Canada is a resource rich country. And one of the things that commonly happens to countries with a lot of resources is that they begin to myopically focus on the immediate gains from resources at the expense of long term innovation and economic development.
This is known as the “resource curse.”
The Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto recently published a report that looks at this exact topic: Canada’s urban competitiveness through the lenses of its resource economy and its knowledge economy. In the end, Richard Florida and Greg Spencer conclude that two can and should work together, but that we need to stop neglecting our cities:
“The oil and gas industry is not necessarily a constraint on the creative economy, but in the past decade or so it has come to dominate thinking around economic development policy-making. It is time to use the resources from the energy economy to build a more secure future as an urban knowledge economy. We can also use talent and technology to deepen and expand the resource economy.”
And one of their key recommendation is something I have argued for many times here on Architect This City:
“A New Federalism for Cities: It is time to give cities the taxing and spending powers they require. Cities must be given more control over their own destinies if they are to prosper in the 21st century.”
Now, here are a few interesting charts from the report.
This first one looks at the relationship between a city’s population and its creativity levels. The two are positively correlated, which means that, in this context, bigger is better.
This second one splits Canada in half – east and west – and then looks at how average income levels are affected by creativity levels (the knowledge economy). Here we see that in eastern cities, income levels are positively correlated with creativity levels. But in western cities, changing creativity levels have almost no impact on income levels.
Finally, this third chart compares the relationship between oil and gas employment (LQ = location quotient) and average income levels. What it finds is that income levels and oil and gas employment are positively correlated in the west, but there’s almost no relationship in eastern cities.
The way to read this chart is to think of the LQ as the employment multiple relative to the national average. So for example, a LQ = 10 means that the oil and gas employment levels are 10 times the national average. As you probably guessed, the pink dot way out on the right is Fort McMurray.
If you’d like to read the entire report, you can do that here. I hope that our new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will read reports like this and spend more of his efforts investing in our knowledge economy – which means investing in our cities.
There has been and continues to be many divided cities around the world.
Berlin had the Berlin Wall.
Northern Ireland (mostly Belfast) has its Peace Walls that still separate Protestant loyalists and Catholic republicans from each other.
Beirut had the Green Line, which separated the predominately Muslim side in the west from the predominantly Christian side in the east during the Lebanese Civil War. And I understand this is still the case today.
Detroit has 8 Mile Road, which is a psychological barrier rather than a physical one, but one that still sharply separates whites (blue dots, below) and blacks (green dots, below). The image below is from Wired Magazine.
Canada is a resource rich country. And one of the things that commonly happens to countries with a lot of resources is that they begin to myopically focus on the immediate gains from resources at the expense of long term innovation and economic development.
This is known as the “resource curse.”
The Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto recently published a report that looks at this exact topic: Canada’s urban competitiveness through the lenses of its resource economy and its knowledge economy. In the end, Richard Florida and Greg Spencer conclude that two can and should work together, but that we need to stop neglecting our cities:
“The oil and gas industry is not necessarily a constraint on the creative economy, but in the past decade or so it has come to dominate thinking around economic development policy-making. It is time to use the resources from the energy economy to build a more secure future as an urban knowledge economy. We can also use talent and technology to deepen and expand the resource economy.”
And one of their key recommendation is something I have argued for many times here on Architect This City:
“A New Federalism for Cities: It is time to give cities the taxing and spending powers they require. Cities must be given more control over their own destinies if they are to prosper in the 21st century.”
Now, here are a few interesting charts from the report.
This first one looks at the relationship between a city’s population and its creativity levels. The two are positively correlated, which means that, in this context, bigger is better.
This second one splits Canada in half – east and west – and then looks at how average income levels are affected by creativity levels (the knowledge economy). Here we see that in eastern cities, income levels are positively correlated with creativity levels. But in western cities, changing creativity levels have almost no impact on income levels.
Finally, this third chart compares the relationship between oil and gas employment (LQ = location quotient) and average income levels. What it finds is that income levels and oil and gas employment are positively correlated in the west, but there’s almost no relationship in eastern cities.
The way to read this chart is to think of the LQ as the employment multiple relative to the national average. So for example, a LQ = 10 means that the oil and gas employment levels are 10 times the national average. As you probably guessed, the pink dot way out on the right is Fort McMurray.
If you’d like to read the entire report, you can do that here. I hope that our new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, will read reports like this and spend more of his efforts investing in our knowledge economy – which means investing in our cities.
There has been and continues to be many divided cities around the world.
Berlin had the Berlin Wall.
Northern Ireland (mostly Belfast) has its Peace Walls that still separate Protestant loyalists and Catholic republicans from each other.
Beirut had the Green Line, which separated the predominately Muslim side in the west from the predominantly Christian side in the east during the Lebanese Civil War. And I understand this is still the case today.
Detroit has 8 Mile Road, which is a psychological barrier rather than a physical one, but one that still sharply separates whites (blue dots, below) and blacks (green dots, below). The image below is from Wired Magazine.
And even here in Toronto you could say that we’ve become a divided city, albeit without the civil wars or race riots that have plagued the other cities listed above. Our voting patterns suggest a real urban-suburban divide and the many ethnic groups in this city continue to concentrate themselves in specific areas.
I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon in the context of a recent article I read talking about closed vs. open social networks. The article was talking about career success, but I think the lessons are also transferrable to cities.
The argument made in the article is that people who are able to position themselves in open networks – that is, become the connector between diverse kinds of social groups – are more likely to succeed than people who position themselves in closed networks where they are only surrounded by people they already know and by people who are similar to themselves.
And the reason for this is because people in open networks end up getting exposed to a broader set of viewpoints and ideas. They get a more accurate view of the world and they are able to problem solve better than those who may be coming at it from a more myopic or singular perspective.
But the challenge with open networks, is that there seems to be an innate human tendency towards closed networks. We love what is familiar. We love what is comfortable to us. In other words, we are attracted to people that are similar to ourselves. This is known as homophily.
So it’s not surprising that we tend to cluster ourselves in cities. Yes, there are economic benefits to doing so (known as agglomeration economies), but there’s also a certain feeling of solidarity that comes from being around other people with the same view of the world. There’s no tension because everyone has the same beliefs, whether that be religion or politics or sports or what to eat.
But just like there’s an argument to be made that successful people should try and resist the pull towards closed networks, I think there’s also an argument to be made that successful cities should try and resist the pull towards closed and divided cities.
That’s why some people believe that tolerance is a critical ingredient to fostering creativity in cities.
A reader recently shared with me an interesting article from Crain’s New York (2013) profiling three “architects as developers.” The three firms are DDG Partners (which I’ve mentioned before here on ATC), FLAnk, and Alloy.
I’ve written a lot about these emerging business models and I continue to think that we’re going to see more of them in the coming years. As evidence for that claim, I thought it was really interesting to read in the article that Vishaan Chakrabarti – who is director of the real estate program at Columbia University – made specific mention that there’s growing interest among his students to wear multiple hats. In other words, they don’t want to be just an architect or just a developer. They want do it all.
In a lot of cases, these firms are made up of partners who have those diverse skill sets. There’s only so much that one person can do. But that doesn’t negate the fact that vertically integrated companies are being formed that handle everything from design and construction to property management and development.
And if an increasing number of students today are interested and thinking about those models, then I think it’s a pretty safe bet that many of them will get out into the workforce and eventually create those companies in the future.
Ultimately, I think that’s a great thing for cities. Developers tend to have a bad reputation for thinking only about money. But when you bring design and other disciplines in-house, you create tensions in the process. And tension can be a great thing for innovation and creativity.
Image: 385 West 12th by Flank
And even here in Toronto you could say that we’ve become a divided city, albeit without the civil wars or race riots that have plagued the other cities listed above. Our voting patterns suggest a real urban-suburban divide and the many ethnic groups in this city continue to concentrate themselves in specific areas.
I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon in the context of a recent article I read talking about closed vs. open social networks. The article was talking about career success, but I think the lessons are also transferrable to cities.
The argument made in the article is that people who are able to position themselves in open networks – that is, become the connector between diverse kinds of social groups – are more likely to succeed than people who position themselves in closed networks where they are only surrounded by people they already know and by people who are similar to themselves.
And the reason for this is because people in open networks end up getting exposed to a broader set of viewpoints and ideas. They get a more accurate view of the world and they are able to problem solve better than those who may be coming at it from a more myopic or singular perspective.
But the challenge with open networks, is that there seems to be an innate human tendency towards closed networks. We love what is familiar. We love what is comfortable to us. In other words, we are attracted to people that are similar to ourselves. This is known as homophily.
So it’s not surprising that we tend to cluster ourselves in cities. Yes, there are economic benefits to doing so (known as agglomeration economies), but there’s also a certain feeling of solidarity that comes from being around other people with the same view of the world. There’s no tension because everyone has the same beliefs, whether that be religion or politics or sports or what to eat.
But just like there’s an argument to be made that successful people should try and resist the pull towards closed networks, I think there’s also an argument to be made that successful cities should try and resist the pull towards closed and divided cities.
That’s why some people believe that tolerance is a critical ingredient to fostering creativity in cities.
A reader recently shared with me an interesting article from Crain’s New York (2013) profiling three “architects as developers.” The three firms are DDG Partners (which I’ve mentioned before here on ATC), FLAnk, and Alloy.
I’ve written a lot about these emerging business models and I continue to think that we’re going to see more of them in the coming years. As evidence for that claim, I thought it was really interesting to read in the article that Vishaan Chakrabarti – who is director of the real estate program at Columbia University – made specific mention that there’s growing interest among his students to wear multiple hats. In other words, they don’t want to be just an architect or just a developer. They want do it all.
In a lot of cases, these firms are made up of partners who have those diverse skill sets. There’s only so much that one person can do. But that doesn’t negate the fact that vertically integrated companies are being formed that handle everything from design and construction to property management and development.
And if an increasing number of students today are interested and thinking about those models, then I think it’s a pretty safe bet that many of them will get out into the workforce and eventually create those companies in the future.
Ultimately, I think that’s a great thing for cities. Developers tend to have a bad reputation for thinking only about money. But when you bring design and other disciplines in-house, you create tensions in the process. And tension can be a great thing for innovation and creativity.
Image: 385 West 12th by Flank
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