Well here are some interesting figures (via MIT Technology Review):
In the past two decades, about 400 million people moved into China's cities -- so more than the entire population of the United States
By 2035, about 70% of China's entire population is expected to be urban (up from 60% today and up from 30% two decades ago)
To accommodate this scale of growth, China's national urban development approach has shifted to something that now revolves around city clusters, or megalopolises (term coined by French geographer Jean Gottmann back in the 1950s to describe the Boston-Washington corridor in the Northeastern US)
By 2035, there are expected to be five major city clusters (see above)
One of the reasons for this is to improve cooperation across the various clusters -- less competition and less redundancy
But it's also about creating smaller more manageable cities -- is this what one needs to do after a certain scale, go polycentric?
To service these clusters, China is rolling out a network of 16 new high-speed rail lines
By 2035, China expects to have 200,000 kilometers of rail, with a third of it being high-speed -- assuming this happens, China will be home to 60% of the world's high-speed rail coverage
Current cost estimates for the construction of this network comes out to about US$150 million per kilometer
1-2-3 Rule: The plan is that everyone should be able to get around a city within 1 hour; a city cluster within 2 hours; and travel between the country's clusters inside of 3 hours
China is building.
Hövding – a Swedish company best known for its radical airbag cycling helmets (definitely check these out) – is currently crowdsourcing unsafe conditions and cyclist frustration in London.
Working with the London Cyclist Campaign, they distributed 500 yellow handlebar buttons. Cyclists were then instructed to tap these buttons whenever they felt unsafe or frustrated with current cycling conditions.
Here’s what the button looks like:
Every time the button is hit, the data point gets logged to a public map and an email gets sent to the Mayor of London reminding him of his promises around cycling. Both of these things happen via the rider’s smartphone.
Here’s what the public map looks like at the time of writing this post:
Not only does it tell you pain point locations, but it also seems to suggest the primary cycling routes. I think this is a brilliant initiative because, it’s entirely user-centric. It’s telling you how people feel on the ground.
Supposedly, Hövding is actively looking for other cyclist groups around the world to help them distribute their buttons. So if you’re a group in Toronto or in another city, I would encourage you to reach out to them. The more data the better.
The Detroit Free Press recently published a summary of some of the new rental apartments coming online in and around downtown Detroit. Here’s the map that they published along with their piece:
Based on this article, demand is outstripping new supply and rents are starting to push above $2 per square foot. This strikes me as a solid number given that there are also for sale lots/houses in the city going for $10,000.
Going back to some of the posts I have written about rental apartment development in Toronto, you might remember that $3 psf is roughly our magic number given current cost structures.
In some special circumstances you might be able to get a project off the ground with rents closer to $2 psf, but that’s an exception to the rule. There are many areas in the Toronto region with $2 psf rents and few, if any, new rental apartments.
But Detroit is obviously a different city, as is every real estate market.
Land would be cheaper. Many of these new rental apartments are conversions of existing buildings (which were probably bought for cents on the dollar). And I wouldn’t be surprised if there are tax abatements and other incentives to encourage more development.
I also wonder if people in the city aren’t being at least partially drawn to multi-family buildings because of the safety and security benefits. That’s something that certainly came up when I was in Detroit last weekend.
Regardless, this is a good news story for Detroit, which is not always the story you hear people telling of the city.