Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
This recent Economist article makes the argument that, despite the recent (and sometimes annoying) proliferation of electric scooters across Europe, we probably shouldn’t be that grouchy about them. And that’s, “because the rise of the electric scooter is part of a broader and welcome phenomenon: the gradual retreat of the car from the European city.” By way of one example, by next year, Paris will have grown its bike lane network by 50% in five years.
The article ends with the point that, while this may seem like a “revolution,” it’s actually a “reversion.” European cities such as Paris and Antwerp (examples from the article) were both built before the advent of the car and were never really designed for it, although Haussmann’s wide avenues certainly helped. All of this gets back to a point I tried to make over the weekend with this post about driving and parking, and the relevance of urban form.
Reversion is a lot easier than a revolution. And for most North American cities, a revolution is what’s needed if we are in fact serious about a post-car future.
Today’s Seth Godin post on innovation, guts, and generosity is Seth Godin at his best. One of the reasons why I like it is that I keep thinking that “innovative” has become too much of a buzzword. It’s similar to walking around and telling everybody you’re a cool person. If you have to explain it to everyone, then you’re probably not cool. At the same time, I also find his generosity angle to be a clever one. Here is Seth’s post in its entirety (short and sweet, as usual):
Innovation is guts plus generosity
Guts, because it might not work.
And generosity, because guts without seeking to make things better is merely hustle.
The innovator shows up with something she knows might not work (pause for a second, and contrast that with everyone else, who has been trained to show up with a proven, verified, approved, deniable answer that will get them an A on the test).
If failure is not an option, then, most of the time, neither is success.
It’s pretty common for someone to claim that they’re innovative when actually, all they are is popular, profitable or successful. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s not innovative.
Allow generosity to take the lead and you’ll probably discover that it’s easier to find the guts.
The City of Nelson, BC — which happens to be the launching pad for some of the best snowboarding in the world — is currently conducting a laneway house design competition. The objective is to come up with a set of “pre-reviewed” design options that homeowners can then purchase and build themselves. Here’s more about what they’re trying to achieve:
The objective is to provide easy access to high-quality designs and code-compliant plans that strike the right balance between affordable construction and ecologically-sound design. They will be plans designed for Nelson, offering exceptional value-for-money for homeowners and making it easier for them to build a laneway house on their property. The contest evaluation criteria emphasise (sic) adaptability to various lots and topographies.
Three designs will be selected, as well as a “people’s choice award.” Payment for a winning design will come in the form of a monetary prize and a $1,000 royalty each time the design is purchased by a homeowner. I’m not sure how many houses there are in Nelson, but I would imagine there are enough to make this a worthwhile exercise.
I also think this is a good approach to making laneway housing more accessible to homeowners. The simpler they are to build, the more housing we will see. Nelson clearly understands that. If you’d like to submit, you have until September 2, 2019. More details, here. Apologies for the short notice.
Thank you to Mason Studio for sharing this competition with me.
Adrian Cook’s recent blog post about parking got me thinking about a few driving-related issues. Adrian points out that most condo buildings only allow owners to rent out their parking spots to people who already live in the building. But oftentimes, that’s not the customer. The people in the market for a downtown spot are the ones who commute into the city. And so what we are seeing in many downtowns is an oversupply of parking. Municipalities need to adjust their requirements.
What I have found is that most, but not all, cities are now fairly flexible when it comes to urban parking requirements. They recognize the hypocrisy in trying to encourage alternative forms of mobility while at the same time mandating a certain number of parking spots. And so the driver is more typically the market. Empty nesters and families who buy larger suites — at least here in Toronto — still almost always want parking. And it’s a deal breaker for them. Sometimes they want 2 spots.
Of course, there are also many instances where the location and unit mix of a project can support building absolutely no parking. There are lots of examples of the market excepting this, and so my view on parking is that there needs to be flexibility. Parking is typically a loss leader. The incentives are in place to build a hell of a lot less of it. But developers build it because they have to.
Lastly, I find that discussions around car dependency tend to ignore that we have designed vast swaths of our cities to be positively inhospitable to people who aren’t driving. Adrian is right in that if you look at the modal splits for people who live in downtown Vancouver and downtown Toronto, you will find a lot less drivers. And that’s because the environment is much better suited to other forms of mobility. The solution starts with urban form.
In the 1940’s, Juscelino Kubitschek invited Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer to design a new planned suburb north of Belo Horizonte called Pampulha. Kubitschek was mayor at the time and Niemeyer was a young modernist architect in his 30’s. This was the start of an important relationship.
The “Pampulha architectural complex” was completed in 1943 and was widely praised by the international design community. It was included in a 1943 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York called “Brazil Builds.”
This was an important exhibition for Brazilian architecture and for modernism in general because it demonstrated that the European principles of modernism were traveling (Brazil was one of the first to adopt), and they were evolving. Brazilian architects, such as Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa, had begun to regionalize it and make it their own.
A Brazilian style of modernism was emerging.
By 1956, Niemeyer had become a key figure in the world of modern architecture. At the same time, Juscelino Kubitschek had just become the 21st president of Brazil. Shortly after assuming the position, he would ask Niemeyer to help build a new capital city for the country. This was the birth of Brasilia. Niemeyer designed the buildings. And Costa planned its streets.
A few years before this, Niemeyer would also return to Belo Horizonte to design the “Niemeyer apartment building” at the Praça da Liberdade in the center of the city (and pictured above). It is quintessentially Niemeyer: curved & feminine. Niemeyer despised right angles. He found them harsh and manmade. Everything that is beautiful in nature — from the mountains of Brazil to the curves of a woman — was, in his view, sinuous.
But the other thing I really appreciate about it is how its “brise soleils” play with your perception of the building. The building is only 10 storeys. But the sun shades, which some of you may read as balconies, make it look much taller (albeit with some minuscule floor-to-floor heights). The reality is that each floor is made up of 3 breaks. And the overall effect is magical (again, see above photo).
Here is a great video tour of the building by Maíra Lemos, which includes a walkthrough of two of the apartments (note the antechamber in the first). This entire post was to get you ready to watch it. Click here if you can’t see it below. (Also, if I made videos, I would want them to be like this one.)
I just came across this chart from Axios, which relies on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the Kaiser Family Foundation. It compares median household income against the average cost of employer health insurance (in the United States).
What it is saying is that, after adjusting for inflation, the median household income has only increased by 2% from 1999 to 2017, whereas employer health insurance costs have increased by some 121% over this same time period.
The takeaway: Rising healthcare costs are believed to be eating away at take-home pay in the US. As of 2017, health insurance costs were estimated to represent about 30% of the average household income. That feels like a big number to me.
A recent study and research paper by the MIT Senseable City Lab — called, Tasty Data — has discovered that restaurant data alone can be used to accurately predict location-based factors such as daytime population, nighttime population, number of businesses, and overall consumer spending within a specific geography.
They started by pulling restaurant data from Dianping (Chinese equivalent of Yelp) for 9 Chinese cities: Baoding, Beijing, Chengdu, Hengyang, Kunming, Shenyang, Shenzen, Yueyang, and Zhengzhou. They then paired their Dianping data with other available data (such as aggregated mobile phone data) and used machine learning to search for any correlations.
Below is a diagram of “nighttime population” in Beijing. They are using a 3 km2 grid.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know that I like these kinds of studies. By 2020, it is estimated that 1.7MB of data will be created every second by every person on earth. The numbers are staggering. And yet, “official” data sources, such as census data, remain slow and fairly limited. Studies like this one continue to show us what’s next.
Over the long weekend, and across a couple of flights, I read Perfect City by Joe Berridge. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Each chapter focuses on a different world city, starting with the one and only Toronto. From New York to Singapore and London to Belfast, Joe hones in on what is working and what is not working.
No city is perfect.
I found myself folding the top corner of the page on numerous occasions. I did this every time I came across an interesting takeaway or stat, such as this one here: “Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, recently observed that Europe has 7 per cent of the world’s population, 25 per cent of its GDP, and 50 per cent of its social expenditures.”
However, the thread that really stood out to me is one about individuals. We all know that great things happen as a result of great teams. But as Joe profiles the various city building initiatives that he has come across throughout his work and travels, a common theme seems to emerge.
From Jane Jacobs to Lee Kuan Yew, there’s often a determined individual who is set on making something happen, or set on stopping something from happening, as is the case with Jane Jacobs and Toronto’s (proposed) Spadina Expressway.
This is not meant to discredit the value of teamwork. We all know that is essential. Instead, I think it speaks to the power of individual passion, conviction, and tenacity — all of which are ingredients required to build a perfect, or almost perfect, city. Wonderful things don’t just happen on their own.
Sometimes I think that writing a blog has become a bit old fashioned. I should probably be making videos. But the reality is that I like writing. Getting up in the morning, reading, having a coffee, and writing my thoughts down is a ritual that I really enjoy. Making videos is also a bigger time commitment, and I would rather focus my energy elsewhere.
But there’s no question that user-generated videos have and will continue to change ecommerce and many other aspects of society. This recent blog post by Connie Chan and Avery Segal called, “Ecommerce as video’s killer app,” is a perfect example of that. In it, they talk about a handful of Chinese companies that are pioneering “shoppable videos.”
What these platforms are doing is allowing consumers to buy things natively within their app and through a “video-centric checkout flow.” In other words: watch a story being told (from an individual, as opposed to a company); become interested in a particular product or service; and then immediately purchase it with only a few taps.
Another use case, which I think many of you will find interesting, is the creation of “crowdsourced video city guides.” Instead of checking for hotel reviews on TripAdvisor, simply find someone who has already vlogged a stay and book it that way. The individual who uploaded the video will then earn a commission.
This behavior already exists. Discovery and buying decisions — for many products and services — have moved to social platforms. Just today a friend reached out asking me about a bar that she saw on my Instagram stories a few weeks. She’s planning to go next week. Now where’s my commission?
Shoppable videos are a natural extension. They may also lower the barriers to participation. And so maybe I will end up making videos, after all.
I am still making my way through (and editing) my photos from Lisbon and Malaga. Here is one that I took from the Playa de La Malagueta. I also posted it to Twitter and Instagram and asked: Should we encourage the personalization and customization of outdoor spaces on multi-family buildings?
This building overlooks the beach and the Alboran Sea. If you look closely, you’ll see that a number of the balconies have been modified to include different kinds of awnings and shade structures. And some look to have been converted to interior space.
A few of you seem to support this level of customization, provided that the overall design integrity of the building is maintained. And I would agree that in this particular instance, it seems to work, which is actually why I took the photo. It gives the facade life.
I recall seeing instances of this in Toronto, but generally speaking it’s not encouraged or allowed. In condominiums, outdoor spaces attached to units are typically defined as “exclusive-use common elements.”
The challenge, here, lies in the subjectivity of “maintaining the overall design intent of the building.” I’m not sure how you codify that, unless you pre-design the options. Perhaps that’s one way of doing it.
