We have all seen these headlines before, so it's not so under the radar for us. But the New York Times just published this article about Toronto calling it a "quietly booming tech town." Depending on how you want to measure things, Toronto is now the third largest tech hub in North America after Silicon Valley and New York City (or at least that's what the NY Times is telling me). The article touches on some of the ingredients for this success, but let me be a bit more explicit in this post because I think it is particularly relevant right now.
Canada is a "Western" country. What does that mean? It means that we're a democracy, we have the rule of law, we respect individuals (including private property), and we allow for pluralism of opinion, along with many other freedoms. These are all wonderful and magical things that are sometimes taken for granted. But I couldn't imagine living in a place that doesn't allow for such freedoms, nor would I want to.
On top of this foundation, we have two other important ingredients: extraordinary universities, like the ones mentioned in the article (University of Toronto and University of Waterloo), and some of the most liberal immigration policies in the world. Our borders are open for the smartest and most ambitious. With just these handful of things -- freedom, rules, education, and talent -- we can screw up a lot of other stuff and still accomplish some pretty great things. I may be oversimplifying, but probably not by much.
Humans are wonderfully talented. Let people be and they'll show you. Because history has shown us time and time again that the above recipe works remarkably well. (Related post: Do the best cities have a lot of immigrants?)
Axios and Generation Lab have something new called the Next Cities Index. The goal is to track US work and culture trends through people's geographic preferences. For their first cities index, they asked over 2,100 students in the US, on two separate occasions, the following question: "Considering all factors that matter to you, where would you most like to live after college?"
The aggregate answer to this question is shown above. But they also collected people's incomes (anticipated since they're students?), political affiliations, and gender. The list of cities changes slightly when you sort based on these different factors, but not by much. Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles remain top cities -- at least in people's minds.
It is, however, interesting to note that about 45% of respondents had different answers to where they want to live and where they think they will live. For a number of reasons, the city of people's dreams isn't often a practical or realistic choice it would seem. Still, wanting a particular place still tells you certain things I suppose.
Given all the chatter over this pandemic, I would have thought that Miami would have appeared higher up on this want list.
Chart: Axios/Generation Lab
New York City is projecting that Lower Manhattan is likely to see more frequent flooding by as early as the 2040s. This could move to monthly flooding by the 2050s and daily by the 2080s. These time horizons may seem like a ways away, but I'm personally going to try my damnedest to see the 2080s.
In light of these projections, New York City released a new Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan at the end of last year. The plan is projected to cost somewhere between $5 to $7 billion and entails building out a new multilevel waterfront that extends the current shoreline into the East River by up to 200 feet.
Here are a couple of renderings:
The upper level will be elevated by about 15-18 feet (designed to protect against storms like Sandy) and the lowest level will be a continuous waterfront esplanade (designed to connect humans to the water). Overall, the plan encompasses about one mile of waterfront, running from The Battery to the Brooklyn Bridge.
City building take times. In the case of this plan, it is building for the next century.
For a copy of the full press release, click here.
Images: NYC Economic Development Corporation