This evening I participated in a roundtable discussion at WORKshop here in Toronto. It was part of an exhibition that they currently have on called, Toronto 2020: Where Will We Live? They are located in the concourse level of 80 Bloor Street West, so go check them out.
The discussion this evening was all about the dramatic change in Toronto’s urban form over the last decade. In other words, the condo boom. We covered everything from the life cycle of buildings and urban design to demographics and policy. It was a lot of fun and I am certain the group could have continued talking all night.
But one thing that I was reminded of this evening is how important it is for great city building to be cross-disciplinary.
Take, for example, architects and (real estate) developers.
The stereotypical developer is greedy and only concerned with money. They don’t care about the impact that their buildings have on the built environment. On the other hand, the stereotypical architect is only concerned with design and not with the economic feasibility of projects. (I’m exaggerating here for effect.)
The point is that neither of these participants in isolation could build a great city. A beautiful design doesn’t have much value if it can’t be financed and built. And a highly financeable project could end up contributing nothing to the city. In some cases it could actually detract from the built environment.
So if we really want to build truly great cities, I believe it needs to be a collaborative effort. We need to bridge the divides in thinking and leverage each other’s strengths.
I have felt very strongly about this since I first started studying architecture as an undergraduate student, which is how I ended up taking business and real estate classes. I felt and continue to feel that the greatest opportunities exist at the intersection of different ways of thinking.
The United Nations recently released its 2015 version of World Population Prospects. It looks as if they put out and revise this report every 5 years.
The Economist then took some of their data and assembled it into the following charts:
It’s obviously extremely difficult to predict what will happen in the world by 2100, but to the extent that forecasting is possible, the world’s population is expected to reach somewhere around 11.2 billion people. Today it’s 7.3 billion.
The bulk of this growth is expected to happen first in Africa, and then in Asia. By 2100, Africa’s share of the global population is expected to grow to 39% and Asia’s share is expected to decline to 44%.
If you’ve been following population trends, most of this shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. The meaningful population growth happening in the world today is happening in the developing world.
That’s why architects, such as Rem Koolhaas, have been studying cities like Lagos (Nigeria) since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Below is a photo from a book/research project that I love called Mutations (2000). I pulled it from my bookshelf this morning.
It’s interesting to think about what all of this will mean for the global economy and for global governance.
The United States is about to be alone when it comes to advanced economies with a globally competitive population. Europe is shrinking, which leads me to believe that a strong EU is likely important. And we now have lots of megalopolises with big populations, but with very low income levels.
Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa, but per capita income is somewhere around $3,000.
Toronto’s Director of Urban Design, Harold Madi, recently did a 20 tweet series on boulevards. And since today is Gardiner East day, it seems appropriate to share it with you all. Thanks to Shawn Micallef for using Storify to put it all together neatly. If you can’t see all the tweets below, click here.
//storify.com/shawnmicallef/grand-boulevard-vs-freeway/embed?border=false//storify.com/shawnmicallef/grand-boulevard-vs-freeway.js?border=false[View the story “Grand Boulevard vs Freeway — the details matter” on Storify]