Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Last week I had something delivered from Amazon almost every single day. They weren’t necessarily big things though. One day it was a new corn broom for the patio. Another day it was a small set of hooks that I wanted to hang some lights. And the list goes on.
This is what Amazon wants us to do. Order every little thing, instantly, as soon as you think about it. And it’s magically convenient.
Developers and architects are of course thinking about the implications of this shifting shopping habit on new residential developments. Usually it comes in the form of a large “Amazon room” and/or a parcel locker system.
I recently measured the package room in my building (geeky, I know). It’s about 10′ x 6′ and it sometimes isn’t enough for the volume of daily packages generated by ~360 units.
The other thing that happened last week is that my concierge said to me: “Brandon, we have become a full fledge post office with the amount of packages that come through here every day.” Every evening there’s a lineup of people waiting to collect their packages.
That immediately signaled to me that simply providing a larger room probably isn’t enough. This trend is only going to continue. How could we better design and optimize for this shift?
I am sure that there many companies working on this problem. Hopefully they will surface in the comments and in my inbox following this post.
Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash
I like looking at real estate values over longer periods of time because it helps to put things into perspective.
Below is a land value index for Manhattan running from 1950 to 2014 that was recently created by economists out of Rutgers University.
The study was also cited in this recent article by Richard Florida.
A condo developer friend of mine once told me something along the lines of this: “Brandon, I have generally learned over the years that if I like something, it probably means the general public [our purchasers] isn’t going to like it. And that’s because if I like it, there’s probably something unique or quirky about it.”
Last week I had something delivered from Amazon almost every single day. They weren’t necessarily big things though. One day it was a new corn broom for the patio. Another day it was a small set of hooks that I wanted to hang some lights. And the list goes on.
This is what Amazon wants us to do. Order every little thing, instantly, as soon as you think about it. And it’s magically convenient.
Developers and architects are of course thinking about the implications of this shifting shopping habit on new residential developments. Usually it comes in the form of a large “Amazon room” and/or a parcel locker system.
I recently measured the package room in my building (geeky, I know). It’s about 10′ x 6′ and it sometimes isn’t enough for the volume of daily packages generated by ~360 units.
The other thing that happened last week is that my concierge said to me: “Brandon, we have become a full fledge post office with the amount of packages that come through here every day.” Every evening there’s a lineup of people waiting to collect their packages.
That immediately signaled to me that simply providing a larger room probably isn’t enough. This trend is only going to continue. How could we better design and optimize for this shift?
I am sure that there many companies working on this problem. Hopefully they will surface in the comments and in my inbox following this post.
Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash
I like looking at real estate values over longer periods of time because it helps to put things into perspective.
Below is a land value index for Manhattan running from 1950 to 2014 that was recently created by economists out of Rutgers University.
The study was also cited in this recent article by Richard Florida.
A condo developer friend of mine once told me something along the lines of this: “Brandon, I have generally learned over the years that if I like something, it probably means the general public [our purchasers] isn’t going to like it. And that’s because if I like it, there’s probably something unique or quirky about it.”
Here are some of the highlights from their study:
We find three major cycles with land values reaching their nadir in 1977, just after the city’s fiscal crisis.
Since 1993, land prices have risen much faster than population or employment, at an average annual rate of 15.8%.
We estimate the entire amount of developable land on Manhattan in 2014 was worth approximately $1.74 trillion.
We estimate the long run return to Manhattan land values [since the island was first inhabited by Dutch settlers in 1626] to be about 6.4%.
What’s fascinating to me is the accelerated appreciation. The index starts at 100 in 1950, ends up slightly above that by 1993, and then simply takes off.
When he told me this it made perfect sense to me, because there’s a well documented taste divide that seems to exist between architects and design-types and non-architects and non-design-types (whatever this latter categorization means).
A few years ago The Architects’ Journal published an article referencing a 1987 study that took a group of students – some architecture students and some non-architecture students – and asked them to rate the attractiveness of a series of photos containing both unfamiliar people and buildings.
What they discovered was that most people had similar views on the attractiveness of the people. I guess hotness is somewhat universal. But when it came to the buildings, the viewpoints were completely opposite. The architecture students’ favorite buildings were what everyone else disliked the most.
The conclusion in the article: “Professionals are, empirically, the very worst judges available of what people want or like in the built environment.”
Photo by Simon Goetz on Unsplash
Here are some of the highlights from their study:
We find three major cycles with land values reaching their nadir in 1977, just after the city’s fiscal crisis.
Since 1993, land prices have risen much faster than population or employment, at an average annual rate of 15.8%.
We estimate the entire amount of developable land on Manhattan in 2014 was worth approximately $1.74 trillion.
We estimate the long run return to Manhattan land values [since the island was first inhabited by Dutch settlers in 1626] to be about 6.4%.
What’s fascinating to me is the accelerated appreciation. The index starts at 100 in 1950, ends up slightly above that by 1993, and then simply takes off.
When he told me this it made perfect sense to me, because there’s a well documented taste divide that seems to exist between architects and design-types and non-architects and non-design-types (whatever this latter categorization means).
A few years ago The Architects’ Journal published an article referencing a 1987 study that took a group of students – some architecture students and some non-architecture students – and asked them to rate the attractiveness of a series of photos containing both unfamiliar people and buildings.
What they discovered was that most people had similar views on the attractiveness of the people. I guess hotness is somewhat universal. But when it came to the buildings, the viewpoints were completely opposite. The architecture students’ favorite buildings were what everyone else disliked the most.
The conclusion in the article: “Professionals are, empirically, the very worst judges available of what people want or like in the built environment.”
Photo by Simon Goetz on Unsplash
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Share Dialog