I came across an interesting discussion on Twitter last night about tunnels, bridges, elevated walkways, and Toronto’s elaborate (mostly) underground shopping complex known as the PATH. It’s the largest of its kind in the world.

Here’s the thing: the idea of pulling people off the street and into an underground shopping mall, runs counter to what many urbanists believe is the optimal outcome.

Below is a footnote I found in a 2006 research paper by Pierre Bélanger called, Underground landscape: The urbanism and infrastructure of Toronto’s downtown pedestrian network.

“The reluctance of urban designers and academics to engage the dynamics of the underground is stunning. For almost 50 years, urban designers, landscape architects and planners have longed for car-free pedestrian environments that are safe, secure and accessible. From a planning perspective, the Toronto underground may be the ultimate form of attrition of the automobile on the urban landscape: there are no parking lots, no asphalt, and no congestion. With its mass-transit accessibility, it is an ideal pedestrian network. This reluctance may in part be attributable to a prevailing attitude that privately-controlled underground shopping is undesirable, at best dismissible. As self-contained environments, they are perceived as lying outside the so-called public domain and that they kill off street life. As a more legitimate form of collective space, street-level activity located within municipal right-of-ways therefore receives much more advocacy.”

Of course, there is truth to the notion that activity gets concentrated below grade. When people visit Toronto’s Financial District for the first time, they’ll often ask: Where is the retail? And then you have to explain that it’s all underground and that we live like mole people from 9-5.

But despite this reluctance on the part of urbanists, people do seem to like it. When you’re marketing a building in the CBD, being PATH-connected is a feature, not a bug. I always joke that in the summer, I hate the PATH. But in the winter, I love it. 

There’s also a feeling of hyper-connectivity during business hours in the PATH – particularly at lunch. You have everyone leaving their desks, descending from their towers, and mixing all about in a dense pedestrian-only network. It’s unusual not to run into someone you know.

So love it or hate it, perhaps we should appreciate it for what it is: thriving city life.

A few weeks ago I received a community meeting notice in the mail for a new development happening in my neighborhood. I am excited about the project and so I immediately put it in my calendar and told myself: “I’m going to this.”

But then a work commitment came up and I skipped the event. I always do this. I put these public meetings in my calendar with every intention of going, but then as soon as something else comes up, it gets bumped. So in the end, my voice will not be heard.

I say this not because I think my singular voice is all that important, but because I suspect I’m not alone when it comes to these community meetings. I live and breathe city building and if I struggle to attend these things, what does that mean for the average resident?

As soon as you create friction – such as having to go somewhere, physically – you’re going to lose a large segment of people. This also means that only those who are highly motivated will attend.

I saw this phenomenon play out in my condo building. At our first annual general meeting – when the building still had a bunch of deficiencies and the elevators were spotty – we had a sold out and lively crowd. 

But as soon as things started humming along in year two (we are now a well-oiled machine), we then struggled to reach quorum. Why show up unless you’ve got a bone to pick, right?

What was the last public meeting that you attended in your city?

This afternoon I walked the High Line with a friend of mine who seemed to know everything there is to know about new residential development in Manhattan. 

She recently purchased a place and so she had done her homework. She was pointing out every building and telling me the price per square foot range; whether the floor plans were well designed (or if they had misproportioned rooms and awkwardly placed columns); and who the architect was. 

Takeaway: To be competitive in the luxury segment in New York, you really need to have a name brand architect on the project. That seems to be the price of entry.

As she was telling me about the “competitively priced” building in the low $2,000′s psf and the expensive penthouse that recently sold for $7,000+ psf, I started to wonder about historical pricing in New York. How has it trended? 

I also told her that you could buy a really great condo in Toronto for $700 psf. She laughed at how affordable that was. It’s all about your point of reference.

In any case, I found a research report from 2004 called: Why is Manhattan So Expensive? The story is one that you’ve heard before. It’s about the impact of land use restrictions on home prices. But it does also include some historical data on average condo prices.

In 1984, the median price per square for a condo in Manhattan was $359 psf. It peaked in 1987 at $505 psf and then dropped back down to the $300′s in the early 90′s. That was not a great time for real estate. However, by 2002, the median price had rebounded to $606 psf. All USD figures.

From 2002 onwards, Manhattan saw a dramatic increase in home prices. Below are two charts from Corcoran (Q3 2016 data) and Castle Avenue, respectively:

Toronto is obviously not New York, but’s interesting to consider that the average price of a downtown Toronto condo, today, is probably in the low $600′s psf. That’s in Canadian dollars and that’s pricing that New York saw decades ago. 

It reminds me that “crazy pricing” can oftentimes be a psychological reaction to a pricing anchor that we previously set in our minds. It feels crazy. But is it?

Image: Me