Today, myself and a few others spent the afternoon urban exploring Hamilton, Ontario with Thomas Allen of the blog, Rebuild Hamilton. If you don’t read his blog, you should. Since he started writing about 3 years ago, he has really emerged as the online voice of Hamilton’s urban resurgence.
If you’re from Toronto, you’ve probably been hearing rumblings about good things happening west of the city. Rumblings about people leaving overpriced Toronto for greener and more affordable pastures in Hamilton, and even that it was destined to become the Brooklyn of Toronto. That basically means Millennials, trendy coffee shops, and beards. (For the record, Thomas’s beard is very nice.)
With all this talk of affordable housing and beards, I decided that it was time to make a pilgrimage. Below is a short photo essay of what we saw.
We started the day east of Hamilton where we found this beauty along the waterfront. I don’t know who designed it, but it’s called the Cube House and it was construction managed by Toms + McNally Design. You’re going to want to click through to their website to see the interior photos.
We then made our way downtown to Jackson Square. Jackson Square is one of two downtown malls (the other is the post-modern City Centre Mall). It has seen a lot of investment in recent years and I was impressed to find a thriving grocery store.
Then came a taco and craft beer pit stop at The Mule. I would definitely recommend this spot if you happen to find yourself in the area.
Following this, we walked James Street North, which we were told has only really come up in the past 5 years or so. And alongside with this resurgence has come the slogan: Art is the new steel. This, of course, is responding to the fact that Hamilton is the steel capital of Canada, but that the industry is facing many challenges. I think it’s a neat slogan.
On James Street we stopped in at Saint James Espresso Bar & Eatery, and it was everything we had hoped for and more. It was more because not only was it a cool space with great coffee, but they had some fancy thing called steam punk coffee.
After James Street, we then drove around checking out some of the other areas in the city such as Kirkendall and neighboring Dundas.
All in all, this afternoon was a great reminder that we are truly living in an urban century. It’s not just the Toronto’s, Berlin’s and Shanghai’s of the of the world that are laying down bike lanes, investing in art and culture, and generally reimagining their city centers. It’s also happening in smaller and mid-sized cities such as Hamilton. And that’s really exciting.
This evening I was interviewed for a documentary called The Millennial Dream. It’s all about how Millennials – people like me – are rethinking or even rejecting some of the traditional notions of The American Dream. It’s being produced by Hemmings House.
My part was all about housing.
So a lot of it was about how housing preferences have (or have not) changed for Millennials. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’d already be familiar with many of the topics I covered.
What’s most interesting to me though, is not what Millennials are doing today. We already know that there’s been a return to cities and that many young people prefer walkable and authentic communities. Everyone is talking about it and it’s no longer novel.
What’s more interesting to me is what Millennials are going to do in the next 10 years when the majority of the cohort is in their 30′s. What percentage will be married? What percentage will have kids? And, where and how will they choose to live in cities?
Because there are some structural changes happening. Marriage rates in the US have been declining since the 1960s (see New York Times).
Today, myself and a few others spent the afternoon urban exploring Hamilton, Ontario with Thomas Allen of the blog, Rebuild Hamilton. If you don’t read his blog, you should. Since he started writing about 3 years ago, he has really emerged as the online voice of Hamilton’s urban resurgence.
If you’re from Toronto, you’ve probably been hearing rumblings about good things happening west of the city. Rumblings about people leaving overpriced Toronto for greener and more affordable pastures in Hamilton, and even that it was destined to become the Brooklyn of Toronto. That basically means Millennials, trendy coffee shops, and beards. (For the record, Thomas’s beard is very nice.)
With all this talk of affordable housing and beards, I decided that it was time to make a pilgrimage. Below is a short photo essay of what we saw.
We started the day east of Hamilton where we found this beauty along the waterfront. I don’t know who designed it, but it’s called the Cube House and it was construction managed by Toms + McNally Design. You’re going to want to click through to their website to see the interior photos.
We then made our way downtown to Jackson Square. Jackson Square is one of two downtown malls (the other is the post-modern City Centre Mall). It has seen a lot of investment in recent years and I was impressed to find a thriving grocery store.
Then came a taco and craft beer pit stop at The Mule. I would definitely recommend this spot if you happen to find yourself in the area.
Following this, we walked James Street North, which we were told has only really come up in the past 5 years or so. And alongside with this resurgence has come the slogan: Art is the new steel. This, of course, is responding to the fact that Hamilton is the steel capital of Canada, but that the industry is facing many challenges. I think it’s a neat slogan.
On James Street we stopped in at Saint James Espresso Bar & Eatery, and it was everything we had hoped for and more. It was more because not only was it a cool space with great coffee, but they had some fancy thing called steam punk coffee.
After James Street, we then drove around checking out some of the other areas in the city such as Kirkendall and neighboring Dundas.
All in all, this afternoon was a great reminder that we are truly living in an urban century. It’s not just the Toronto’s, Berlin’s and Shanghai’s of the of the world that are laying down bike lanes, investing in art and culture, and generally reimagining their city centers. It’s also happening in smaller and mid-sized cities such as Hamilton. And that’s really exciting.
This evening I was interviewed for a documentary called The Millennial Dream. It’s all about how Millennials – people like me – are rethinking or even rejecting some of the traditional notions of The American Dream. It’s being produced by Hemmings House.
My part was all about housing.
So a lot of it was about how housing preferences have (or have not) changed for Millennials. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’d already be familiar with many of the topics I covered.
What’s most interesting to me though, is not what Millennials are doing today. We already know that there’s been a return to cities and that many young people prefer walkable and authentic communities. Everyone is talking about it and it’s no longer novel.
What’s more interesting to me is what Millennials are going to do in the next 10 years when the majority of the cohort is in their 30′s. What percentage will be married? What percentage will have kids? And, where and how will they choose to live in cities?
Because there are some structural changes happening. Marriage rates in the US have been declining since the 1960s (see New York Times).
And fertility rates are at their the lowest in US history. So in theory, and unless things change, Millennials should on average demand different types of housing. Fewer of them are likely to marry and they’re having fewer kids.
But at the same time, I also believe that there have been changes in consumer preference that are not going to completely reverse as Millennials age. So city builders will need to come up with new and creative forms of housing for families who want to stay in urban centers. And that’s an exciting challenge.
I’d be curious to hear thoughts in the comment section below. The documentary won’t be out until the end of the year, so you still have a chance to influence its direction. More voices are better than one.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, Toronto built a lot of towers. A 2010 report by the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal identified 1,925 rental apartment towers of 8 storeys or more across the Greater Toronto Area.
That’s the second largest inventory of apartment towers in North America – many or most of which are in car-oriented suburban neighborhoods.
Of course, Toronto continues to build a lot of towers. But this second and current wave of towers is quite different than the last. Virtually all of them are now condo (as opposed to rental) and most are concentrated in central neighborhoods that are generally well-serviced by transit.
This has created a lot of positives for the city. It brought more people into the core to live, which in turn brought more retailers and employers into the city. It has created what I believe is a more vibrant and exciting 24/7 city.
But this return to city centers (as well as the economic spikiness it has created) is now well established both in Toronto, as well as in other cities all around the world. Every real estate conference or panel you go to now talks about Millennials and their desire to be in walkable communities. We got it.
And relatively speaking, those kinds of communities aren’t that difficult to create when you’re infilling city centers. Certainly not at this point. The street grid and bones are usually all in place. And the urban form is often conducive to transit.
The real challenge – and thus opportunity – for Toronto and lots of other cities is how to urbanize the (inner) suburbs and in particular these “towers in a park”. If you follow this space, you’ll know that there’s a lot more that we could be doing.
How do we rethink their relationship to the rest of the city? How do we better connect them through transit? How do we plug them in economically? In my opinion, these are far more difficult tasks. But they’re important ones for the long-term success of our cities.
And fertility rates are at their the lowest in US history. So in theory, and unless things change, Millennials should on average demand different types of housing. Fewer of them are likely to marry and they’re having fewer kids.
But at the same time, I also believe that there have been changes in consumer preference that are not going to completely reverse as Millennials age. So city builders will need to come up with new and creative forms of housing for families who want to stay in urban centers. And that’s an exciting challenge.
I’d be curious to hear thoughts in the comment section below. The documentary won’t be out until the end of the year, so you still have a chance to influence its direction. More voices are better than one.
Between the 1950s and 1980s, Toronto built a lot of towers. A 2010 report by the Centre for Urban Growth and Renewal identified 1,925 rental apartment towers of 8 storeys or more across the Greater Toronto Area.
That’s the second largest inventory of apartment towers in North America – many or most of which are in car-oriented suburban neighborhoods.
Of course, Toronto continues to build a lot of towers. But this second and current wave of towers is quite different than the last. Virtually all of them are now condo (as opposed to rental) and most are concentrated in central neighborhoods that are generally well-serviced by transit.
This has created a lot of positives for the city. It brought more people into the core to live, which in turn brought more retailers and employers into the city. It has created what I believe is a more vibrant and exciting 24/7 city.
But this return to city centers (as well as the economic spikiness it has created) is now well established both in Toronto, as well as in other cities all around the world. Every real estate conference or panel you go to now talks about Millennials and their desire to be in walkable communities. We got it.
And relatively speaking, those kinds of communities aren’t that difficult to create when you’re infilling city centers. Certainly not at this point. The street grid and bones are usually all in place. And the urban form is often conducive to transit.
The real challenge – and thus opportunity – for Toronto and lots of other cities is how to urbanize the (inner) suburbs and in particular these “towers in a park”. If you follow this space, you’ll know that there’s a lot more that we could be doing.
How do we rethink their relationship to the rest of the city? How do we better connect them through transit? How do we plug them in economically? In my opinion, these are far more difficult tasks. But they’re important ones for the long-term success of our cities.
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