Yesterday the Washington Post published a great chart showing the housing types of the 40 largest cities, by population, in the US. The list is ordered from lowest to highest according to the percentage of single-family houses in the city (green bar).
Here’s the chart:
Not surprisingly, many of the cities at the top of this list (meaning they have the lowest percentage of single-family houses) are in the older east coast cities.
It’s also interesting to see just how much the rowhouse dominates the urban landscape in Philadelphia and Baltimore. In Philadelphia, almost 60% of the housing stock is an attached rowhouse.
Housing is the backdrop for such a big portion of our lives. And when you live in a particular kind of home, it impacts your life whether or not you realize it. The dense rowhouses of Philadelphia and the single-family houses of Oklahoma City are the result of two very different kinds of urban landscapes.
In Toronto, that backdrop is in the midst of a dramatic change. More and more of us are now living in high-rise condos. That hasn’t always been the case, of course. It’s a recent shift. But it looks like it’ll be a big part of our future.
When I was a kid I remember my parents having something called a “Perly’s” in their car. It was basically a map book and it was the best thing around.
You would start by looking at a big grid of the city and then you’d find the specific area you were looking for and then flip to that page. If you were on the road a lot for work, a Perly’s was a mandatory addition to your car.
Things have obviously come a long way since then. It could take you a long time to find the street you were looking for in a Perly’s. I remember doing that from the passenger seat. Now our phones do that for us and if the connection makes us wait for more than few seconds, we get irritated.
But we’ve also moved beyond just static maps.
The other morning I was driving out to the suburbs and I saw this road sign telling me that – given current traffic conditions – it was going to take me 15 minutes to get to HWY 427.
I just got my tickets for NXT City Night, happening Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 6:30pm here in downtown Toronto.
If you’re not familiar with NXT City Prize, it’s an annual urban design competition where young Canadians (35 years of age or younger) submit ideas to improve the built environment. The top submissions win a total of $9,000 in prize money and the winning idea gets paired up with the City of Toronto work on actually implementing it. That’s the best part.
Yesterday the Washington Post published a great chart showing the housing types of the 40 largest cities, by population, in the US. The list is ordered from lowest to highest according to the percentage of single-family houses in the city (green bar).
Here’s the chart:
Not surprisingly, many of the cities at the top of this list (meaning they have the lowest percentage of single-family houses) are in the older east coast cities.
It’s also interesting to see just how much the rowhouse dominates the urban landscape in Philadelphia and Baltimore. In Philadelphia, almost 60% of the housing stock is an attached rowhouse.
Housing is the backdrop for such a big portion of our lives. And when you live in a particular kind of home, it impacts your life whether or not you realize it. The dense rowhouses of Philadelphia and the single-family houses of Oklahoma City are the result of two very different kinds of urban landscapes.
In Toronto, that backdrop is in the midst of a dramatic change. More and more of us are now living in high-rise condos. That hasn’t always been the case, of course. It’s a recent shift. But it looks like it’ll be a big part of our future.
When I was a kid I remember my parents having something called a “Perly’s” in their car. It was basically a map book and it was the best thing around.
You would start by looking at a big grid of the city and then you’d find the specific area you were looking for and then flip to that page. If you were on the road a lot for work, a Perly’s was a mandatory addition to your car.
Things have obviously come a long way since then. It could take you a long time to find the street you were looking for in a Perly’s. I remember doing that from the passenger seat. Now our phones do that for us and if the connection makes us wait for more than few seconds, we get irritated.
But we’ve also moved beyond just static maps.
The other morning I was driving out to the suburbs and I saw this road sign telling me that – given current traffic conditions – it was going to take me 15 minutes to get to HWY 427.
I just got my tickets for NXT City Night, happening Thursday, September 24, 2015 at 6:30pm here in downtown Toronto.
If you’re not familiar with NXT City Prize, it’s an annual urban design competition where young Canadians (35 years of age or younger) submit ideas to improve the built environment. The top submissions win a total of $9,000 in prize money and the winning idea gets paired up with the City of Toronto work on actually implementing it. That’s the best part.
Have you ever wondered how they come up with those time estimates?
There are a few ways to do it. But here in Toronto along the Gardiner Expressway and Lake Shore Boulevard it’s done using your mobile phone. Phones have unique network identifiers called MAC addresses. And when they try and connect via Bluetooth or Wifi they actually send out their MAC address.
So what happens as you’re driving along is that your phone’s MAC address is being picked up at various locations. And since the distance between these various reception points is known, it’s pretty easy to determine how fast you’re traveling. That’s how they come up with those time/traffic estimates.
This data is anonymous but, in theory, the city also knows if people are speeding when the traffic is light.
This same technology is being used by many retailers and shopping malls to track how people move through their spaces. It’s used to see, among other things, which merchandising strategies are working and what synergies one might be creating (or not creating) with the tenant mix.
But getting back to traffic, there are obviously ways to collect traffic data without any additional physical infrastructure.
As I was about to leave the suburbs and head back downtown, my phone somehow knew I was about to do that (perhaps because I was stopped at a Starbucks near the highway) and so it decided to tell me this:
It wasn’t the best notification to receive on my phone, but I was impressed nonetheless. This traffic data is collected using GPS data transmitted from mobile phones using Google Maps, Apple Maps, and so on. Clearly we’ve come a long way since the days of manually leafing through a thick Perly’s.
At the same time, it feels like we are still pretty far away from solving the problem of urban congestion. Every big city in the world is grappling with this issue.
Part of the problem, I think, is the belief that there’s some sort of silver bullet – more highways, a magic smartphone app, and so on – that will enable everyone to be able to drive around in their own car by themselves. I don’t believe that’s possible in big cities. And the sooner we get away from that toxic thinking, the quicker we’ll solve this problem.
The 2015 finalists have already been announced, here, but the top submissions will be announced at NXT City Night. The Chief Planner of Toronto, Jennifer Keesmaat, will be there, along with the competition’s very impressive jury.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of what makes cities great often happens through citizen-led grassroots movements.
The High Line in New York – which today attracts over 5 million visitors a year and is believed to be responsible for over $2.2 billion in new economic activity – was really the work of 2 friends who thought that preserving and repurposing the High Line was a cool idea. Which is why in 1999 they founded a non-profit called Friends of the High line. Amazing things happen when people and passion get involved.
So I would encourage you to grab a ticket and join me at NXT City Night next week. Tickets are $25, but if you use the coupon code ATHISCITY, you’ll get $5 off your ticket :)
The event is also taking place in a spectacular old warehouse building at 56 Maud Street (formerly St. Andrew’s Market Hall). That alone is reason enough to come. I’ve been inside before. Get your Instagram ready. But if that’s not enough, there’s also:
Open bar including Steam Whistle beer and Pillitteri Estate wine
Catering from Oyster Boy, Kanpai Snack Bar, Thoroughbred and many more
Art installations by Wayward Collective
Beats by Jesse Futerman and A Digital Needle
Local wares from GetFresh, Shopify, Spacing Store and Swipe
I hope to see you there. Make sure to tweet at me if you’ll be there so we can connect in person.
Have you ever wondered how they come up with those time estimates?
There are a few ways to do it. But here in Toronto along the Gardiner Expressway and Lake Shore Boulevard it’s done using your mobile phone. Phones have unique network identifiers called MAC addresses. And when they try and connect via Bluetooth or Wifi they actually send out their MAC address.
So what happens as you’re driving along is that your phone’s MAC address is being picked up at various locations. And since the distance between these various reception points is known, it’s pretty easy to determine how fast you’re traveling. That’s how they come up with those time/traffic estimates.
This data is anonymous but, in theory, the city also knows if people are speeding when the traffic is light.
This same technology is being used by many retailers and shopping malls to track how people move through their spaces. It’s used to see, among other things, which merchandising strategies are working and what synergies one might be creating (or not creating) with the tenant mix.
But getting back to traffic, there are obviously ways to collect traffic data without any additional physical infrastructure.
As I was about to leave the suburbs and head back downtown, my phone somehow knew I was about to do that (perhaps because I was stopped at a Starbucks near the highway) and so it decided to tell me this:
It wasn’t the best notification to receive on my phone, but I was impressed nonetheless. This traffic data is collected using GPS data transmitted from mobile phones using Google Maps, Apple Maps, and so on. Clearly we’ve come a long way since the days of manually leafing through a thick Perly’s.
At the same time, it feels like we are still pretty far away from solving the problem of urban congestion. Every big city in the world is grappling with this issue.
Part of the problem, I think, is the belief that there’s some sort of silver bullet – more highways, a magic smartphone app, and so on – that will enable everyone to be able to drive around in their own car by themselves. I don’t believe that’s possible in big cities. And the sooner we get away from that toxic thinking, the quicker we’ll solve this problem.
The 2015 finalists have already been announced, here, but the top submissions will be announced at NXT City Night. The Chief Planner of Toronto, Jennifer Keesmaat, will be there, along with the competition’s very impressive jury.
I think it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of what makes cities great often happens through citizen-led grassroots movements.
The High Line in New York – which today attracts over 5 million visitors a year and is believed to be responsible for over $2.2 billion in new economic activity – was really the work of 2 friends who thought that preserving and repurposing the High Line was a cool idea. Which is why in 1999 they founded a non-profit called Friends of the High line. Amazing things happen when people and passion get involved.
So I would encourage you to grab a ticket and join me at NXT City Night next week. Tickets are $25, but if you use the coupon code ATHISCITY, you’ll get $5 off your ticket :)
The event is also taking place in a spectacular old warehouse building at 56 Maud Street (formerly St. Andrew’s Market Hall). That alone is reason enough to come. I’ve been inside before. Get your Instagram ready. But if that’s not enough, there’s also:
Open bar including Steam Whistle beer and Pillitteri Estate wine
Catering from Oyster Boy, Kanpai Snack Bar, Thoroughbred and many more
Art installations by Wayward Collective
Beats by Jesse Futerman and A Digital Needle
Local wares from GetFresh, Shopify, Spacing Store and Swipe
I hope to see you there. Make sure to tweet at me if you’ll be there so we can connect in person.
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