Jarrett Walker of Human Transit recently published an interesting post talking about downtowns. His argument is that we shouldn’t be planning our transit networks around the traditional notion of a single-centered city.

Here’s a snippet:

So growing a single downtown isn’t the key to becoming a great transit city. Quite the opposite, it’s best to have a pattern of many centers, all generating high demand, and supporting balanced two-way flows between them that let us move more people on less infrastructure.  This is the great advantage of Paris or Los Angeles or the Dutch Randstad over Chicago or Manhattan.

Now, there are many cases where a singular economic center still dominates an urban region. See downtown Toronto. And many will argue that the current economic environment is creating more, rather than less, concentrated urban spikiness.

But at the same time it is quite clear that many of our cities have shifted away from a monocentric model to a polycentric one. 

I mean, just look at all employment nodes that have developed across the Toronto region. The idea that everyone comes downtown in the morning and then leaves in the evening has become an anachronism for many. Early in my career I spent 4 years commuting from downtown to the suburbs.

So what is happening is that our cities need to start performing more like point-to-point networks. This isn’t a new thought. But it’s a lot harder to execute on compared to what many cities have been used to. 

You need a critical density of both residents and employers and the right kind of connectivity to create a true “mobility hub.” In Toronto, you could argue that we really only have one of those and it’s centered around Union Station.

But I think that will change for many cities. And when we do get it right, we will be doing a lot to improve the crippling traffic congestion that so many of our cities are suffering from.

I’m off this week to South Florida to check out Art Basel (among other things). This week isn’t a great week to be leaving the city since it’s the Toronto Real Estate Forum and lots of people are coming to the city for that. But I’ve wanted to go to Art Basel for over a decade, so it was about time I did that.

I also decided to pick up the new Monocle Travel Guide to Miami. This is the 8th city that they’ve covered and, as you might know from reading this blog, I’m a big fan of Monocle. (I’m still waiting for the Toronto edition, guys.)

As part of this guide launch – which was timed to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach – they also released a short video that is worth watching.

When most people think of Miami they probably think of sun and flash. And that is certainly part of the DNA of the city. But Miami has also grown into a global city with important and extensive connections to Latin America. It’s also an incredible place for those who love art, architecture, and design. If you watch the Monocle video, I’m sure you’ll feel that. 

Miami is absolutely one of my favorite cities.

The Neptis Foundation here in Toronto just recently published a fantastic report looking at the regional economic structure of the Greater Golden Horseshoe area. It’s called Planning for Prosperity.

In it they identity the polycentric nature of employment in the Toronto region by way of downtown Toronto and three suburban “megazones.” Here’s one of their maps showing overall employment density and the megazones (light blue circles):

Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of the scale of these megazones:

“The Airport megazone, one of the three employment megazones outside Downtown Toronto, is the second largest concentration of employment in Canada, after Downtown Toronto. It represents almost 300,000 jobs, more than the central business districts of Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary individually.”

And here’s a chart showing the hard numbers:

Downtown Toronto dominates in terms of employment. But it’s also fascinating to see how much more efficiently it provides that employment. It has the smallest physical area of all the employment zones (2,540 hectares or 6,276 acres) and the lowest percentage of car trips (29%).

But the big takeaway from their report is that we have not been focused enough on employment in our planning. Instead, we seem to be thinking residentially. Here’s a final snippet:

“This study shows that the Growth Plan and The Big Move, which are currently under review, do not address the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing regional economy or the reality of a transforming economic landscape.

The Growth Plan’s focus has largely been on managing residential growth rather than non-residential and employment-related development. Indeed, the Growth Plan is based on shockingly little hard evidence on the evolving economy of the region. Plans for city-regions a fraction of the size of the GGH typically involve more economic research, analysis, and evidence.”

Clearly we need to be looking at both the residential and non-residential sides of the equation as we grow the region. To read the full report, click here.