Below is a mapping (by Taylor Blake of the Martin Prosperity Institute) of the top 10 metro economies in the world by GDP at purchasing power parity. In brackets, is a country with a comparable GDP.

Tokyo is the world’s largest metro economy with ~$1.6 trillion in GDP. This is greater than the GDP of all of Canada. New York City is number 2 with ~$1.5 trillion in GDP, which is only slightly less than Canada.

The point of all of this – which Richard Florida argues here – is that the global economy is, today, powered by metropolitan areas. And yet our governance structures do not reflect this new reality.

Here’s an excerpt from Florida’s article:

“Cities really are the new power centers of the global economy—the platforms for innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. But when it comes to fiscal and political power, they remain beholden to increasingly anachronistic and backward-looking nation-states, which has become distressingly obvious with the rise of Trumpism in the United States and populism around the world.”

Florida has been arguing this for years and I’ve really gotten behind it. The above chart is a good reminder just how big and wealthy some cities have become in today’s economy. 

The MIT Senseable City Lab recently looked at which cities are the most “shareable” when it comes to ride sharing services such as UberPOOL. Their goal was determine what fraction of individual trips (inefficient) could be shared or pooled (more efficient). To do this, they developed a single “shareability curve.” Full research paper, here.

Not surprisingly, New York City does very well in this analysis. Its shareability is well above 95% for a delta of 5 minutes. That’s because the city has a large population, a small geographic area, enormous density, and lots of taxi traffic. (They used taxi data in their research.)

But New York City also does very well when it comes to transit ridership. Highest in North America. So it strikes me that the characteristics that make a city “shareable” also apply to transit – which is effectively another form of ride sharing. Might we see the distinction between these 2 forms of mobility blur in the future? I think so.

My friends in New York tell me that if you want to sell a luxury residential building, you need a name brand architect. People care about architecture and it’s part of the buying process: “Oh, it’s a Herzog building.”

To that end, Toll Brothers City Living just released the following video for their 121 E 22nd project in New York. If you can’t see it below, click here. What’s notable, is that it is OMA’s first full building in New York. So the story is: star architect + first building in the city.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSQq8W8od9g?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

But there’s more. It’s almost unbelievable that, until now, OMA hadn’t designed and constructed a full building in New York. I reread this Dezeen article 5 times just to make sure I wasn’t missing something.

So much of Rem Koolhaas’ career (founding partner of OMA) is centered around New York City. In 1978, he published Delirious New York, where he both dissected and celebrated the city’s “culture of congestion.” Oysters at the downtown athletic club, anyone?

This book was so influential that I bet you’d be hard pressed to find an architect that doesn’t have it in their collection. I have his approximation of New York hanging on my wall. So this was clearly overdue. Kudos Toll Brothers City Living.

Note: OMA’s New York office is led by Shohei Shigematsu.