Category: Places

• Montréal is making yet another case for pedestrian-only streets

  There are parts of Toronto that are pedestrian only. There’s the Distillery District, some small laneways in Yorkville, the Toronto Islands (though this is a bit of a unique situation), and various other pockets around the city.

  There are also streets that we temporarily open up to only pedestrians, such as Market Street and King Street, and areas, such as Kensington Market, that we have been rigorously considering pedestrianizing for as long as I can remember.

  What is clear is that pedestrian-only streets are controversial. Motorists fear that it will make driving in the city even more inconvenient. And businesses fear that it will limit their customer base.

  While it is true that not all streets can and should be pedestrianized, there are countless examples of streets and areas that appear to be thriving because of it.

  Take, for example, Montréal.

  Since 2021, the city has been pedestrianizing a stretch of 30 blocks along Mont-Royal Avenue during the summer months. And according to Mayor Valérie Plante, the commercial vacancy rate for the street has dropped from 14.5% in 2018 to 5.6% in 2023:

  Le taux de vacance des locaux commerciaux de l’avenue du Mont-Royal depuis la piétonnisation ⤵️
  
  2018 : 14,5 %
  2023 : 5,6 %
  
  Depuis la piétonnisation, l’avenue est plus dynamique et fréquentée que jamais et les affaires sont bonnes. Un grand succès! 🎉#polmtl 📸 Eva Blue pic.twitter.com/GWjlP3zsBI

  — Valérie Plante (@Val_Plante) July 7, 2023

  Maybe you don’t want to infer causality here, but at the very least, it seems to suggest that the street isn’t dying and bereft of human activity. This year, pedestrianization is also planned to be extended further into the fall.

  This won’t necessarily be the outcome for all streets, but I do agree with this recent Globe and Mail article that, oftentimes, the reasons for not pedestrianizing are “a question of philosophy, not geography.” Because there’s lots of research and data to support doing this.

  If any of you are business owners along Mont-Royal, I’d love to hear about your experiences and how you think, for better or for worse, it has changed the area. Leave a comment below or drop me a line.

  2024.07.06

• This slash that

  Maison Kitsuné is a French-Japanese lifestyle brand that was founded in 2002 as both a record label and a fashion house. Apparently, the founders — Gildas Loaëc and Masaya Kuroki — started out by DJ’ing in order to promote their brand and clothes.

  In 2005, they released a full ready-to-wear collection and, according to Wikipedia, fashion has come to represent about 90% of the company’s revenue (2020 figure).

  In 2013, Kitsuné opened their first coffee shop in Tokyo. And since then, they have expanded around the world, opening cafes in Paris, Vancouver, Shanghai, and many other cities. As of today, I think they have 35 around the world.

  Their latest venture is something a bit new though. It’s called Desa Kitsuné, it’s located in Canggu, Bali, and it’s their first ever clothing shop/restaurant/club. It also comes with a pool and the idea is that you can do lots of different things here: shop, lounge during the day, and/or party at night.

  I always find it interesting when different ideas and approaches are combined. And that’s what Kitsuné continues to do. They also plan to do more of it. According to Monocle, the company wants to reach 100 cafes/restaurants around the world in the next 5 years.

  So keep an eye out for more foxes in your city.

  2024.06.24

• 10 years of radical change in Paris

  I know that many of you already know this, but it’s pretty remarkable what Paris has been able to achieve over the last 10 years:

  Paris has closed more than 100 streets to motor vehicles, tripled parking fees for SUVs, removed roughly 50,000 parking spots, and constructed more than 1,300 kilometers (800 miles) of bike lanes since Mayor Anne Hidalgo took office in 2014.

  The result is that, according to city officials, air pollution in the capital has declined by about 40% since 2011. And bicycle usage has increased by some 70% — this is since 2019.

  Now, Paris does happen to be blessed with a dense urban fabric. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that this transformation was simple or easy. The difference is will. Most Parisians seem to support these actions.

  So the next time you’re stuck in traffic and cursing some scapegoat, maybe consider what you would be willing to do to dramatically reduce traffic congestion. Would you be open to radical change in your city?

  2024.06.10

• Salt Lake City wants to turn Main Street into a pedestrian promenade

  Last year, I wrote about how Salt Lake City wants to build a new linear park around its downtown. That post can be found, here.

  Fast forward to today, and the city’s Department of Economic Development has just published a new comprehensive 215-page study that supports turning Main Street into a pedestrian promenade.

  Specifically, the area running from South Temple to 400 South, and including 100 South from Main to West Temple:

  

  As part of the study, they highlight a number of successful case studies from around the world, including 16th Street Mall in Denver, Bourke Street Mall in Melbourne, and Queens Quay here in Toronto.

  In the case of Denver, they cite the one-mile stretch as single-handedly generating over 40% of the city’s total downtown tax revenue! And in the case of Toronto, they refer to Queens Quay as a global destination. (Toronto readers, do you agree?)

  Like most city building initiatives, this vision is will take years to realize. But it’s interesting to note that, of the eight design alternatives included in the study, there is already one clear preference within the local community — option B.

  

  Option B is a pedestrian/transit mall, but with multi-use trails. In other words, it is a no-cars-allowed alternative that would still allow bicycles and scooters. Here’s the street section:

  

  If you’d like to download a copy of the full Main Street Pedestrian Promenade Study, click here.

  2024.05.18

• Open-air corridors and exterior exit stairs

  Montreal is, in many ways, a city of winding exterior stairs. If you’ve been there, then you know. The city is overwhelmingly a city of low-rise apartments (less than five storeys). And with these, comes lots of exterior circulation. But this tradition doesn’t just apply to older buildings. Here is a contemporary tall-building example which follows a similar approach.

  Designed by MSDL Architects, the project, called The Laurent & Clark, consists of two tower volumes. They read as two separate towers, but they’re connected and share egress paths. On the east side is a conventional “scissor stair” tucked behind two elevators. And on the other end, connected by an open-air corridor, is an exterior exit stair that runs all the way up the tower.

  Here is a circulation diagram via Azure:

  

  This is novel (at least in this part of the world). The suites in the west tower are all dual aspect; meaning, they have windows on both ends.

  They also have direct elevator access (see cores above), which means a lot less non-revenue generating circulation space. I mean, if you think about it, the open-air corridor on the north side of the west tower is akin to building a simple balcony. Extend the slab and add a guard rail. And so you could argue that this portion of the building has a near 100% efficiency factor.

  However, the downside is that you need more elevators. Here, it looks like they have 6 for their 356 suites. That’s an overall ratio of just under 60 suites per elevator, which is lower (i.e. better) than what you’d typically find in a conventional tower. The crude rule of thumb is 1 elevator for every 100 suites. That said, these direct-access suites would be premium.

  But perhaps the most important takeaway is this: If cold and snowy Montreal is cool with open-air corridors and exterior exit stairs, then maybe your city should be as well.

  2024.04.25

• New York’s first all-electric tower

  Here’s the thing:

  Nationwide, the biggest single source of emissions is transportation, dominated by low-occupancy cars and trucks. But in New York, most people use mass transit instead of driving. That means buildings “are by far the largest source” of climate pollution in the city, said Christopher Halfnight, senior director of research and policy at the Urban Green Council, a nonprofit focused on energy efficiency in buildings. Gas- and oil-burning furnaces and water heaters are together responsible for 40% of NYC emissions, according to Halfnight.

  In response to this, New York City has been passing laws that restrict greenhouse gases and that by and large incentivize electrification. One of these is Local Law 97, which will generally require buildings over 25,000 sf to reduce their GHG emissions by 40% (relative to 2005) by 2030.

  Already the market is responding. Alloy Development has just completed the city’s first all-electric tower at 505 State Street in Brooklyn. Tenants began moving in on April 5.

  When team members asked what the complex would look like absent gas, the answers were fairly straightforward. “Instead of a gas boiler, an electric boiler; instead of a gas cooktop, it was an induction cooktop. And literally that was it,” said Pires, noting that they had to revise the design of the electrical room to allow for higher amperage, since more incoming electricity would be needed for a larger electrical load.

  Some, or perhaps many, in the industry are fighting these new laws. In 2022, a co-op in Queens apparently went to the New York Supreme Court. But directionally, this certainly looks to be where we are headed. So you can either fight it, or you can try and get ahead of it, as Alloy has done here.

  For more information on 505 State Street, go here (Bloomberg) and here (project website).

  2024.04.22

• XS in Philadelphia, not Tokyo

  

  This is the sort of housing project that you’d fully expect to find in Tokyo. Seven homes built on a small urban lot measuring only 11 feet wide by 93 feet deep. But in this case, it’s not Tokyo; it’s Chinatown, Philadelphia, where a residual lot that was created when the sunken Vine Street Expressway was carved through the middle of the city in the 1950s.

  Designed by Philadelphia-based Interface Studio Architects (ISA), the project contains 7 levels of livable space. What’s interesting, though, is that from a building code perspective this is still a 4-story building. There are two mezzanine levels that don’t get counted (and that create some great double-height spaces). This also seems to be what allowed them to get away with a single egress stair in the middle of the building.

  

  The other technique that was used to maximum density is facade projections. Philadelphia’s zoning code allows for projections up to 3 feet in the horizontal dimension. And if you look at the above plans, you’ll see that these were used to “top up” or extend the site’s 11 foot width to 14 feet, when it made sense to do so from a programming standpoint. The result is some very livable spaces.

  

  I am endlessly fascinated by these sorts of projects because they demand creativity and because you ultimately end up unlocking something that the market had been overlooking. Here is an example of a small leftover urban parcel that was previously used as surface parking for two cars. Now it’s seven beautiful homes.

  Photos/drawings: ISA

  2024.04.21

• How the ski industry price discriminates

  Snowboarding in Europe, of course, sounds really fancy. And don’t get me wrong, it can be fancy if you want it to be. But the reality is that it’s also a cheaper option. And that’s because the price of a single day lift ticket at most resorts in America is now many multiples of what it costs in Europe. Think $250 vs. €50.

  North America has become the expensive destination.

  According to a recent Economist article titled “the economics of skiing in America,” resorts in Europe are often owned by local or national governments. This is not the case in America, and it’s why the lift tickets in Europe seem, by comparison, cheap. But this price differential is also the result of an evolving business model.

  Historically, owning a ski resort has never been a stable business in the US. And this makes sense. Most resorts make their money on lift ticket sales. However, sales are dependent on snowfall. If you get a lot of snow, then you make a lot of money. If the planet starts warming up and you don’t get a lot of snow, then you don’t make a lot of money. Vail has since changed this.

  What they have done is made it so punitive to buy a single day lift ticket in North America, that even if you’re an occasional skier, the only sensible thing to do is buy a subscription-like pass in the spring — well before the next season starts.

  This is what I have started doing and it gives you unlimited skiing for less than the price of a few days. It also gives Vail a source of revenue that isn’t so dependent snowfall. Season passes now make up about 61% of their lift-ticket revenue, according to The Economist. At the same time, it is a model that relies on being able to price discriminate against single-day, non-pass users:

  In basic economic theory, excessive market power reduces the efficiency of an industry. Firms reduce output so as to be able to charge more. There is, however, an exception: if a monopolistic firm can charge different prices to different customers, it need not reduce output to increase its profit. The skiing industry shows the truth of this. As the industry has consolidated, daily prices have soared, extracting more cash from price-insensitive skiers.

  But this isn’t the only way to do it. There’s also the whole real estate thing. Last year, Reed Hastings, cofounder of Netflix, became the majority owner of Powder Mountain. And here, they’re trying out a different business model:

  This December, Powder Mountain in Utah announced that it would be moving to a model where only local property-owners are allowed to ski certain chairlifts. The idea is to profit from real-estate sales, by offering private skiing without the crowds. “To stay independent and uncrowded, we needed to change,” says Reed Hastings, the firm’s boss.

  Even still, neither of these approaches is making snowboarding and skiing more accessible. Which is why it’s not uncommon to come across stickers and t-shirts at local ski shops that say, “Vail — ruining ski towns since 1966.” People are missing the old days when lift tickets were cheap and the lines on powder days weren’t so long.

  What skiing needs is in fact much of what the economy more generally needs: supply-side reform, and especially the construction of new housing and transport in the most popular spots. Though there are more skiers than ever, there are in fact fewer resorts than there were a few decades ago.

  This sounds familiar.

  All quotes are from The Economist.

  2024.04.06

• Choosing speed over perfection

  

  This morning, I was on site at Parkview Mountain House reviewing construction progress and finalizing some finishes with our contractor. And during that time, he said two things to me that I was frankly happy to hear.

  The first is that we are his only client — ever — where they didn’t need to touch the construction contingency line item. (Knock on wood. We are about 2 months out from completion at this point.) And the second is that he loves working with us because we are also his most decisive client.

  Now to be fair, both of these things are easier to do when you’re not building your own home, or something else for yourself. The process becomes less emotional and more just about business.

  Even still, this is generally the aspiration with all construction projects. As an owner, you want to leave your contingency untouched. You want to minimize changes. And you want to make decisions as fast as humanly possible.

  In fact, this is a prime example of the mantra that “any decision is better than no decision.” And that’s because poor decision making is the kiss of death for construction projects. You need to keep things moving.

  I also find that decisions tend to seem more daunting in the moment. When you’re staring at 37 different shades of white paint and being asked to pick just one, it can be easy to get analysis paralysis. Is a yellow white with a subtle green undertone really the right one?

  But more often than not, when the project is done, you’re probably not going to remember the other 36 shades of white you didn’t select. Or least that’s been my experience. So choosing speed over perfection is typically your safest bet.

  2024.04.05

• How Muji is collaborating with Japan’s housing agency

  

  This is a familiar story that is, of course, not unique to Japan:

  “Danchi”, or apartment blocks built by Japan’s housing agency during the country’s high-growth period, may look grim and outdated in today’s Tokyo, where flashy glass and steel towers reign.

  However, I only just learned that, since 2013, the Japanese houseware brand Muji has been renovating apartments within these housing blocks in an attempt to reduce vacancies:

  But danchi are becoming hip again, thanks to modern renovations by lifestyle brand Muji, which is turning the poky, multi-room flats into open-plan studios.

  The above excerpts are from a 2015 article, but this partnership between Muji and Japan’s Urban Renaissance (UR) Agency continues to this day. Today, they’re also focused on creating a greater sense of community within these danchi neighborhoods.

  It’s a logical collaboration. Both want to bring good and affordable design to the masses. And obviously there are brand benefits for Muji. It’s a way to expose more people to their products.

  But what I find particularly interesting is that it, once again, shows the potential of a strong brand within the real estate industry.

  According to the same 2015 article, as soon as Muji completed its first round of apartment renovations, UR saw 2x the number rental applications from people in their 20s and 30s. Perhaps the number is even higher today.

  Clearly what happened is that you had young followers of the brand who said to themselves, “oh if Muji is involved, it must then be cool and nice, and so I’d like to live there.”

  I mention this because, as a gross generalization, real estate companies don’t seem to focus on their own brands in the same way other companies do. (Again, I’m making a gross generalization.)

  Instead, they often rely on 3rd party brands — hotel brands, fashion brands, and whatever else — to augment as needed. (See “Dubai is now the capital of branded residences.”)

  Maybe this is truly the optimal way to do it. Just partner as needed. Or maybe more real estate companies should invest in their own brand.

  Photo by taro ohtani on Unsplash

  2024.03.16