One of the things that I have learned over the years from sitting on panel discussions about city building is that, if I talk about the challenges and economic realities of development, I will be less popular than if I just tell feel-good stories about urbanism and architecture. The latter is often what people want to hear. It's more exciting.

But to ignore the economic realities of the world is to ignore real solutions. And this, as I have talked about before, is one of the main qualms that I had with architecture school. Money, economics, and real estate matters were tertiary, if not entirely taboo. Just focus on the purity of design and everything else will resolve itself.

Now don't get me wrong, I love design. It is fundamental. But so are a bunch of other things, which is why I think this article, by Benjamin Schneider, hits the nail on the head. It is specifically a review of a MoMA exhibit called New York, New Publics, but really the overarching message is this one here: "Enough with the feel-good architecture."

To tell a feel-good story within this framework, urban development projects must be edited and curated to cleanse them of these associations. Favored projects must somehow appear to transcend capitalism, NIMBYism, an anti-urban federal government, and the compromises inherent in the transformation of the built environment. Because this is impossible—except in the case of marginal beautification projects—the public is left with false expectations about how cities get built, making the hard stuff even harder to pull off.

City building always involves compromises. But the more we're upfront about what they are, the sooner we'll get to more optimal solutions.

Social media, as we all know, isn't all that real. Photos are cropped, edited, and distorted all the time. But that's kind of how things work these days and it's not just on social media. Back in 2014, it was revealed that about 75% of Ikea's catalogues were made up of computer generated images. It's simply a lot faster to do that than stage a bunch of spaces for photoshoots. Fast forward six years and Ikea is now taking it a step further by integrating "digital influencers" into their ads. Here's what that looks like:

This particular campaign was done to promote a new store in Tokyo's Harajuku district. And it features a popular digital influencer known as Imma. This is my first foray into the world of digital influencers, but Imma is apparently popular enough to have some 265,000 followers on Instagram. What I have just learned is that a real human is first photographed and filmed for all of this content. Imma's digital head is then transplanted onto said content. That's how these digital influencers are created.

It all feels very Japanese to me. It also feels a bit like the starting premise of a great Black Mirror episode. But on the other hand, is it really all that different from the highly doctored content that already graces the internet?

Airbnb has just announced a new initiative called Backyard, where it will be looking at new ways in which homes can be designed, built, and shared. They are, in a broad sense, becoming architects.

The initiative has been in the prototyping phase for some time now, but the plan is to put forward some sort of product in 2019. Despite the name, the initiative won’t just be focused on small backyard cottages or accessory dwelling units.

Here is an excerpt from Fast Company:

“Backyard investigates how buildings could utilize sophisticated manufacturing techniques, smart-home technologies, and gains vast insight from the Airbnb community to thoughtfully respond to changing owner or occupant needs over time,” Gebbia says. “Backyard isn’t a house, it’s an initiative to rethink the home. Homes are complex, and we’re taking a broad approach–not just designing one thing, but a system that can do many things.”

This is yet another example of tech and real estate coming together. But as I’ve mentioned before on the blog, I think eventually we’ll stop making that distinction; it will just become the way in which we build companies.