Remember when you first started using the internet and nobody wanted to reveal their actual identity? Everyone used aliases, because it was weird to share sensitive information - like your full name - on the internet. One of my earliest usernames was bdonn. I used it for everything. I had bdonn@aol.com.

Well, things have certainly changed.

Could you have imagined that we’d get to a world where “over sharing” is viewed as a real - albeit first world - problem and phrases like “I share therefore I am” get thrown around. It’s a pretty dramatic departure from how we used to feel about privacy. And for the younger generation, who grew up entirely with social media, I don’t even think privacy is on the radar.

Some would argue that this is a problem, which is why a group of academics over at Berkeley created a web app called Ready or Not? What it does is allow anyone to enter a Twitter or Instagram username and see a plotted map of where that user has shared from.

Here’s what it spit out for me based on my recent tweets:

The hope is that this will promote awareness around the fact that even one short tweet could be potentially revealing your exact geographic location. But I wonder to what extent people are actually unaware that this is happening or is just that they’re comfortable sharing this information? What do you think?

A couple of months ago I had coffee with an urban planner who had recently relocated from the Bay Area back to Toronto. One of the interesting things that came up during our conversation - that I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to before - was how corporate shuttle buses (from the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook and so on) could be impacting cities.

On the surface, they seem fairly benign. Most of the big tech companies are located outside of San Francisco, but young smart people today like living in cities. So let’s run shuttles buses that take people back and forth. Employees get to live the life they want and employers get broader access to human capital. It seems like a win-win.

But in reality, some argue that these shuttles buses reinforce a powerful trend already plaguing the region: The alienation of non-tech people. George Packer of the New Yorker called the buses "a vivid emblem of the tech boom’s stratifying effect in the Bay Area."

We need to stop fixating so much on building height. I think some people believe that there’s a perfect correlation between building height and offensiveness. But in fact, I’ve been offended many a times by fairly squat buildings.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that height is an important part of urban design. But I’m starting to feel like we’re over emphasizing the importance of height and under estimating the myriad of other factors that constitute great architecture and city building.

Massing is one. And the ground floor is another. Buildings that give nothing back to the street can be a real drain on a city, which is why if you’re trying to build a livable and exciting place where people want to be, you need to get the ground floor right.

It’s important because as a pedestrian, it almost doesn’t matter what the building looks like 500 feet up in the air (unless of course you’re completely bathed in shadow). What matters is what you see right in front of you. The stuff happening on the street.

What I worry about is not all the tall buildings we’re building in Toronto, it’s what we’re doing, or not doing, for our main streets. In some cases, a new development can be a welcome addition to a neighbourhood because it fills in what was previously a void (either physical or psychological).

But in other cases it can be harmful, particularly if we’re destroying small scale retail and replacing it with something that sucks, or worse - nothing at all. So I would encourage you all - real estate folk and citizens - to think more about the ground floor the next time you evaluate a project. It’s an important one.

Remember when you first started using the internet and nobody wanted to reveal their actual identity? Everyone used aliases, because it was weird to share sensitive information - like your full name - on the internet. One of my earliest usernames was bdonn. I used it for everything. I had bdonn@aol.com.

Well, things have certainly changed.

Could you have imagined that we’d get to a world where “over sharing” is viewed as a real - albeit first world - problem and phrases like “I share therefore I am” get thrown around. It’s a pretty dramatic departure from how we used to feel about privacy. And for the younger generation, who grew up entirely with social media, I don’t even think privacy is on the radar.

Some would argue that this is a problem, which is why a group of academics over at Berkeley created a web app called Ready or Not? What it does is allow anyone to enter a Twitter or Instagram username and see a plotted map of where that user has shared from.

Here’s what it spit out for me based on my recent tweets:

The hope is that this will promote awareness around the fact that even one short tweet could be potentially revealing your exact geographic location. But I wonder to what extent people are actually unaware that this is happening or is just that they’re comfortable sharing this information? What do you think?

A couple of months ago I had coffee with an urban planner who had recently relocated from the Bay Area back to Toronto. One of the interesting things that came up during our conversation - that I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to before - was how corporate shuttle buses (from the likes of Apple, Google, Facebook and so on) could be impacting cities.

On the surface, they seem fairly benign. Most of the big tech companies are located outside of San Francisco, but young smart people today like living in cities. So let’s run shuttles buses that take people back and forth. Employees get to live the life they want and employers get broader access to human capital. It seems like a win-win.

But in reality, some argue that these shuttles buses reinforce a powerful trend already plaguing the region: The alienation of non-tech people. George Packer of the New Yorker called the buses "a vivid emblem of the tech boom’s stratifying effect in the Bay Area."

We need to stop fixating so much on building height. I think some people believe that there’s a perfect correlation between building height and offensiveness. But in fact, I’ve been offended many a times by fairly squat buildings.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand that height is an important part of urban design. But I’m starting to feel like we’re over emphasizing the importance of height and under estimating the myriad of other factors that constitute great architecture and city building.

Massing is one. And the ground floor is another. Buildings that give nothing back to the street can be a real drain on a city, which is why if you’re trying to build a livable and exciting place where people want to be, you need to get the ground floor right.

It’s important because as a pedestrian, it almost doesn’t matter what the building looks like 500 feet up in the air (unless of course you’re completely bathed in shadow). What matters is what you see right in front of you. The stuff happening on the street.

What I worry about is not all the tall buildings we’re building in Toronto, it’s what we’re doing, or not doing, for our main streets. In some cases, a new development can be a welcome addition to a neighbourhood because it fills in what was previously a void (either physical or psychological).

But in other cases it can be harmful, particularly if we’re destroying small scale retail and replacing it with something that sucks, or worse - nothing at all. So I would encourage you all - real estate folk and citizens - to think more about the ground floor the next time you evaluate a project. It’s an important one.