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August 2, 2016

Journeys by walking

Arup, the global consulting firm, has an interesting publication out called Cities Alive: Towards a walking world. The report highlights 50 benefits of walking and then 40 actions that city leaders can take today to transform their cities. The entire study was informed by examining 80 international case studies.

As I was going through the report, the following diagram caught my attention. It compares journeys on foot vs. journeys by car for a collection of global cities.

The turquoise circles represent % of journeys by walking. On the left is Los Angeles at 4%. And on the right is Istanbul at 48%.

The red circles represent % of journeys by car. On the left is Miami at 79% (with Los Angeles right beside it). And on the right is Kolkata at 2%.

The map in the middle of the circles represents pedestrians killed in traffic crashes per 100,000 people.

I’m not sure where the data was drawn from, but it’s not all that surprising to see a few North American cities clustered towards the left (less walking; more driving). Still, I wonder how “journey” is defined.

To view the full report, click here. Arup also produces a lot of other great content that you can download for free, here.

May 7, 2016

Is Toronto a world-class city?

Earlier this week I was on a panel discussion called Building Toronto Tomorrow. One of the questions was about whether or not Toronto is world-class city. It elicited a good discussion, so I thought I would talk about that today on the blog.

Shamez Virani, President of CentreCourt Developments, responded by saying that he thinks Toronto is the greatest city in the world and that he wishes more people would just accept how incredible this city is. I agreed with him.

I also responded by saying that I hate this question. I think it reeks of insecurity and I think it’s a bit of a red herring. It distracts from more direct and meaningful questions – questions such as our livability and our position as a global city.

Because the reality is that Toronto is one of the most livable cities in the world and, in my view, we are the only true global city in Canada. We are an important node in the global economy for the flow of goods, people (we’re particularly good at this), capital, and now information. There’s a lot to be proud of.

Blogger and Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Aaron M. Renn, recently published an interesting long-form article called, Rethinking America’s Cities’ Success Strategy.

One of the central themes is the idea that globalization has caused a kind of bifurcation in cities – a disconnect between the local and the global. In an effort to compete with other global cities around the world, we have begun to turn our back on local concerns. At the same time, not every city has the market power of, say, New York or London.

So what does this mean for cities? Here’s a quote from the article that I think does a good job explaining the mental model:

At the end of the article, Aaron makes a number of recommendations for how to better think about local entrepreneurship and economic growth. The first one is as follows:

“Local civic priorities should favor building a successful and inclusive local economy, including entrepreneurship, over global concerns and real estate development.”

Despite this being seemingly contradictory to do what I do for a living, I think it’s important to note that on a fundamental level, architects and developers simply create space.

It might be a beautiful space. A space that improves well-being, creates value, and enables certain activities. But at the end of the day, there needs to be demand for that space. And a robust local economy is paramount to that equation. So I agree that we shouldn’t forget about local and expect that “if we build it, they will come.”

If you have the time, the full article is worth a read. It’s also part of a broader series on entrepreneurship and cities, so there are a bunch of other related articles on the same page.

Brandon Donnelly

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Journeys by walking

Is Toronto a world-class city?

The local vs. global city