What’s happening in Houston right now is devastating. Ian Bogost of The Atlantic is calling the flood a “disaster of biblical proportions.” Harvey has unloaded 9 trillion gallons of water.
It is once again reminding us of the importance of resiliency when it comes to our cities.
One emerging argument is that this is an almost inevitable outcome for Houston, brought on by the multiplicative effects of climate change, unfettered urban sprawl, and poor design decisions.
The barriers to development are famously low in Houston, which allows the city to quickly add housing and people. There are many benefits to this.
But it also means that there has been, among other things, a dramatic increase in the amount of impervious surface.
This matters because impervious surface creates runoff.
According to The Texas Tribune, impervious surface in Harris County (third most populous county in the U.S.) increased by 25% between 1996 and 2011.
And it replaced things like the below prairie grass (switchgrass), which are highly absorbent as a result of their deep root system.
But much like climate change, not everyone believes this is to be blamed.
For more on this, check out The Texas Tribune’s full interactive piece. It’s called “Boomtown, Flood Town” and it’s worth a read.
Image from The Texas Tribune
What’s happening in Houston right now is devastating. Ian Bogost of The Atlantic is calling the flood a “disaster of biblical proportions.” Harvey has unloaded 9 trillion gallons of water.
It is once again reminding us of the importance of resiliency when it comes to our cities.
One emerging argument is that this is an almost inevitable outcome for Houston, brought on by the multiplicative effects of climate change, unfettered urban sprawl, and poor design decisions.
The barriers to development are famously low in Houston, which allows the city to quickly add housing and people. There are many benefits to this.
But it also means that there has been, among other things, a dramatic increase in the amount of impervious surface.
This matters because impervious surface creates runoff.
According to The Texas Tribune, impervious surface in Harris County (third most populous county in the U.S.) increased by 25% between 1996 and 2011.
And it replaced things like the below prairie grass (switchgrass), which are highly absorbent as a result of their deep root system.
But much like climate change, not everyone believes this is to be blamed.
For more on this, check out The Texas Tribune’s full interactive piece. It’s called “Boomtown, Flood Town” and it’s worth a read.
Image from The Texas Tribune
In my recent post about why I write about tech on this city building blog, I made a pithy comment about autonomous vehicles and why it is “largely a software challenge.”
The argument I was trying to make was that the hardware, similar to smartphones today, will likely become a commodity. More of the value will end up flowing to the firms that control the software.
Benedict Evans has an excellent deep dive into this topic on his blog. The post is called: Winner-takes all effects in autonomous cars.
Here’s an excerpt about hardware:
To begin with, it seems pretty clear that the hardware and sensors for autonomy - and, probably, for electric - will be commodities. There is plenty of science and engineering in these (and a lot more work to do), just as there is in, say, LCD screens, but there is no reason why you have to use one rather than another just because everyone else is. There are strong manufacturing scale effects, but no network effect. [My link, not his.]
And here’s his conclusion:
So, the network effects - the winner-takes-all effects - are in data: in driving data and in maps.
That said, it is still early days for autonomous vehicles. Who knows if these network effects will end up being highly defensible or weak. There are still lots of assumptions and questions at this stage.
From a city building perspective, one of the major concerns with autonomous vehicles is that they could tempt us back to car-centric city planning. That would be a shame.
Photo by Zachary Staines on Unsplash
I had a friend ask me this week about how I decide what to write on this blog. His comment was that I tend to write about a variety of different topics. He wondered: Isn’t it better to focus on one particular niche?
The simple answer is that I write about what interests me. And secondary to that is any concern around what will get the most clicks. In fact, I try not to fall into the trap of worrying about the latter. Sometimes it can be paralyzing to fixate on what will appeal most to the tens of thousands of people who read this blog on a regular basis.
The reality is that my interests are much broader than, say, just design and real estate; though these two topics are clearly central.
I learned a long time ago while studying architecture and art history that what we make as a society is generally a product of the cultural milieu at the time. In other words, the built environment doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is the physical manifestation of what we believe to be true at a particular moment.
Today, it’s pretty hard to ignore the importance of tech. Think of some of the most valuable companies in the world right now: Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and so on. Now, technology has always shaped our cities, but what makes this moment different is the decisive shift toward software.
It’s arguably no longer about who can build the best mousetrap. It’s about who can build the best software layer on top of that mousetrap.
In 2011, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (previously the co-founder of Netscape) published a widely shared essay called, “Why Software Is Eating the World.” And over the past 6 years he has been proven to be very right.
The 3 main points he aimed to make with that essay are as follows:
Every product or service that can become software will become software.
Every company will have to become a software company.
The winning companies will be the best software companies.
Depending on your industry, this may sound ludicrous to you. Certainly in 2011 it probably seemed that way.
But a perfect example of this phenomenon is the iPhone. The phone itself is manufactured in China, albeit where a lot of great hardware innovation is taking place.
But at this point, phones have become fairly commoditized. The profits that Apple makes from the iPhone disproportionately come from the software layer and the app ecosystem it has developed.
You could make a similar argument with Tesla. Autonomous navigation – which most of us can agree will have a profound impact on cities – is largely a software challenge.
And so if you believe that autonomous vehicles will be a fundamental part of the future of mobility, then it’s not that hard to believe in point number three: the winning car company will also have to be the best car software company.
Some industries have been less touched by tech and software – real estate being one of them. But if Andreessen is right and it’s not a question of if, but a question of when, then it behooves all of us to think about the potential impacts.
I love how Andreessen ends this podcast discussion with Barry Ritholtz of Bloomberg and so I’m going to repeat it here to close out this post. He says: “There are no bad ideas. There are only early ideas.”
And that’s why I write about tech on my city building blog.
Photo by Michal Pechardo on Unsplash
In my recent post about why I write about tech on this city building blog, I made a pithy comment about autonomous vehicles and why it is “largely a software challenge.”
The argument I was trying to make was that the hardware, similar to smartphones today, will likely become a commodity. More of the value will end up flowing to the firms that control the software.
Benedict Evans has an excellent deep dive into this topic on his blog. The post is called: Winner-takes all effects in autonomous cars.
Here’s an excerpt about hardware:
To begin with, it seems pretty clear that the hardware and sensors for autonomy - and, probably, for electric - will be commodities. There is plenty of science and engineering in these (and a lot more work to do), just as there is in, say, LCD screens, but there is no reason why you have to use one rather than another just because everyone else is. There are strong manufacturing scale effects, but no network effect. [My link, not his.]
And here’s his conclusion:
So, the network effects - the winner-takes-all effects - are in data: in driving data and in maps.
That said, it is still early days for autonomous vehicles. Who knows if these network effects will end up being highly defensible or weak. There are still lots of assumptions and questions at this stage.
From a city building perspective, one of the major concerns with autonomous vehicles is that they could tempt us back to car-centric city planning. That would be a shame.
Photo by Zachary Staines on Unsplash
I had a friend ask me this week about how I decide what to write on this blog. His comment was that I tend to write about a variety of different topics. He wondered: Isn’t it better to focus on one particular niche?
The simple answer is that I write about what interests me. And secondary to that is any concern around what will get the most clicks. In fact, I try not to fall into the trap of worrying about the latter. Sometimes it can be paralyzing to fixate on what will appeal most to the tens of thousands of people who read this blog on a regular basis.
The reality is that my interests are much broader than, say, just design and real estate; though these two topics are clearly central.
I learned a long time ago while studying architecture and art history that what we make as a society is generally a product of the cultural milieu at the time. In other words, the built environment doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is the physical manifestation of what we believe to be true at a particular moment.
Today, it’s pretty hard to ignore the importance of tech. Think of some of the most valuable companies in the world right now: Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and so on. Now, technology has always shaped our cities, but what makes this moment different is the decisive shift toward software.
It’s arguably no longer about who can build the best mousetrap. It’s about who can build the best software layer on top of that mousetrap.
In 2011, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (previously the co-founder of Netscape) published a widely shared essay called, “Why Software Is Eating the World.” And over the past 6 years he has been proven to be very right.
The 3 main points he aimed to make with that essay are as follows:
Every product or service that can become software will become software.
Every company will have to become a software company.
The winning companies will be the best software companies.
Depending on your industry, this may sound ludicrous to you. Certainly in 2011 it probably seemed that way.
But a perfect example of this phenomenon is the iPhone. The phone itself is manufactured in China, albeit where a lot of great hardware innovation is taking place.
But at this point, phones have become fairly commoditized. The profits that Apple makes from the iPhone disproportionately come from the software layer and the app ecosystem it has developed.
You could make a similar argument with Tesla. Autonomous navigation – which most of us can agree will have a profound impact on cities – is largely a software challenge.
And so if you believe that autonomous vehicles will be a fundamental part of the future of mobility, then it’s not that hard to believe in point number three: the winning car company will also have to be the best car software company.
Some industries have been less touched by tech and software – real estate being one of them. But if Andreessen is right and it’s not a question of if, but a question of when, then it behooves all of us to think about the potential impacts.
I love how Andreessen ends this podcast discussion with Barry Ritholtz of Bloomberg and so I’m going to repeat it here to close out this post. He says: “There are no bad ideas. There are only early ideas.”
And that’s why I write about tech on my city building blog.
Photo by Michal Pechardo on Unsplash
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