For those of you interested in real estate development (and architecture), the New York Times recently published an article about New York developer Harry Macklowe. 

At 80 years old, he has been in the business for almost 60 years and he has what some might describe as the typical developer story. He has seen ups. And he has seen downs. As a result of the 2008 economic crisis, he was forced to give up seven landmark properties in New York.

The article doesn’t paint a particularly nice picture about developers. It talks about how he demolished several single room occupancy hotels in midtown Manhattan (hours before a new moratorium was set to go into effect) and how he recently filed a lawsuit against his son, William Macklowe. After their relationship went south, William went off and started his own real estate company and presumably that is causing some problems.

There’a also mention of a book called The Liar’s Ball, which I am pretty sure would be a good read:

Real estate “is not an industry full of camaraderie and good will,” said Vicky Ward, the author of “The Liar’s Ball” (Wiley, 2014), a book about Mr. Macklowe and the G.M. building. Developers “are set up to dislike each other, yet occasionally they do come together to partner.”

If the real estate business has anything, it has characters. Click here for “Harry Macklowe on New York Real Estate.”

This is what it looks like in Mont-Tremblant right now:

It’s currently -11 degrees celsius and it’s expected to snow for most of the day. It’s starting to come down right now. But this evening it’s supposed to warm up to +1 degrees celsius, which means it may turn into (freezing) rain. I hope we see a lot more snow than rain. Nobody wants an icy mountain.

If you’re looking for things to read this morning, here are 3 pieces:

1. In American Towns, Private Profits From Public Works. It’s a NY Times article talking about how cash-strapped towns are turning to private equity firms to pay for their infrastructure. 

2. How Zoning Laws Shaped New York City Over the Last Century. This is about an exhibition being held at The Museum of the City of New York right now. The rules we make shape our built environment. Thanks John for the link.

3. Authenticity, and how Snapchat is banking on it. I am very fascinated by Snap Inc.’s ability to think differently and adopt counterintuitive business strategies. There’s also a cultural dimension to all of this.

Today I came across this Reddit talking about how few census tracts there are in the United States with a population density greater than 150,000 people per square mile. 

Basically, there’s a bunch in New York, one in San Francisco (Tenderloin), and one in Chicago that doesn’t really count because it’s an unusually small tract. Most other American cities don’t even come close.

Looking at this New York Times mapping of the 2010 US census data, it turns out there are neighborhoods in NYC that go well beyond 150,000 people per square mile. Here’s one census tract (#154) at just over 200,000 ppsm:

If you convert 200,764 into the globally accepted standard for measuring distances and areas, you get approximately 77,515 people per square kilometer. Pretty dense.

As a comparison, I thought I would see how this number stacks up against what is commonly referred to as the densest neighborhood in Canada: St. James Town. 

If you pull up that geographic code in the 2011 Canadian census data (#5350065.00 in case you’re that nerdy), you’ll see a map boundary that looks like this:

And you’ll also find a 2011 population density of approximately 60,915 people per square kilometer. Also pretty dense – though the population did decline from 2006.

Now obviously St. Jamestown is only one example. The rest of the city is, by and large, far less dense. But maybe when our 2016 census data gets released next year, we’ll find that we’ve become even denser. I suspect we will.