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The City of London Corporation recently published a report called “The City as a Place for People”, which talks primarily about itself and how great London is as a magnet for talent.
But as self-serving as it may be – the report is timed to be ahead of this year’s MIPIM – there appears to be some data and interviews backing up the claims.
58% of “institutional investors” said that London is the best European city for business. Dublin was next at 22%.
A separate survey of 2,568 “corporate decision makers” in Europe revealed that 21% of respondents felt that London was the best European city for business, followed by Paris (13%) and Frankfurt (7%). When asked which city had the best talent pool, the responses were fairly similar.
Also included in the report is a rendering of the City’s skyline by 2026. These are always fun to see. Here is a screen grab:
It is showing all towers under construction and all towers with their planning permissions in place. If you’d like to download the full report, you can do that here.
My friend Ben Stevens runs a blog called Skyline where he interviews people involved in the built environment (architecture, real estate, planning, and so on). You might remember that I did an episode with him about a year ago where we talked about the overlap between architecture and development.
His most recent episode is with San Diego-based architect-developer Jonathan Segal. I’ve mentioned Segal before on this blog and that’s because he is well known and admired in certain circles for (re)creating a process that places the architect in the position of “master builder.”
He is singularly driven by one goal: to have ultimate control over the architecture that he creates. Making money is secondary. It is a byproduct of goal number one.
To achieve this, he has worked to cut out every conceivable middle person. Design is in-house. Construction management is in-house. Property/asset management is in-house. He even avoids bringing on investors for his projects, out of fear that they will start to dictate what he can and can’t do.
If this approach resonates with you, I definitely recommend you watch the interview. Click here if you can’t see it below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7UT--CAS1g?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post on New Urbanism, I thought I would post an interesting video discussion between Andrés Duany and Ben Stevens.
Duany is the father of New Urbanism and Stevens runs a great blog called The Skyline Forum where he interviews notable city builders, developers, architects, planners, and so on. If you can’t see the video below, click here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfZZ61C4YOY?rel=0&w=560&h=315]
Once again it’s a great reminder that so much of what we do and build in our cities is dictated by parking requirements. One of the ways Duany differentiates New Urbanism from “old urbanism” is that the new explicitly provides for the car.
Regrettably, I think we do that almost everywhere nowadays. But I take his point that New Urbanism happens almost as an intervention in areas where there are few or no other mobility options besides the car.
I also thought it was interesting that Duany refers to big box stores as the new noxious-use in cities, rather than industry. He describes the parking, not the stores themselves, as creating a “flume of unwalkability.”
It always seems to come down to parking.
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