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I am sure that a lot of you know where the title of this post comes from. It’s a riff on one of the most important and influential books in the world of city planning: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961).
But when Jane Jacobs first wrote this book, there was no such thing as smartphones and nobody was “checking-in” to hipster dive bars on Foursquare.
So instead of leveraging big data, her analyses and arguments were based on observation. She walked the streets of New York and Toronto and figured out what made cities thrive and what made cities die. That was her brilliance.
Today, however, we have data – lots of it. And so recently, a group of researchers set out to test Jane Jacob’s theories using mobile phone data. The study was called, The Death and Life of Great Italian Cities: A Mobile Phone Data Perspective.
More specifically, they set out to test the following 4 essential conditions:
“She [Jane Jacobs] argued that, to promote urban life in large cities, the physical environment should be characterized by diversity at both the district and street level. Diversity, in turn, requires four essential conditions: (i) mixed land uses, that is, districts should serve more than two primary functions, and that would attract people who have different purposes; (ii) small blocks, which promote contact opportunities among people; (iii) buildings diverse in terms of age and form, which make it possible to mix high-rent and low-rent tenants; and (iv) sufficient dense concentration of people and buildings.”
To accomplish this, the team assembled and studied data from the following sources:
Mobile phone activity (specifically internet activity)
OpenStreetsMap Data
Census Data
Land Use Information
Infrastructure Data
Foursquare Data (Venues API)
Ultimately, they determined that Jane Jacobs knew what she was talking about. The above conditions are essential to urban vibrancy and they apply to Italian cities, just as they did and do to American cities. But this test was valuable, because the more that we can measure and quantify cities, the better I think we’ll get at creating and promoting urban vitality.
Now imagine if you overlaid the findings of their report with residential and commercial rents. I bet you’d also find that there’s a strong business case for urban vitality.
I’ve heard a number of people say that, eventually, every company will be a software/technology company. And I don’t think we’re far off from that reality. To me, this study feels like an early example of what that might look like for city building.
On a side note, the picture at the top of this post is of the Spanish Steps in Rome. I took it on a weekend trip in 2007. I was living in Dublin at the time.
McKinsey recently published a report called Digital globalization: The new era of global flows.
The overarching thesis is that we are transitioning to a data-driven global economy:
“Flows of physical goods and finance were the hallmarks of the 20th-century global economy, but today those flows have flattened or declined. Twenty-first-century globalization is increasingly defined by flows of data and information. This phenomenon now underpins virtually all cross-border transactions within traditional flows while simultaneously transmitting a valuable stream of ideas and innovation around the world.”
One of the benefits of this shift is that it has become easier for emerging economies and individuals from all around the world to participate.
Of course, not all countries and cities are participating equally. In their report, McKinsey ranks the top cities according to five global flows. In each case a proxy was used:
“Unfortunately, data on global flows are not available at the city level. However, we have obtained data that serve as proxies for each of our five global flows. Container port volumes approximate goods flows; airport passenger volumes serve as a proxy for goods, service, and people flows; the ranking of cities in the Global Financial Centers Index by the Z/Yen Group provides an indication of financial flows; the number of foreign-born residents in a city measures people flows; and Internet bandwidth approximates data flows.”
The Neptis Foundation here in Toronto just recently published a fantastic report looking at the regional economic structure of the Greater Golden Horseshoe area. It’s called Planning for Prosperity.
In it they identity the polycentric nature of employment in the Toronto region by way of downtown Toronto and three suburban “megazones.” Here’s one of their maps showing overall employment density and the megazones (light blue circles):
I am sure that a lot of you know where the title of this post comes from. It’s a riff on one of the most important and influential books in the world of city planning: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs (1961).
But when Jane Jacobs first wrote this book, there was no such thing as smartphones and nobody was “checking-in” to hipster dive bars on Foursquare.
So instead of leveraging big data, her analyses and arguments were based on observation. She walked the streets of New York and Toronto and figured out what made cities thrive and what made cities die. That was her brilliance.
Today, however, we have data – lots of it. And so recently, a group of researchers set out to test Jane Jacob’s theories using mobile phone data. The study was called, The Death and Life of Great Italian Cities: A Mobile Phone Data Perspective.
More specifically, they set out to test the following 4 essential conditions:
“She [Jane Jacobs] argued that, to promote urban life in large cities, the physical environment should be characterized by diversity at both the district and street level. Diversity, in turn, requires four essential conditions: (i) mixed land uses, that is, districts should serve more than two primary functions, and that would attract people who have different purposes; (ii) small blocks, which promote contact opportunities among people; (iii) buildings diverse in terms of age and form, which make it possible to mix high-rent and low-rent tenants; and (iv) sufficient dense concentration of people and buildings.”
To accomplish this, the team assembled and studied data from the following sources:
Mobile phone activity (specifically internet activity)
OpenStreetsMap Data
Census Data
Land Use Information
Infrastructure Data
Foursquare Data (Venues API)
Ultimately, they determined that Jane Jacobs knew what she was talking about. The above conditions are essential to urban vibrancy and they apply to Italian cities, just as they did and do to American cities. But this test was valuable, because the more that we can measure and quantify cities, the better I think we’ll get at creating and promoting urban vitality.
Now imagine if you overlaid the findings of their report with residential and commercial rents. I bet you’d also find that there’s a strong business case for urban vitality.
I’ve heard a number of people say that, eventually, every company will be a software/technology company. And I don’t think we’re far off from that reality. To me, this study feels like an early example of what that might look like for city building.
On a side note, the picture at the top of this post is of the Spanish Steps in Rome. I took it on a weekend trip in 2007. I was living in Dublin at the time.
McKinsey recently published a report called Digital globalization: The new era of global flows.
The overarching thesis is that we are transitioning to a data-driven global economy:
“Flows of physical goods and finance were the hallmarks of the 20th-century global economy, but today those flows have flattened or declined. Twenty-first-century globalization is increasingly defined by flows of data and information. This phenomenon now underpins virtually all cross-border transactions within traditional flows while simultaneously transmitting a valuable stream of ideas and innovation around the world.”
One of the benefits of this shift is that it has become easier for emerging economies and individuals from all around the world to participate.
Of course, not all countries and cities are participating equally. In their report, McKinsey ranks the top cities according to five global flows. In each case a proxy was used:
“Unfortunately, data on global flows are not available at the city level. However, we have obtained data that serve as proxies for each of our five global flows. Container port volumes approximate goods flows; airport passenger volumes serve as a proxy for goods, service, and people flows; the ranking of cities in the Global Financial Centers Index by the Z/Yen Group provides an indication of financial flows; the number of foreign-born residents in a city measures people flows; and Internet bandwidth approximates data flows.”
The Neptis Foundation here in Toronto just recently published a fantastic report looking at the regional economic structure of the Greater Golden Horseshoe area. It’s called Planning for Prosperity.
In it they identity the polycentric nature of employment in the Toronto region by way of downtown Toronto and three suburban “megazones.” Here’s one of their maps showing overall employment density and the megazones (light blue circles):
Using this methodology, they believe that the world only has 8 truly global cities right now: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Dubai. They are the colored cities listed below:
I always take these city rankings with a grain of salt. This stuff is not easy to quantify and a lot depends on the methodology that you use.
For instance, Atlanta sits on the top of “goods, services, and people” because it has the busiest airport in the world according to passenger volume. (It’s the primary hub of Delta Air Lines.) But is that enough to assert that Atlanta is #1? Maybe. Maybe not.
In any case, the report is packed full of information. If you’d like to take a look, click here.
Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of the scale of these megazones:
“The Airport megazone, one of the three employment megazones outside Downtown Toronto, is the second largest concentration of employment in Canada, after Downtown Toronto. It represents almost 300,000 jobs, more than the central business districts of Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary individually.”
And here’s a chart showing the hard numbers:
Downtown Toronto dominates in terms of employment. But it’s also fascinating to see how much more efficiently it provides that employment. It has the smallest physical area of all the employment zones (2,540 hectares or 6,276 acres) and the lowest percentage of car trips (29%).
But the big takeaway from their report is that we have not been focused enough on employment in our planning. Instead, we seem to be thinking residentially. Here’s a final snippet:
“This study shows that the Growth Plan and The Big Move, which are currently under review, do not address the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing regional economy or the reality of a transforming economic landscape.
The Growth Plan’s focus has largely been on managing residential growth rather than non-residential and employment-related development. Indeed, the Growth Plan is based on shockingly little hard evidence on the evolving economy of the region. Plans for city-regions a fraction of the size of the GGH typically involve more economic research, analysis, and evidence.”
Clearly we need to be looking at both the residential and non-residential sides of the equation as we grow the region. To read the full report, click here.
Using this methodology, they believe that the world only has 8 truly global cities right now: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Dubai. They are the colored cities listed below:
I always take these city rankings with a grain of salt. This stuff is not easy to quantify and a lot depends on the methodology that you use.
For instance, Atlanta sits on the top of “goods, services, and people” because it has the busiest airport in the world according to passenger volume. (It’s the primary hub of Delta Air Lines.) But is that enough to assert that Atlanta is #1? Maybe. Maybe not.
In any case, the report is packed full of information. If you’d like to take a look, click here.
Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of the scale of these megazones:
“The Airport megazone, one of the three employment megazones outside Downtown Toronto, is the second largest concentration of employment in Canada, after Downtown Toronto. It represents almost 300,000 jobs, more than the central business districts of Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary individually.”
And here’s a chart showing the hard numbers:
Downtown Toronto dominates in terms of employment. But it’s also fascinating to see how much more efficiently it provides that employment. It has the smallest physical area of all the employment zones (2,540 hectares or 6,276 acres) and the lowest percentage of car trips (29%).
But the big takeaway from their report is that we have not been focused enough on employment in our planning. Instead, we seem to be thinking residentially. Here’s a final snippet:
“This study shows that the Growth Plan and The Big Move, which are currently under review, do not address the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing regional economy or the reality of a transforming economic landscape.
The Growth Plan’s focus has largely been on managing residential growth rather than non-residential and employment-related development. Indeed, the Growth Plan is based on shockingly little hard evidence on the evolving economy of the region. Plans for city-regions a fraction of the size of the GGH typically involve more economic research, analysis, and evidence.”
Clearly we need to be looking at both the residential and non-residential sides of the equation as we grow the region. To read the full report, click here.
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