Merry Christmas and/or happy whatever you happen to celebrate around this time of year.
Hopefully things have slowed down for you all and you’re relaxing with family and friends either at home or somewhere on vacation. I’ll be doing that here in Toronto and making pancakes for breakfast, because that’s what I like to do on Christmas morning.
If you’re in the market for some long form reading material while you relax, I recommend you check out an article in The Walrus called, After the Troubles. It’s by Toronto-based planner Joe Berridge – who is a partner at Urban Strategies – and it’s the story behind his team’s Belfast City Centre Regeneration Strategy and Investment Plan.
It’s a fascinating and entertaining read, and there are lots of comparisons between Toronto and Belfast. Here’s a little taste:
“IT WOULD BE HARD to conceive of two cities more different than Belfast and Toronto. One old world, one new; one grand, one utilitarian; one barely ticking over, one growing like topsy. And of course, one tribal, the other the epitome of post-tribe. Belfast is 96 percent white—forget about Catholic-Protestant, that’s the critical urban statistic. And yet it’s important to remember that Toronto itself was once the largest Orange town in the world. (Wikipedia asserts that every mayor of Toronto since its founding was an Orangeman until Nathan Philips, a wonderful Jewish mayor, was elected in 1954.) Even the current mayor, John Tory, draws his name from a bunch of brigands and royalist cattle thieves in the Irish backcountry.”
I spent a bit of time in Belfast when I was working in Dublin (2007) and so it was particularly interesting for me to read about his assessment of the city. Like Berridge, I found the city eerily empty during off-peak times. But it’s an architecturally rich city and a fascinating city for urbanists because of all that has happened.
Though now we are talking about “after the troubles.” Things are progressing. And that strikes me as a positive thought while I make my pancakes on Christmas morning.
The 2015 edition of The Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) was just released last month. It is often used as one of the sources for ranking financial centres.
The index – which is now in its 18th edition – is created using two main ingredients. The first is an analysis of 5 broad areas of competitiveness: 1) business environment, 2) financial sector development, 3) infrastructure, 4) human capital, and 5) reputational & general factors. And the second is an online survey given to financial services professionals. The 2015 edition includes responses from 3,194 professionals.
Below are the top 25 financial centres in the world according to the GFCI (the full list has 84 cities).
Here are a couple of things to note from this year’s index:
London has overtaken New York for the top spot – but both remain more or less at parity if you dig into the numbers.
Dublin is performing particularly well in Western Europe.
The leading centre in Eastern Europe is Warsaw (38th), with Istanbul just behind it.
Toronto is now second in North America, only to New York.
Sao Paulo remains the top Latin American centre.
And, Los Angeles (49th) and Liechtenstein (60th) join as new entrants this year.
If you’d like to see the full report and ranking, click here.
In 2007, I spent the summer working in Dublin, Ireland for a boutique real estate consulting firm called Urban Capital. (For those of you who are from Toronto and know the industry, there’s no connection between the Urban Capital in Dublin and the Urban Capital in Toronto.)
At the time, they were working with a number of government agencies on the development of masterplanned communities, as well as on specific development projects. Real estate was booming and everyone wanted to be a part of it – including the band U2.
But as you all know, the following year (2008) wasn’t kind to the real estate industry and, in particular, to Ireland. That year the country fell into recession for the first time since the 1980s and became labeled as one of the “PIGS.”
I really wish I had started this blog by that point because it would be interesting to look back today on my posts from that summer and see how I was thinking about the Dublin real estate market. I remember having many Guinness-fueled discussions about whether the bull market could continue.
In any event, the Irish economy is coming back.
This year GDP is expected to grow by 5.4%, which would make it the fastest growing economy in Europe. National debt is also falling. At the end of 2013 it stood at €215 billion or about 123% of GDP. And at the end of 2014 it had fallen to €203 billion or about 109% of GDP. The national debt is expected to fall below 100% of GDP by 2018.
At the same time, Ireland also got permission to pay off its bailout loans early. That’s a good sign.
I’m thinking and reading about all of this today because I was looking through my photo collection this morning and I stumbled upon a folder titled “Dublin 2007.” The photo at the top of this post was the terrace that I had outside of my apartment in the Docklands area. I don’t think I used it once that summer.
And here’s a photo of my bedroom. It must have been the curtains that sold me on the apartment.
I had a great time in Dublin that summer. It’s a fun and young city and I remember being incredibly impressed by the quality of city building that was going on. I’m sure that wasn’t lost in the Great Recession.