This week was the first public meeting for the revitalization of Berczy Park in the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood of Toronto. I wasn’t able to attend the meeting but, as a resident of the area, I am interested in the project and will be following.

In browsing through the project’s site, I came across an incredibly depressing photo of the St. Lawrence area from the 1970s. Here it is:

The empty greenish plot of land in the foreground is where Berczy Park sits today. The building at its point is the Flatiron Building, which is easily one of the most photographed buildings in the city.

What’s obviously remarkable about this image is just the sheer number of surface parking lots. There is no neighbourhood, really.

But even more depressing is the fact that all of this was seemingly deliberate. We tore down buildings to make way for all those parking areas. And that’s always upsetting. Here’s a photo of the same area in the 1920s (the Flatiron Building is at the bottom right):

It just goes to show how planning ideologies change.

But to our credit, look how far we’ve come since the 1970s. Today, the St. Lawrence Market neighbourhood is one of the most vibrant downtown neighbourhoods. It’s become a model for mixed-income urban renewal - both here and abroad - and it continues to see strong investment.

So while we screwed it up before, we are making amends.

I sat on a panel tonight for a discussion on investing in condominiums. It was organized by the Six Degrees Real Estate Mixer group.

My overall position was that we’re now returning to a more balanced market. The days of massive appreciation and overnight riches are gone. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to see anywhere near the correction that the US housing market saw in 2008.

What I do think it means is that everyone - from developers to small investors - needs to remain focused on fundamentals. Buy quality assets in great locations and make sure the rental income is there. Cash is king. That’s fundamentally what the real estate business is about.

Overall, the data shows that developers are pulling back with respect to releasing new product to the market and that price appreciation has slowed, almost trading sideways. All of this is good for the market if you’re worried about a catastrophic crash.

I think the experience in the US has made us all paranoid about our own housing market. But it could end up saving us from repeating their mistakes.

For the sake of our global brand, Toronto taxis need to have a consistent brand - the same car, the same colour. I’ve thought about this before and written about it somewhere, but it’s worth repeating.

I was driving around downtown on Saturday night and I started to compare the ratio of cabs to non-cabs on the road. As is typical for any weekend night, most of the cars were cabs. And yet they’re a complete hodgepodge of different car types and colours.

The cab companies, of course, like it this way. They want to be differentiated. But from a practical standpoint, does this even matter? Sure, I might call a specific company to pick me up somewhere, but when I’m hailing a cab on the street I go for the first available car. I couldn’t care less what company it is. 

The result of this heterogeneity though is that we’re missing out on a valuable opportunity to brand our city. New York has its yellow cabs, London has its black cabs and all of Germany has its beige Mercedes Benzes. In our psyche, those cars symbolize those cities.

Just like companies, cities today compete with one another for talent and capital. It’s been said many times before that the vast majority of Millenials now choose where they want to live (which city) before they even start looking for a job. Toronto needs to be on the top of that last.

Taxi branding may seem like a small detail, but it’s not. As a comparison, take for example the Shangri-La Hotel company. The first time I stayed at one of their hotels was in Vancouver. I remember asking one of the staff members about the fragrance that seemed to permeate the entire building.

He told me that it was the “Essence of Shangri-La" and that it was actually diffused throughout the entire building, as well as around the perimeter. The purpose of this was to give global travels a familiar feeling - that feeling of being home - wherever they are in the world. Now that’s consistent branding.

Similarly, being in Toronto should make you feel like you’re here and in no other city. Our lumbering streetcars certainly help with that, but our cabs don’t. In a time where globalization is making cities feel more and more alike, we need to be doing everything we can in order to differentiate.

Hell, in addition to having the same car and colour, maybe we should even create an Essence of Toronto scent for our cabs.