A couple of months ago I picked up a FitBit Flex. For those of you unfamiliar with the wrist device, it’s similar to the Nike FuelBand.
I bought one for really two reasons.
The first is that I think it’s pretty clear at this point - with Google Glass and rumours of an Apple iWatch - that wearable computing will eventually be a massive market opportunity. Who knows, it could do to mobile what mobile did to PCs.
The second reason is that I love data. I love measuring and tracking things. And it’s probably the main reason I use apps like Foursquare fairly regularly.
To this end, here’s how I walked today:
It’s pretty typical for a day of commuting: To the office in the morning; out and about at lunch; and then back at the end of the day.
In terms of the value I get out of this, it’s more for novelty than anything else at this point. The FitBit app has a lot of features to track caloric intake and other things, but I only use it to track things it can do passively.
That said, I like being able to quickly see how close I am to my daily step goal of 15,000. On most days I don’t hit it.
In many ways, the woes of Detroit are simply an extreme example of what’s happening in many advanced economies. The loss of manufacturing based jobs is creating a void that is not being filled - or is being filled differently - by new industries.
Some of you might be wondering why on earth I would do that, but I’m actually super excited. Why? Because I’m fascinated by the city. Detroit is such a dramatic example of how the fortunes of a city can change. I think some people forget what places like New York City and South Beach were like in the 1980s.
But more importantly, I’m interested in the future of Detroit and the opportunities that might lie ahead. In many ways, the city feels like a clean slate. It’s a city that’s trying to completely rebuild and reinvent itself. And there’s a lot of smart (and rich) people, like billionaire Dan Gilbert, putting their weight behind its renewal. Through his company Bedrock, he has quickly become one the largest private landlords in the city. I also have a good friend who’s working in Detroit on
A couple of months ago I picked up a FitBit Flex. For those of you unfamiliar with the wrist device, it’s similar to the Nike FuelBand.
I bought one for really two reasons.
The first is that I think it’s pretty clear at this point - with Google Glass and rumours of an Apple iWatch - that wearable computing will eventually be a massive market opportunity. Who knows, it could do to mobile what mobile did to PCs.
The second reason is that I love data. I love measuring and tracking things. And it’s probably the main reason I use apps like Foursquare fairly regularly.
To this end, here’s how I walked today:
It’s pretty typical for a day of commuting: To the office in the morning; out and about at lunch; and then back at the end of the day.
In terms of the value I get out of this, it’s more for novelty than anything else at this point. The FitBit app has a lot of features to track caloric intake and other things, but I only use it to track things it can do passively.
That said, I like being able to quickly see how close I am to my daily step goal of 15,000. On most days I don’t hit it.
In many ways, the woes of Detroit are simply an extreme example of what’s happening in many advanced economies. The loss of manufacturing based jobs is creating a void that is not being filled - or is being filled differently - by new industries.
Some of you might be wondering why on earth I would do that, but I’m actually super excited. Why? Because I’m fascinated by the city. Detroit is such a dramatic example of how the fortunes of a city can change. I think some people forget what places like New York City and South Beach were like in the 1980s.
But more importantly, I’m interested in the future of Detroit and the opportunities that might lie ahead. In many ways, the city feels like a clean slate. It’s a city that’s trying to completely rebuild and reinvent itself. And there’s a lot of smart (and rich) people, like billionaire Dan Gilbert, putting their weight behind its renewal. Through his company Bedrock, he has quickly become one the largest private landlords in the city. I also have a good friend who’s working in Detroit on
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
- I think it’s pretty clear that the opportunities for unskilled workers is on the decline.
Therefore (and this is old news), we clearly need to figure out ways to retrain existing workers and ensure that the next generation is equipped with the skills and knowledge to compete in this new world. The problem though - and this is the second piece - is that I’m not sure the new economy will require the same raw number of people.
What I mean by this is that scaling up production of an automative plant is quite different than scaling up an internet platform like Twitter or Tumblr. You just don’t need as many people, which is why the returns to being smart have grown massively for those few. And this is part of the reason we’re seeing rising income inequality across the board.
Now, I don’t know what the answer is, but I think we’ve already shown that the transition to a new economy isn’t going to be a smooth one. To that end, I’ll leave you with one last thought which came from a former professor of mine at Rotman, Walid Hejazi.
His argument is that it’s actually unethical for governments to subsidize unproductive sectors of the economy, such as a manufacturing, in order to sustain jobs. The reason being that you then have high school students telling themselves that they don’t need to go to University because they can simply go work at the local plant and make decent money. But what they don’t realize is that there’s a very real expiry date to those opportunities and, when it comes, it’ll be much harder for them to be retrained.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in media headlines and so I want to see what’s happening first hand on the ground. Detroit has a long history of entrepreneurialism and so the eternal optimist in me wants to believe that it can come back.
One of its big challenges, however, is education. As Harvard economist Ed Glaeser put it in his book, the Triumph of the City, one of the greatest things about the Detroit of yesterday was its ability to create a lot of high paying jobs for people with little education. Now the city has to deal with that legacy and few jobs.
I’ll have more to say after my trip but, in the interim, what are your thoughts on Detroit? Can it come back? Will it ever be the economic powerhouse that it once was?
, where high school graduates can make six figures working in the Canadian oil sands and the
- I think it’s pretty clear that the opportunities for unskilled workers is on the decline.
Therefore (and this is old news), we clearly need to figure out ways to retrain existing workers and ensure that the next generation is equipped with the skills and knowledge to compete in this new world. The problem though - and this is the second piece - is that I’m not sure the new economy will require the same raw number of people.
What I mean by this is that scaling up production of an automative plant is quite different than scaling up an internet platform like Twitter or Tumblr. You just don’t need as many people, which is why the returns to being smart have grown massively for those few. And this is part of the reason we’re seeing rising income inequality across the board.
Now, I don’t know what the answer is, but I think we’ve already shown that the transition to a new economy isn’t going to be a smooth one. To that end, I’ll leave you with one last thought which came from a former professor of mine at Rotman, Walid Hejazi.
His argument is that it’s actually unethical for governments to subsidize unproductive sectors of the economy, such as a manufacturing, in order to sustain jobs. The reason being that you then have high school students telling themselves that they don’t need to go to University because they can simply go work at the local plant and make decent money. But what they don’t realize is that there’s a very real expiry date to those opportunities and, when it comes, it’ll be much harder for them to be retrained.
It’s easy to get wrapped up in media headlines and so I want to see what’s happening first hand on the ground. Detroit has a long history of entrepreneurialism and so the eternal optimist in me wants to believe that it can come back.
One of its big challenges, however, is education. As Harvard economist Ed Glaeser put it in his book, the Triumph of the City, one of the greatest things about the Detroit of yesterday was its ability to create a lot of high paying jobs for people with little education. Now the city has to deal with that legacy and few jobs.
I’ll have more to say after my trip but, in the interim, what are your thoughts on Detroit? Can it come back? Will it ever be the economic powerhouse that it once was?
