Later this month the new 9.7 km North-South metro line in Amsterdam will start service. Like most large scale infrastructure projects, its opening has been delayed many times. 8 times according to this source. But this post is not about that. It’s about a byproduct of the line’s construction.
The excavations required for the line meant that two sections of the Amstel River – namely the Damrak and Rokin sites – had to be drained. This took place from 2003 to 2012 and gave archaeologists unprecedented access to the bottom of a river in the middle of a historic city center.
Amsterdam started as a small trading port along the banks of the Amstel River some 800 years ago. So not surprisingly, they found a few things. Over 17,000 objects were found and all of them have been catalogued online according to time period, use, material, and location found.
For the full catalogue of objects, click here. Screenshot of the catalogue shown above. And to learn more about the entire project, start here. There’s a lot of good stuff in there for city nerds.
Last week, Joe Berridge, Partner at Urban Strategies, gave a presentation at the Institute on Municipal Finance & Governance titled, Toronto: The Accidental Metropolis. I’ve seen Joe give similar presentations to this one before, and I always thoroughly enjoy his focus on Toronto’s position as a global city.
Here is a slide from the presentation that projects out Toronto’s population to 2071 and compares it to the largest cities in the US.
Later this month the new 9.7 km North-South metro line in Amsterdam will start service. Like most large scale infrastructure projects, its opening has been delayed many times. 8 times according to this source. But this post is not about that. It’s about a byproduct of the line’s construction.
The excavations required for the line meant that two sections of the Amstel River – namely the Damrak and Rokin sites – had to be drained. This took place from 2003 to 2012 and gave archaeologists unprecedented access to the bottom of a river in the middle of a historic city center.
Amsterdam started as a small trading port along the banks of the Amstel River some 800 years ago. So not surprisingly, they found a few things. Over 17,000 objects were found and all of them have been catalogued online according to time period, use, material, and location found.
For the full catalogue of objects, click here. Screenshot of the catalogue shown above. And to learn more about the entire project, start here. There’s a lot of good stuff in there for city nerds.
Last week, Joe Berridge, Partner at Urban Strategies, gave a presentation at the Institute on Municipal Finance & Governance titled, Toronto: The Accidental Metropolis. I’ve seen Joe give similar presentations to this one before, and I always thoroughly enjoy his focus on Toronto’s position as a global city.
Here is a slide from the presentation that projects out Toronto’s population to 2071 and compares it to the largest cities in the US.
I don’t know what it’s like in your market, but everyone is talking about it in the industry here in Toronto. Combine these rapidly rising hard costs with higher development charges and inclusionary zoning and you get significant upward pressure on condo prices and apartment rents.
This is also one of the reasons – perhaps it is the main reason – why you’re seeing some projects get cancelled. These are projects that maybe sold in one market (lower revenues) and are now trying to build in another (higher costs). The math no longer works. Sorry.
I mention this today not to complain, although I’m always up for a good industry commiseration over beers, but because I often hear people lament that Toronto needs better design. Why aren’t developers using triple-glazed windows? Why aren’t developers thermally breaking the balconies?
I will always advocate for better design. That is core to my belief system. But everything costs money. There are very real limits in this equation. And markets have a funny way of telling you exactly what those are.
Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash
But the two slides that have been really making the rounds online are the following ones. The first is a rendering of what downtown Toronto looked like in 2000.
I remember this time clearly. Queen West seemed to end at Spadina. King West and Ossington weren’t things. And “Richmond and Adelaide” felt like the greatest club district in the world. (If you’re not from Toronto, these references will likely mean nothing to you. Sorry.)
The second slide is a rendering of what Toronto will look like in 2025. The transformation is just incredible.
I’ve seen some people comment that the Toronto of 2000 was relatively affordable; the Toronto of 2018 is unaffordable; and the Toronto of 2025 will be even more unaffordable with all of this new development.
But I don’t understand that logic. Considering the growth rate shown in the first slide, imagine how unaffordable this city would be if we weren’t building new places for people to live and new places for people to work.
For the full slide deck, go here. And for recent aerial photos of Toronto’s downtown core, check out my Instagram page.
I don’t know what it’s like in your market, but everyone is talking about it in the industry here in Toronto. Combine these rapidly rising hard costs with higher development charges and inclusionary zoning and you get significant upward pressure on condo prices and apartment rents.
This is also one of the reasons – perhaps it is the main reason – why you’re seeing some projects get cancelled. These are projects that maybe sold in one market (lower revenues) and are now trying to build in another (higher costs). The math no longer works. Sorry.
I mention this today not to complain, although I’m always up for a good industry commiseration over beers, but because I often hear people lament that Toronto needs better design. Why aren’t developers using triple-glazed windows? Why aren’t developers thermally breaking the balconies?
I will always advocate for better design. That is core to my belief system. But everything costs money. There are very real limits in this equation. And markets have a funny way of telling you exactly what those are.
Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash
But the two slides that have been really making the rounds online are the following ones. The first is a rendering of what downtown Toronto looked like in 2000.
I remember this time clearly. Queen West seemed to end at Spadina. King West and Ossington weren’t things. And “Richmond and Adelaide” felt like the greatest club district in the world. (If you’re not from Toronto, these references will likely mean nothing to you. Sorry.)
The second slide is a rendering of what Toronto will look like in 2025. The transformation is just incredible.
I’ve seen some people comment that the Toronto of 2000 was relatively affordable; the Toronto of 2018 is unaffordable; and the Toronto of 2025 will be even more unaffordable with all of this new development.
But I don’t understand that logic. Considering the growth rate shown in the first slide, imagine how unaffordable this city would be if we weren’t building new places for people to live and new places for people to work.
For the full slide deck, go here. And for recent aerial photos of Toronto’s downtown core, check out my Instagram page.
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