Tonight I attended and gave a short talk at a city building themed PechaKucha night here in Toronto. If you aren’t familiar with the PechaKucha 20x20 presentation format, click here.

The first PechaKucha night was held in Tokyo, but it has since expanded to over 800 cities around the world. Each city has a local organizer who acts as a steward and here in Toronto it is Amy Bath. She did a fantastic job this evening.

Tonight’s event was all about non-traditional forms of city building. It was not so much about how architects and developers are shaping the built environment – thought there was some of that. It was more about how interdisciplinary artists, graphic designers, bloggers, and others, are having an impact on cities. So in my case, I was speaking as a blogger, rather than as a real estate developer, which was a bit unique for me.

What excited me about tonight is the amount of talent and passion that we have in this city, and how so much of it is being harnessed to make cities better.

Jay Wall of Studio Jaywall is doing incredible work at the intersection of graphic design and city building. My friend Mackenzie Keast of Distl and NXT City Prize is organizing public space competitions and then working with the city to get them built. And my friend Justin Broadbent, who is an interdisciplinary artist, is just killing it and putting Toronto on the map. I don’t know how else to say it.

And this is just naming a few of the people in attendance.

I have so much respect for people who love the city they call home and actively try to make it a better place. That’s a lot harder to do than just complain about why your city isn’t (insert other allegedly better city here). But it’s also a lot more productive.

This past week I received 2 separate invitations to talk at events about blogging as a form of city building.

The first is a Pecha Kucha talk being held here in Toronto on Tuesday, October 20th, 2015. If you’ve never heard of the Pecha Kucha movement, it’s basically all about rapid fire presentations. Each person gets 20 slides and 20 seconds for each one. 

Here are the details for the upcoming Toronto event:

The second event is being held in Ottawa in the new year. I’ll write more on that closer to the date when I have more information to share.

I haven’t yet figured out exactly what I’m going to talk about at each event, but I am starting to think about a few things.

When I started writing this blog, it was intended simply as an outlet for my own city-related – and also personal – thoughts. Ultimately, the blog evolved into having its own mission, which is to promote the building of beautiful, sustainable, and globally competitive cities. And so clearly in my mind blogging was and is in fact a form of city building.

But writing is vastly different than the kind of city building I do for a living. During the day I worry about things like rental rates, building setbacks, bulkhead locations, parking counts, and a bunch of other fun stuff.

The two are certainly related, but the latter feels a lot more tangible. The result is spaces that people will occupy and buildings that will have some sort of impact on the overall built environment.

But as you all know, city building is a lot more than just bricks-and-mortar. It is political. It is emotional. It is subjective. It is ego-driven. And it is so many other things. Because of this, words do have a role to play in shaping the cities we live in. And hopefully my words are having some kind of positive impact.

At the same time, I see myself as simply part of a larger set of trends that are happening in both city building, as well as in many other sectors. Trends around transparency, decentralization, and the democratization of information.

Technology today allows us to connect at zero marginal cost. And that is empowering people like me to self-publish, people to crowdfund real estate development projects, people to crowdsource community feedback for projects, and to do many other exciting things that weren’t possible before. Without this blog, most of you reading this right now would have absolutely no idea who I am.

So I guess I kind of do know what I’m going to talk about.

Earlier this week I wrote a post called: The pull from services to products. And in it I made mention of the fact that part of what’s driving this pull towards products is that the marginal cost of servicing additional users or customers is almost nothing in a world of internet services and products.

Well the reality is that this phenomenon is driving a hell of a lot more. It could – and probably will – fundamentally change almost all aspects of the economy.

I know that sounds like a pretty audacious statement, but if you watch the following 10 minute talk by Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures) you might start to feel the same way. He outlines 5 changes being driven by the fact that in the digital world, marginal cost = 0. The impacts go well beyond tech, capturing sectors such as transportation and industrial real estate.

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

If you can’t see the video, click here.

Tonight I attended and gave a short talk at a city building themed PechaKucha night here in Toronto. If you aren’t familiar with the PechaKucha 20x20 presentation format, click here.

The first PechaKucha night was held in Tokyo, but it has since expanded to over 800 cities around the world. Each city has a local organizer who acts as a steward and here in Toronto it is Amy Bath. She did a fantastic job this evening.

Tonight’s event was all about non-traditional forms of city building. It was not so much about how architects and developers are shaping the built environment – thought there was some of that. It was more about how interdisciplinary artists, graphic designers, bloggers, and others, are having an impact on cities. So in my case, I was speaking as a blogger, rather than as a real estate developer, which was a bit unique for me.

What excited me about tonight is the amount of talent and passion that we have in this city, and how so much of it is being harnessed to make cities better.

Jay Wall of Studio Jaywall is doing incredible work at the intersection of graphic design and city building. My friend Mackenzie Keast of Distl and NXT City Prize is organizing public space competitions and then working with the city to get them built. And my friend Justin Broadbent, who is an interdisciplinary artist, is just killing it and putting Toronto on the map. I don’t know how else to say it.

And this is just naming a few of the people in attendance.

I have so much respect for people who love the city they call home and actively try to make it a better place. That’s a lot harder to do than just complain about why your city isn’t (insert other allegedly better city here). But it’s also a lot more productive.

This past week I received 2 separate invitations to talk at events about blogging as a form of city building.

The first is a Pecha Kucha talk being held here in Toronto on Tuesday, October 20th, 2015. If you’ve never heard of the Pecha Kucha movement, it’s basically all about rapid fire presentations. Each person gets 20 slides and 20 seconds for each one. 

Here are the details for the upcoming Toronto event:

The second event is being held in Ottawa in the new year. I’ll write more on that closer to the date when I have more information to share.

I haven’t yet figured out exactly what I’m going to talk about at each event, but I am starting to think about a few things.

When I started writing this blog, it was intended simply as an outlet for my own city-related – and also personal – thoughts. Ultimately, the blog evolved into having its own mission, which is to promote the building of beautiful, sustainable, and globally competitive cities. And so clearly in my mind blogging was and is in fact a form of city building.

But writing is vastly different than the kind of city building I do for a living. During the day I worry about things like rental rates, building setbacks, bulkhead locations, parking counts, and a bunch of other fun stuff.

The two are certainly related, but the latter feels a lot more tangible. The result is spaces that people will occupy and buildings that will have some sort of impact on the overall built environment.

But as you all know, city building is a lot more than just bricks-and-mortar. It is political. It is emotional. It is subjective. It is ego-driven. And it is so many other things. Because of this, words do have a role to play in shaping the cities we live in. And hopefully my words are having some kind of positive impact.

At the same time, I see myself as simply part of a larger set of trends that are happening in both city building, as well as in many other sectors. Trends around transparency, decentralization, and the democratization of information.

Technology today allows us to connect at zero marginal cost. And that is empowering people like me to self-publish, people to crowdfund real estate development projects, people to crowdsource community feedback for projects, and to do many other exciting things that weren’t possible before. Without this blog, most of you reading this right now would have absolutely no idea who I am.

So I guess I kind of do know what I’m going to talk about.

Earlier this week I wrote a post called: The pull from services to products. And in it I made mention of the fact that part of what’s driving this pull towards products is that the marginal cost of servicing additional users or customers is almost nothing in a world of internet services and products.

Well the reality is that this phenomenon is driving a hell of a lot more. It could – and probably will – fundamentally change almost all aspects of the economy.

I know that sounds like a pretty audacious statement, but if you watch the following 10 minute talk by Albert Wenger (Union Square Ventures) you might start to feel the same way. He outlines 5 changes being driven by the fact that in the digital world, marginal cost = 0. The impacts go well beyond tech, capturing sectors such as transportation and industrial real estate.

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

If you can’t see the video, click here.