Blogger and Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Aaron M. Renn, recently published an interesting long-form article called, Rethinking America’s Cities’ Success Strategy.

One of the central themes is the idea that globalization has caused a kind of bifurcation in cities – a disconnect between the local and the global. In an effort to compete with other global cities around the world, we have begun to turn our back on local concerns. At the same time, not every city has the market power of, say, New York or London.

So what does this mean for cities? Here’s a quote from the article that I think does a good job explaining the mental model:

At the end of the article, Aaron makes a number of recommendations for how to better think about local entrepreneurship and economic growth. The first one is as follows:

“Local civic priorities should favor building a successful and inclusive local economy, including entrepreneurship, over global concerns and real estate development.”

Despite this being seemingly contradictory to do what I do for a living, I think it’s important to note that on a fundamental level, architects and developers simply create space. 

It might be a beautiful space. A space that improves well-being, creates value, and enables certain activities. But at the end of the day, there needs to be demand for that space. And a robust local economy is paramount to that equation. So I agree that we shouldn’t forget about local and expect that “if we build it, they will come.”

If you have the time, the full article is worth a read. It’s also part of a broader series on entrepreneurship and cities, so there are a bunch of other related articles on the same page.

Today I was surprised to learn from Charlie Gardner’s blog that groceries now represent 56% of Walmart’s sales. This is a huge number that I frankly wouldn’t have expected. 

Groceries have relatively low online penetration, which makes them great for brick-and-mortar retailers. I’ve written about this topic before in the context of big box stores and online shopping. But I clearly didn’t realize that it had become such a big segment for Walmart. 

What’s also noteworthy about grocery shopping though, is that customers appear to be less likely to travel far distances for it, even for lower prices. This means that the radial impact of Walmart the supermarket is less significant and far tighter (~2 miles) than Walmart the discount store. Click here for that study.

This is important because a big catchment area has been central to the Walmart model. They consume cheap land on the outskirts of cities and then offload the transportation costs (indirect costs) to consumers in exchange for everyday low prices (direct costs). Studies show that we, consumers, typically undervalue indirect costs.

Charlie argues in his post that this does not mean that we should write off big box retailing. And I would agree. The Walmart Express concept may have failed, but they are clearly looking for ways to rethink their model. Urban stores will need to form part of that.

Yesterday was an exciting day for Toronto city building announcements. 

Firstly, Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail published an exclusive preview of architect Bjarke Ingel’s plan for King Street West. Here’s a photo of the architectural model (it’s by Landon Speers):

My favorite quote from the article is this one from Bjarke:

“It would be sad if the most diverse city in the world had the most homogenous real estate.”

It’s true.

For those of you who emailed me about the details of his talk next week (there were a lot of you!), I believe I emailed you all back. But in case I missed some of you, you can click here for the event details. I should have included it in my original post about BIG, but I thought the event was already oversubscribed.

Secondly, a private company called Bullwheel International Cable Car Corp. has just proposed to build a $20 to $25 million gondola running from Danforth Avenue (near Broadview subway station) to the Evergreen Brickworks. The total length would be almost 1 km and it, allegedly, wouldn’t require any public money. Here is their website.

The timing of this proposal feels a bit serendipitous to me. When I was in Park City, Utah a few weeks ago, snowboarding right into the town and then taking their “town lifts” back up to traverse the mountain, I remember thinking to myself: what a wonderful form of transportation this is.

Of course, Park City has giant mountains and Toronto, unfortunately, does not. But we do have spectacular ravines and a spectacular institution known as the Evergreen Brickworks.

But one of the challenges with our ravines is that they can be a bit hidden – particularly for visitors to the city. Part of this is because we are trying to figure out the right balance between natural preservation and active use. But that’s one of the things that makes this proposal so intriguing. It’s a way to celebrate our ravines and natural landscape, without physically encroaching it.

Here’s a map of the proposed gondola path:

What do you think about these announcements?