Category: New York

• 80% of New York’s 150 million taxi trips could be shared

  I’ve been a big fan of MIT’s Senseable City Lab since I was a grad student at Penn. Their work sits at the intersection of cities and technology, and so I’ve always found it incredibly fascinating.

  Recently, the lab examined data from all of New York’s 13,586 registered cabs and looked for ways that technology and mobile tech could potentially optimize the way the system works today. In particular, they were interested in examining instances where people were heading to the same place at the same time, and were within no more than a 3 minute walk of each at the start of the trip.

  What they found was that, of the 150 million taxi rides taken in New York City during 2011, almost 80% of them could have been shared.

  That is, 80% of the time, there was an overlap in both time and route. That’s an hugely interesting stat because it starts to show just how much waste and inefficiency there currently is in the system. Think about all the trips and carbon emissions that could be potentially eliminated through optimization.

  Here’s a video they produced on the project. Click here if you can’t see it below.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyq_Zr96uzs?rel=0]

  It’s a great example of how technology is and will continue to creep into every segment of the economy. It’s exactly what I was talking about in my post, “Disrupting everything.”

  2014.03.12

• New York City on Market Street

  On my walk to the subway this morning I was confronted by a transformed Market Street in Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market area. New York City had taken over.

  There were NYC yellow cabs, NYPD cars, FDNY trucks and lots of film people milling about in Canada Goose jackets. Toronto, once again, stands in for New York.

  

  But while I think it’s great that we’re (presumably) creating a bunch of local jobs, there’s also a part of me that hates to see this. I hate it because I want the Toronto brand to be strong enough so that movies actually take place here, instead of just being filmed here.

  I mean, who wants to be the stand-in? It’s much better to be the actor.

  2014.03.03

• How Bloomberg transformed the streets of New York

  Here’s a great video by Streetfilms that shows the incredible transformation of New York’s public realm during the Bloomberg administration. I found it via The Urbanophile blog. It’s about 5 minutes long.

  Video Description: “There’s nothing more dramatic than looking back five or ten years at Streetfilms footage to see how much the streets of New York City have changed. In this wonderful montage, check out the incredible changes at Times Square, Herald Square, the Brooklyn waterfront, and many other places that outgoing NYC DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and her staff have intrepidly transformed.”

  It just goes to show what can be accomplished with the right leader and political will. I wish we (Toronto) had a mayor who understood the value of beautiful public spaces and bike lanes. It’s unfortunate that these things often become attached to political orientation. This shouldn’t be the case. It’s just good city building.

  2014.01.16

• Airbnb subpoenaed for information on its 15,000 New York City “landlords”

  Last Monday, the Office of the New York Attorney General subpoenaed Airbnb for information about all of its 15,000 “landlords” who rent out spaces in New York through their service. Airbnb has since refused to provide the information.

  This is an interesting case. Airbnb is one of those startups that seemed initially like an idea too crazy to work, but has since grown to become a serious disruption to the hotel industry. However, the problem is that many jurisdictions have laws pertaining to illegal hotels. In the case of New York, the law prohibits short-term rentals under 30 days unless the permanent resident is present alongside the guest(s).

  What this means is that renting out your apartment while you’re away for the weekend-which from my experience here in Toronto is how a lot of people use the service-is technically illegal in New York. State senator, Liz Krueger, believes that apartment building residents shouldn’t have to worry that their neighbouring apartment could turn into a de facto hotel room.

  While I do sympathize with this concern, I think there’s a gradient of use here. Not every Airbnb user is operating a de facto hotel. Many, whatever that percentage might be, simply use it to earn extra income while their place sits idle. And to do this, the permanent resident is trusting their home to a stranger.

  So in a way, there’s a filter in place that isn’t there when the unit is being operated strictly as a hotel suite. Therefore, maybe we just need to expand the definition of having a “permanent resident present” to include having their belongings and life in the place.

  It’ll be interesting to see how this all pans out. But whatever the result, it’s clear that Airbnb is definitely shaking up the status quo. Do you think residents should be freely allowed to rent out their places on any term?

  2013.10.14

• Tech is now the second largest job sector in New York City

  According to a recent report called Building a Digital City, which I found via Fred Wilson’s blog, tech is now the second largest job sector in New York City behind financial services (which includes real estate). There are an estimated 262,000 tech workers in the city earning wages in excess of $30 billion.

  This is a really interesting stat that speaks to the diversity of New York’s economy and the ability for it to continually reinvent itself. But what I found particularly interesting, was the following comment by Fred Wilson:

  “And the reason tech is growing so fast in NYC is that it is embedding itself in all of these other industries. It’s not entirely clear to me whether Gilt is a tech company or a fashion/retail company, it is not clear to me whether ZocDoc is a tech company or a health care company, it is not clear to me whether Codecademy is a tech company or an education company.”

  This is very much the way I think about so called tech companies today. I recently had a Rotman colleague say to me that he felt the startup world was becoming saturated. Everyone is now seemingly working on some new app.

  But I like to think of it slightly differently. As Fred’s comment above suggests, a lot of startups today aren’t purely tech companies. They’re just out to solve a problem and it just so happens that technology and the internet are creating all sorts of opportunities for new solutions.

  I also read a blog called Platform Connected and the author put it like this:

  “In the future, every company will be a tech company. We already see this change around us as companies move to restructure their business models in a way that uses data to create value. We are moving from linear to networked business models, from dumb pipes to intelligent platforms. All businesses will need to move to this new model at some point, or risk being disrupted by platforms that do.”

  So there you have it. Software really is eating the world.

  2013.10.09

• Sky High and Going Up Fast: Luxury Towers Take New York

  A tower being built on Park Avenue is part of Manhattan’s booming ultraluxury construction business, a trend that is warping the real-estate market and driving up overall costs.

  Sky High and Going Up Fast: Luxury Towers Take New York

  2013.05.20