I'm excited to learn that the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design has just launched a new master's program that is intended to fill the gap in education between design and real estate development. It's called the Master of Science in Design with a concentration in Property Development and Design (or MSD-PDD).

From the sounds of it, it's an expansion of the certificate program in real estate development that I did while I was there. Good. It's also something that I've been advocating for at the University of Toronto for over a decade. We need more bilingual city-building professionals who understand both design and real estate development.

My initial comment is that I hope they're really drawing on and leveraging the resources of the Wharton School. That's what will really make this program stand out against many similar programs. When I was there, I remember them having two different real estate finance classes: one for MBAs and one for designers (which had been made deliberately easier).

I thought this was bullshit, so I met with the program coordinator and requested to be admitted to the MBA one. He strongly advised against it and said that it's, you know, really hard. But that only made me want to take it even more. I ended up getting an A.

So my piece of unsolicited advice for this nascent program is: don't baby the designers when it comes to business and finance. Because the market certainly won't.

I started thinking about this the other night. For the first 18 years of my life, in other words, up until I moved away to university, I lived for the most part in a detached single-family house in the suburbs of Toronto. But since then, I have almost exclusively lived in apartments/condominiums ranging from converted houses to high-rise buildings.

This was true when I was at the University of Toronto and it was true when I lived in Philadelphia for grad school. In my first year of grad school I lived in a converted house in a questionable area of West Philly. In my second year I lived in a high-rise brutalist building. And in my third year I lived in a small three level walk-up apartment above a pet store and a really great deli. This perhaps not surprising given I was a student.

But since moving back to Toronto, the same has been true. I initially invested and lived in a single-family house, but then decided I preferred living in a condominium and so I have done that ever since. Maybe this changes with kids or maybe it doesn't. But it's interesting to think about the housing types we have chosen or were handed. Location and other factors certainly play a role.

What housing type have you lived in the most throughout your life? Let us know in the comment section below.

Cover photo by Michal GADEK on Unsplash

I can’t remember where I found it, but I recently stumbled upon this video simulating the dendrochronology of U.S. immigration from 1830 to 2015. 

It is part of an ongoing project by Pedro Cruz, John Wihbey, Avni Ghael, and Felipe Shibuya, and is supported by Northeastern University.

As its name suggests, the video (and broader study) uses the metaphor of a tree (and its growth rings) to explain historical immigration to the U.S. 

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

[vimeo 276140430 w=640 h=280]