I love the work that LSE Cities (London School of Economics) is doing with Urban Age. If you haven’t yet checked out their site, you should do that now. If you’re a city geek, it’s the kind of site you can get lost in for hours. Especially if you’re a sucker for great diagrams like I am.
Here’s one I found today that shows where cities are growing in the world:
Each circle represents a city (well, metropolitan area). The dark green dot is the city’s population in 1950. The lighter green dot is the city’s population in 1990. And the yellow dot is the city’s projected population by 2025. Click here for a larger version of the map.
What’s fascinating about this diagram is that you can so clearly see how the most significant population growth has shifted away from the West to the rest of the world and in particular Asia. That is, those dots have more yellow than green.
We, of course, already knew this was happening. And population is just one dimension. But it’s still interesting to see this in diagram form. We are living through the rise of the East. And this diagram is a reminder of that.
If you’ve been reading this blog since the summer, you might remember that there was a period of time where I wrote incessantly about the removal of the eastern portion of Toronto’s elevated Gardiner Expressway.
Ultimately City Council didn’t vote the way I believe we should have. But I remain hopeful that somehow we will manage to do the right thing and replace it with a surface boulevard. Now – before the east waterfront gets developed – is the right time to make that happen.
However, the western portion of the Gardiner Expressway is a different story. The adjacent area is already developed and it is unlikely that this highway is going anywhere any time soon. So for the foreseeable future, we are stuck with it.
And if we are stuck with it then we should make the absolute best of it – even celebrate it. Which is why Toronto is buzzing right now with the news that a 1.75 km stretch under the western portion of the Gardiner Expressway will be remade into a vibrant public space by 2017. This is thanks to a generous $25 million private donation. (Is that enough money?)
Here’s the overall programming strategy, going from west to east (via undergardiner.com):
And here are two renderings:
The first phase is expected to run from Strachan Avenue in the west all the way to Spadina Avenue in the east. That is what is shown above.
Two key elements include a grand stair at Strachan Avenue, which looks like this today (via Google Streetview):
And a pedestrian bridge over Fort York Boulevard, which looks like this today:
All of this doesn’t change my opinion of the Gardiner East, but I do believe that this is an incredibly exciting opportunity for the city. Today the space under the Gardiner is a void in our public realm.
I also think it could be quite interesting to have these two opposing urban conditions along the central waterfront. A linear underpass park in the west and an open air boulevard in the east.
It’s also exciting to see private money step up. It goes to show you that there is no shortage of passionate city builders in this town.
Top image courtesy of Harry Choi Photography.
Recently it has been in the news that BuzzBuzzHome.com – the new construction real estate site – will be launching a “buy now” feature in the new year (2016).
This will allow people to buy condos and homes online with their credit card, which means that people will be able to pay the $5,000 deposit online and process all the paperwork that today happens within a sales office.
This is huge.
If you’re somebody who has used a computer and the internet before, the process today feels archaic. Typically you go online to register for a project and then somebody will call you to arrange an appointment. If you ask them to email you the price sheet and floor plans ahead of time, they’ll almost always tell you that they can’t do that and that you’ll need to come into the sales office for an appointment.
But what about if you end not liking the floor plans and you’re about to waste a few hours of your time? Too bad. The sales funnel requires you to be present in person. This is nothing against the many talented sales professionals working in new construction; it’s just that if I can design and price out a car online and if Mark Cuban can buy a $40 million jet online, then I should be able to shop for a new condo online.
BuzzBuzzHome has been chipping away at the current model for years and they’ve managed to get a lot more information online than was previously available. When Matthew and Cliff first launched BuzzBuzzHome in the late 2000s it was almost unheard of for developers to put any sort of pricing and floor plans online. Now they at least have some of that on their site. I’m glad they stuck with it.
Because what’s equally exciting about what BuzzBuzzHome is doing is that in order to offer a “buy now” feature, they also need to have an accurate account of all developer inventory on hand. And so alongside this “buy now” feature they’re also building out a full cloud-based inventory management system for developers.
This means that BuzzBuzzHome will soon be managing the supply-side of the new construction marketplace. Think of the data and analytics you can extract from a platform like this. It’s going to bring much greater transparency to this industry.
But if your business is in any way connected to the new construction real estate market, I would take this morning and think about how the above innovations could impact your business model. I can think of a few winners and losers.
Some of you might be thinking that people aren’t going to make the biggest purchase of their life online. But I would bet the farm that many people will. I know I would.