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.
A new Facebook-supported blockchain and cryptocurrency, called Libra, was announced today. The goal: a new global currency. But unlike other cryptocurrencies, this one will be backed by a basket of government-issued securities and other investments.
A new governing body called the Libra Association has also been formed, with its 28 founding members (see above image) contributing both capital (at least $10 million) and expertise. Going forward, they will help shape the network. It’s important to note that Facebook will have the same status as all other members of the Association.
Facebook said Tuesday the network underpinning the new cryptocurrency would be governed by the Libra Association, an independent, not-for-profit organization based in Geneva. Facebook named more than two-dozen founding partners in that association, including Uber, Visa Inc. and a handful of venture-capital firms and blockchain companies like Coinbase.
The other thing that differentiates Libra from other cryptocurrencies is that when it launches next year (2020), it will do so inside some of the most widely used consumer apps on the internet, including Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. That translates into somewhere around 2.4 billion active users.
Many within in the industry are already speculating that this could be what finally brings the crypto ecosystem into the mainstream, which is, I guess, why companies such as Visa and Mastercard have already signed on to the project. I am also thrilled to see the Creative Destruction Lab listed above. They are a seed-stage program based out of the University of Toronto.
If you’d like to learn more about Libra, here’s the official website and here’s a good solid overview by TechCrunch.
Today was a historic day for Toronto, for Canada, and for the game of basketball in this country. The Toronto Raptors are world champions for the first time since their founding in 1995. Soak it in. Here is a photo that I took of the parade coming through the Financial District at around 2:30pm:
Some of the estimates going around are that 1 to 2 million people attended today’s championship parade. But 2 million seems like a lot, even though today was frenetic (see above photo, again). I mean, that’s 1/3 of the population of the Greater Toronto Area.
The fact that some of the “official” estimates also have a 1 million person spread tells me that, as of right now, we actually have no idea how many people were at today’s parade.
So that got me thinking: How do people count crowds? And are we using drones to do it, yet? Subway and rail ridership for the day — which surely spiked — will give us some indication. But definitely not the full picture.
It turns out that the typical approach to counting crowds is known as Jacobs’ Method. It was invented in the 1960s by a professor at UC, Berkeley, named Herbert Jacobs. He came up with the method while trying to count the number of students protesting the Vietnam War.
The concept is simple: It’s area x density. And permutations of his method usually use this same principle. What you do is take the area filled with people, break it up into a smaller grid, and then come up with a population density estimate for each square.
He had some rules of thumb for that. A light crowd was about 1 person per 10 square feet. And a dense crowd (such as a mosh pit or an NBA championship parade in Toronto) was about 1 person per 2.5 square feet.
Using this method and aerial photos of today’s parade, I would imagine that we could eventually get to a more precise estimate than 1 to 2 million people. But surely somebody has figured out how to program a drone (or other UAV) and do this even more accurately.
Crowd data is valuable information, particularly for political rallies and protests (I would imagine). If you know of a company doing this, please leave it in the comment section below. And if it doesn’t yet exist, well then, now you have a new business idea.
This morning I was reading about Aman’s new condo and hotel project in New York, which is planned for the 100-year-old Crown Building at 730 Fifth Avenue. It will have 83 hotel rooms and just 22 homes, and be the first urban condominium for the resort company.
Owned by OKO Group, the hospitality company is mostly known for their “sleek, minimalist hotels in secluded, far-flung destinations,” according to the WSJ. Rooms go for upwards of USD 2,500 per night and they, supposedly, have a rabid customer base known as “Amanjunkies.”
What’s interesting about this project is that (among other things) it’s a bet the Aman brand will translate to an urban context and drive above-market pricing. And it will do it at a time when the ultra high-net-worth segment of the market in NYC has been cooling because of a new “mansion tax” and probably other factors.
The five-storey penthouse, which will be built into the building’s “crown,” is asking USD 180 million. If/when it sells, it will break the record for the most expensive home ever sold in the city on a square foot basis at $14,358 psf.
If you subscribe to the WSJ, you can read the full story here. I find it valuable to see how projects position themselves.
Click here for a short video (by Monocle) about Tokyo’s nascent “kitchen car”, or food truck, scene. (The soundtrack is fun.) Historically, street food stands, or “yatai,” have had a questionable reputation in Japan. They proliferated across the country following World War II when times were tough and food was being rationed. But as Tokyo prepared to host the 1964 Olympics, local governments began to clamp down on yatai. They were seen as unhygienic and a place for drunks to hang out. There may have also been a sense of shame around the country’s post-war struggles. Whatever the case may be, these new food trucks have — aided by technology — changed the way people eat on the street.
Earlier this year, an 800 unit co-living project was approved in downtown San Jose. The developer is Starcity. And it is said to be the largest co-living project in the pipeline in the United States right now.
A few months later (presumably because of this project), San Jose also created a new “co-living” land-use classification. It is similarly thought to be a first for US cities.
I think it still remains to be seen how broad the market can be for co-living. Do older generations also want to go back to dorm-like living? Or is this a housing solution mainly for twenty-somethings?
At the same time, it’s not an entirely new housing idea. I like the parallel that Sarah Holder of CityLab draws between today’s co-living and yesterday’s single room occupancy buildings (SROs).
There are, of course, many differences, including the amount of space dedicated to common areas (the community aspect). But in both cases, part of the value proposition is about affordability.
San Francisco-based Helium launched a new wireless communication standard today that it is calling “LongFi.” It has 200x the range of WiFi and operates at 1/1000th the cost of a cellar modem. It is perfectly suited to IoT (Internet of Things) devices, such as the electric scooters that are proliferating across our cities. Helium’s goal is to build out the “world’s first peer-to-peer wireless network.”
What’s potentially very exciting about this technology is that it represents decentralized network infrastructure. Anyone can install a Helium Hotspot in their home (to grow the network). And if you do that, you’ll be rewarded with tokens, which, in theory, will have some value going forward. Another way to think of a Helium Hotspot is as “the equivalent of bitcoin mining for network infrastructure.”
Put yet another way, it’s a new kind of wireless protocol and an entirely new business model — which is often how startups end up beating entrenched incumbents. Here is a short description from Union Square Ventures (an investor in the company) on how the Helium network will work:
Hotspots, the backbone of the Helium network, can be deployed by anyone, anywhere, simply by plugging into an existing router. The Helium network will be assembled, over time, by a broad community of volunteers, civic organizations, commercial partners, and ideally a new class of entrepreneurs building out connectivity in new cities and towns.
Economic activity in the Helium network is coordinated through a new type of blockchain that uses “proof of coverage” (proving that a Hotspot is actually located in physical space) to secure the network and incentivize deployment where it is needed most. We believe that the Helium network has the potential to become one of the most decentralized blockchain networks in existence, due to physical location as the underpinning of the economic and security model.
This is a good example of the potential of the blockchain technology. We are still waiting for mainstream consumer applications to be built on top of it, but many people within the industry believe we’re only a few years out from that. I’m going to try out a Helium Hotspot as soon as they’re available in Toronto.
Last week I went for a tour of Sidewalk Labs’ “307” workshop here in Toronto. In it they have a generative urban design tool that allows you to toggle things like density, building shape, building height, the amount of green space, the distribution of green space, and so on.
Perhaps some of you have seen it or used it before. The controls look like this:
After you’re done playing around with the dials, you are then able to provide feedback on the design that you’ve birthed through two very simple feedback buttons. One is a happy face. And the other is a sad face. (I wonder if the placement of these two buttons has any impact on responses.)
What I like about this tool is that it immediately imposes a certain degree of reality and it forces you, the participant, to acknowledge the various trade-offs that need to be considered when you’re designing and planning a city.
For example, if you want lots of parks and public spaces, but you want to hold population density constant — perhaps because you’re trying to make use of an investment made in transit infrastructure — well then you’ll need to accept taller buildings.
A very similar thought process goes into each and every development pro forma as we all try and manage the myriad of competing interests. But I guess this is also true of life in general. There are gives and there are takes.
I am on my third Fitbit device. The first one I got was their very first release. I wanted to try it out and so I put in a pre-order. It was pretty cool, but it wasn’t yet great. So I eventually stopped using it. The second one I got was better, but I somehow lost it, possibly at a bar. Its whereabouts are still unconfirmed to this day.
The FitBit Inspire, which is what I am using now, has really stuck with me. I bought it for the heart rate monitor and for sleep tracking, which is why an Apple Watch wasn’t for me. But the ability to read incoming text messages on my wrist has, surprisingly, also proven to be a feature that I like.
Up until a few months ago, this was the only wearable tech that I owned. However, this spring I was given a pair of smart glasses: the new Focals by North. They are a much better and sexier version of Google Glass. (You can read about my Focals fitting, here.)
The premise behind Focals is that they are the next step toward conflating real life and tech. In other words, instead of pulling out your phone or looking at your wrist, now you can remain engaged and get the information you want by looking straight ahead. The objective is to help you stay present. And they certainly help with that.
Focals are the opposite of Snap’s Spectacles in that the former allows you to consume information, whereas the latter is all about narrow types of content creation. With Focals, you can read and respond to texts, get directions, talk to Alexa (there’s a microphone), see your appointments (and the weather), and even get speaker notes when you’re giving a presentation.
Now that I’ve had some time to test them out, here’s what I would tell you.
Because I don’t wear glasses anymore (I got laser eye surgery so that I could avoid things on my face), it was a bit of an adjustment. While very well designed, they do have some heft. The arms are thicker than normal glasses. So I found myself using them more as sunglasses (they come with great clip-ons). Perhaps I would feel differently if I still wore glasses.
I’m also not a huge fan of the Loop (pictured above), which is the 4-directional joystick that you wear as a ring and use to control the glasses. For me, it simply feels like a bit too much tech to wear on a regular basis. Though I will say that, for what it is, it is well designed and easy to use inconspicuously. The other input mechanism for the glasses is your voice.
With all that said, Focals by North are exceedingly cool. The Canadian company is creating a new category and the glasses do feel like a hint of what’s to come next in the world of wearable technologies. In the same way that I was surprised by just how useful (some) notifications on my wrist could be, I am impressed by the ability to see notifications right in front of me.
North has also been consistent with rolling out software updates and new features. Similar to my experience with Fitbit, the product keeps getting better. Over the last month, they announced conversation awareness (notifications are delayed if the glasses think you’re busy talking), as well as integrations with Google Fit and Google Slide.
Sometimes all you need is one really strong use case for a product or service to work and I think presentations could be one of them for Focals. Having presentation notes float in front of you means you’re not looking down at your notes and away from your audience. And being able to move from slide to slide with your thumb transforms the Loop into now a pretty slick clicker.
I am looking forward to seeing this space develop and I am excited that a Canadian company has jumped out in front. If you’d like to check out Focals for yourself, there are permanent showrooms in Toronto and Brooklyn, as well as pop-ups all across North America.
A couple of months ago I wrote about the relationship between IPOs and home prices. It was in response to the current wave of tech companies — most of which are headquartered in San Francisco — that have gone public or are expected to go public this year (2019). What impact will this have on the city’s housing market?
I cited this academic study on the topic, which already discovered a “positive and significant association between local house price changes and firms going public.” But today I stumbled upon another interesting study by a San Francisco real estate agent, name Deniz Kahramaner, who happens to also be a Stanford-trained data scientist.
What Kahramaner wanted to figure out was, who tends to buy residential real estate in San Francisco?
So he started with title data and then scraped the internet to try and match up individual buyer names with specific companies and industries. Since not everyone has some sort of public profile and because real estate is sometimes held within a company, he was only able to traceback about 55% of home purchases in San Francisco last year.
Still, the data looks pretty clear. About half of the homes bought in 2018 were by individuals whose employment has roots in “software.” The next biggest buyer segment was “finance.”
The other interesting thing about this data set is that it shows where people have been buying (at least last year). Historically, the north end of the city has been the wealthiest, but the above data shows things moving in a southeasterly direction. Though, it remains to be seen what all of this will look like when the dust settles after this current crop of tech IPOs.
