About a month ago, a reader of ATC and friend of mine suggested that I write a post on some of the common misconceptions that people hold about cities. I immediately thought it was a good idea and so I started a draft post with some of my initial thoughts.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been collecting fallacies as they came to me, waiting until I reached a nice round number like 5. Well today, I reached that number. So here are 5 misconceptions that I think people often hold about cities. If you have any others, or if you disagree, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
1. Adding more lanes will solve traffic congestion
There’s a saying I read somewhere: Adding more lanes to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to deal with obesity. I can’t remember where I read it, but I like it a lot because it gets at the heart of this fallacy: Trying to build our way out of traffic congestion has proven time and time again to be a losing battle. In fact, it has been shown to make traffic even worse as a result of “induced demand.” The more roads you build, the more people drive.
About a month ago, a reader of ATC and friend of mine suggested that I write a post on some of the common misconceptions that people hold about cities. I immediately thought it was a good idea and so I started a draft post with some of my initial thoughts.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been collecting fallacies as they came to me, waiting until I reached a nice round number like 5. Well today, I reached that number. So here are 5 misconceptions that I think people often hold about cities. If you have any others, or if you disagree, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
1. Adding more lanes will solve traffic congestion
There’s a saying I read somewhere: Adding more lanes to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to deal with obesity. I can’t remember where I read it, but I like it a lot because it gets at the heart of this fallacy: Trying to build our way out of traffic congestion has proven time and time again to be a losing battle. In fact, it has been shown to make traffic even worse as a result of “induced demand.” The more roads you build, the more people drive.
2. A suburban home is always cheaper
While it is true that the
direct
cost of a suburban home is usually less than one in the center of a city, many people often neglect to factor in the
indirect
costs of a home purchase – the biggest of which is usually transportation costs.
As you move out from the center of a city and home prices start to fall, I like to think of it as transfer from housing costs to transportation costs. In other words, what you save on the price of your home, simply gets used to pay for a car (or perhaps a second car), as well as the additional time you’re going to spend traveling.
So how much is an hour of your time worth? Have you ever attached a value to it and added it to the price of your home? Because if you factor in transportation costs and your time, you might find that your suburban home is actually more expensive.
3. Opposing new development and advocating for affordable housing is a responsible way to build cities
Community opposition is a big part of the development game. But what a lot of people don't think about is that when you oppose or stop new development (let’s say it’s residential), the demand for that housing doesn’t go away.
In fact, all it does is create more pressure on the housing stock that does exist and foster an environment where the rich will starting outbidding the poor for housing. More simply, you end up creating a supply constrained market and that drives up home prices. Demand > supply. So in reality, opposing new development and, at the same time, advocating for more affordable housing is a contradiction.
As a comparative example, let’s think about another basic human need: water.
Imagine that you could only buy water from stores (it didn’t come out of taps). But that every time the delivery people were trying to bring more water to these stores, that there was a group of people who fought and opposed them. These opposers already had enough water for themselves and they didn’t want additional water being sold as it would bring new customers into their local grocery store and disrupt their way of life.
This, of course, caused the price of water to rise as the rich people started offering more for the water. This in turn made it difficult for the poorer folk to afford any water at all. But instead of allowing the delivery people to simply deliver more water, it was decided that out of the water that they have, that some of it should be earmarked as “affordable water” and priced accordingly. That would guarantee that the poorer folk could still have some.
Does that sound like a sensible solution to you?
4. Developers don’t want to build big apartments
Here in Toronto there’s a somewhat pervasive belief that developers don’t want to build big condo and apartment units. The thought is that small units are more profitable and so developers are doing everything they can to squeeze people into small units. But I’ve argued before that this isn’t the case. It’s far more nuanced than that.
To illustrate this point, imagine you’re a developer debating between building two 500 square foot condo units or one 1,000 square foot condo unit. If you build the two 500 square foot condo units you’ll need 2 x kitchens, 2 x entry doors, 2 x separate color selection appointments, 2 x separate PDI appointments, and you’ll have to pay development charges on two 1 bedroom units (to name only a few things).
On the other hand, if you build one 1,000 square foot condo unit you’re only going to need 1 of each of the items listed above and you’ll be paying development charges on only one 2 bedroom condo unit (which currently works out to be less than what you’d be paying for the two 1 bedroom units – it’s not quite double).
Which one do you think would be cheaper to build?
5. Technology is going to make cities irrelevant
Lastly, during the dot com era there was a growing belief that technology and the internet were going to make cities and real estate irrelevant. Capital was flowing out of real estate and into tech companies, because that was seen as the future. Bricks and mortar were passé.
But since then we’ve learned that it’s actually the opposite. Paradoxically, technology has made cities even more important. The returns to being smart and talented are huge in the right place. So much so that our biggest concern shouldn’t be whether cities are going to become irrelevant, but whether we’re concentrating too much wealth and talent in only a select few.
So there you have it, 5 misconceptions about cities. I’m sure there are many others, so I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.
As an architecture and city lover, it’ll probably surprise you that I’ve never been to Chicago. I think it may have to do with the fact that it has always felt like a sister to Toronto–another Great Lakes city of comparable size. And when you travel, you often want something novel.
But that’s no excuse.
Thankfully I’m happy to report that last week I booked a trip to Chicago for this August. I’ll be there for an extended long weekend. But since it’s for a bachelor party, it remains to be seen how much archi-touring I’ll actually get a chance to do.
When most people think of skyscrapers they think of New York. But in actuality, if there’s one city that gave birth to the modern skyscraper I would argue that it was Chicago. And it was made possible by the steel industry.
Before the late 19th century, tall buildings were largely built with their exterior walls supporting most of the loads. This meant that the taller you went, the thicker the walls had to be near the bottom of the building. This is why older buildings often feel so heavy and permanent.
But when structural steel became widely available, a new building form was created. All of a sudden architects and builders could create relatively light weight structural steel frames to support the building. The skin, or outside of the building, was no longer carrying the weight.
That made images like this possible:
For most of us today, this building under construction looks fairly typical. First the structure goes up and then it gets clad with its window and exterior skin. But at the time, this sort of construction technique–with the 3rd and 4th floors still unenclosed and the upper floors finished–would have blown people’s minds. It was an entirely new way of building.
Steel framed buildings removed the technical limitations of building tall and also opened up entirely new possibilities for architectural expression–such as the all glass building. Today, there’s a lot of criticism around our glass buildings. But it’s interesting to note that it started as the futuristic dream of architects.
Freed from the technical limitations of load-bearing exterior walls, architects such as Mies van der Rohe began dreaming of transparent, all glass buildings. For them it represented modernity. It was the future. Above is an early charcoal sketch of that dream by Mies.
But our fixation with glass and transparency has never been because of environmental efficiency. It was about light, transparency and feelings of modernity. So as sustainability becomes increasingly critical, we should remember that there’s still lots of innovating left for us to do.
Art and architecture has always been a representation of the time and era in which it was created–which is one of the reasons I’m so interested in technology today. It’s our era. It’s our “structural steel”. And it’s going to impact our cities.
When posterity looks back on us and what we’ve done, I’m sure that will be clear.
Some of you might know that I’ve recently started using a mobile app called Strava. It’s a platform that allows you to track your runs and bike rides, as well as those of your friends. It tells you your speed, elevation changes, and it also maps your trips–among many other things. Here’s what my 50 km ‘Ride for Heart’ looks like from last Sunday.
For $20,000 a year, transportation planners and others can access Strava Metro, which provides an unprecedented look at where and how people are biking. It can tell them where they speed up and slow down, for example, or where they might stay in the street or ride on a crosswalk. That information can reveal where bike lanes or traffic calming measures would be useful, and if those already installed are effective.
It’s a perfect example of how “tech” is infiltrating so many other sectors. Mobile technology and networks are generating huge amounts of data and it’s happening at an increasing rate. We’re gaining insights into the way people live that simply wasn’t possible before. Some of this information will inevitably be misused, but a lot of it will be used to improve the way we live our lives.
I know that the City of Toronto also has its own proprietary cycling app and is hoping to collect similar sorts of data from it. But intuitively, I don’t think they’ll be able to compete with the scale of a platform like Strava. Though I certainly applaud the initiative.
cost of a suburban home is usually less than one in the center of a city, many people often neglect to factor in the
indirect
costs of a home purchase – the biggest of which is usually transportation costs.
As you move out from the center of a city and home prices start to fall, I like to think of it as transfer from housing costs to transportation costs. In other words, what you save on the price of your home, simply gets used to pay for a car (or perhaps a second car), as well as the additional time you’re going to spend traveling.
So how much is an hour of your time worth? Have you ever attached a value to it and added it to the price of your home? Because if you factor in transportation costs and your time, you might find that your suburban home is actually more expensive.
3. Opposing new development and advocating for affordable housing is a responsible way to build cities
Community opposition is a big part of the development game. But what a lot of people don't think about is that when you oppose or stop new development (let’s say it’s residential), the demand for that housing doesn’t go away.
In fact, all it does is create more pressure on the housing stock that does exist and foster an environment where the rich will starting outbidding the poor for housing. More simply, you end up creating a supply constrained market and that drives up home prices. Demand > supply. So in reality, opposing new development and, at the same time, advocating for more affordable housing is a contradiction.
As a comparative example, let’s think about another basic human need: water.
Imagine that you could only buy water from stores (it didn’t come out of taps). But that every time the delivery people were trying to bring more water to these stores, that there was a group of people who fought and opposed them. These opposers already had enough water for themselves and they didn’t want additional water being sold as it would bring new customers into their local grocery store and disrupt their way of life.
This, of course, caused the price of water to rise as the rich people started offering more for the water. This in turn made it difficult for the poorer folk to afford any water at all. But instead of allowing the delivery people to simply deliver more water, it was decided that out of the water that they have, that some of it should be earmarked as “affordable water” and priced accordingly. That would guarantee that the poorer folk could still have some.
Does that sound like a sensible solution to you?
4. Developers don’t want to build big apartments
Here in Toronto there’s a somewhat pervasive belief that developers don’t want to build big condo and apartment units. The thought is that small units are more profitable and so developers are doing everything they can to squeeze people into small units. But I’ve argued before that this isn’t the case. It’s far more nuanced than that.
To illustrate this point, imagine you’re a developer debating between building two 500 square foot condo units or one 1,000 square foot condo unit. If you build the two 500 square foot condo units you’ll need 2 x kitchens, 2 x entry doors, 2 x separate color selection appointments, 2 x separate PDI appointments, and you’ll have to pay development charges on two 1 bedroom units (to name only a few things).
On the other hand, if you build one 1,000 square foot condo unit you’re only going to need 1 of each of the items listed above and you’ll be paying development charges on only one 2 bedroom condo unit (which currently works out to be less than what you’d be paying for the two 1 bedroom units – it’s not quite double).
Which one do you think would be cheaper to build?
5. Technology is going to make cities irrelevant
Lastly, during the dot com era there was a growing belief that technology and the internet were going to make cities and real estate irrelevant. Capital was flowing out of real estate and into tech companies, because that was seen as the future. Bricks and mortar were passé.
But since then we’ve learned that it’s actually the opposite. Paradoxically, technology has made cities even more important. The returns to being smart and talented are huge in the right place. So much so that our biggest concern shouldn’t be whether cities are going to become irrelevant, but whether we’re concentrating too much wealth and talent in only a select few.
So there you have it, 5 misconceptions about cities. I’m sure there are many others, so I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.
As an architecture and city lover, it’ll probably surprise you that I’ve never been to Chicago. I think it may have to do with the fact that it has always felt like a sister to Toronto–another Great Lakes city of comparable size. And when you travel, you often want something novel.
But that’s no excuse.
Thankfully I’m happy to report that last week I booked a trip to Chicago for this August. I’ll be there for an extended long weekend. But since it’s for a bachelor party, it remains to be seen how much archi-touring I’ll actually get a chance to do.
When most people think of skyscrapers they think of New York. But in actuality, if there’s one city that gave birth to the modern skyscraper I would argue that it was Chicago. And it was made possible by the steel industry.
Before the late 19th century, tall buildings were largely built with their exterior walls supporting most of the loads. This meant that the taller you went, the thicker the walls had to be near the bottom of the building. This is why older buildings often feel so heavy and permanent.
But when structural steel became widely available, a new building form was created. All of a sudden architects and builders could create relatively light weight structural steel frames to support the building. The skin, or outside of the building, was no longer carrying the weight.
That made images like this possible:
For most of us today, this building under construction looks fairly typical. First the structure goes up and then it gets clad with its window and exterior skin. But at the time, this sort of construction technique–with the 3rd and 4th floors still unenclosed and the upper floors finished–would have blown people’s minds. It was an entirely new way of building.
Steel framed buildings removed the technical limitations of building tall and also opened up entirely new possibilities for architectural expression–such as the all glass building. Today, there’s a lot of criticism around our glass buildings. But it’s interesting to note that it started as the futuristic dream of architects.
Freed from the technical limitations of load-bearing exterior walls, architects such as Mies van der Rohe began dreaming of transparent, all glass buildings. For them it represented modernity. It was the future. Above is an early charcoal sketch of that dream by Mies.
But our fixation with glass and transparency has never been because of environmental efficiency. It was about light, transparency and feelings of modernity. So as sustainability becomes increasingly critical, we should remember that there’s still lots of innovating left for us to do.
Art and architecture has always been a representation of the time and era in which it was created–which is one of the reasons I’m so interested in technology today. It’s our era. It’s our “structural steel”. And it’s going to impact our cities.
When posterity looks back on us and what we’ve done, I’m sure that will be clear.
Some of you might know that I’ve recently started using a mobile app called Strava. It’s a platform that allows you to track your runs and bike rides, as well as those of your friends. It tells you your speed, elevation changes, and it also maps your trips–among many other things. Here’s what my 50 km ‘Ride for Heart’ looks like from last Sunday.
For $20,000 a year, transportation planners and others can access Strava Metro, which provides an unprecedented look at where and how people are biking. It can tell them where they speed up and slow down, for example, or where they might stay in the street or ride on a crosswalk. That information can reveal where bike lanes or traffic calming measures would be useful, and if those already installed are effective.
It’s a perfect example of how “tech” is infiltrating so many other sectors. Mobile technology and networks are generating huge amounts of data and it’s happening at an increasing rate. We’re gaining insights into the way people live that simply wasn’t possible before. Some of this information will inevitably be misused, but a lot of it will be used to improve the way we live our lives.
I know that the City of Toronto also has its own proprietary cycling app and is hoping to collect similar sorts of data from it. But intuitively, I don’t think they’ll be able to compete with the scale of a platform like Strava. Though I certainly applaud the initiative.
