well said. 

  But what are your thoughts? Out of the following 3 options, which do you think the mayor should go with?

  1. Remove the pedestrian plazas.
  2. Find an alternate solution to curb “undesirable” behaviour in Times Square.
  3. Do nothing and maintain the status quo.

  I’d be curious to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

  2015.08.22