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.
One of the pedestrian overpasses in Central has an exhibition running right now called Density 2.0. Here is a photo of one of the posters talking about Hong Kong’s typical “8-units-per-floor” tower plan.
Noteworthy is the fact that the floor plates contemplate minimal tower separation distances. This allows multiple towers to be built right beside each other. As a point of reference, the guideline in Toronto is 25m between tall buildings.
We went for dim sum (breakfast) yesterday morning. We wanted an authentic experience and found a place in Monocle’s Hong Kong travel guide called Lin Heung Lau. It’s an “institution” in Central that has been around since 1926. Locals would later tell us that the place is good but they probably would have sent us elsewhere.
It was of course packed when we arrived and we quickly learned that you need to be aggressive in this place if you hope to get any food. There’s no line at the front and nobody is going to seat you. Instead, you circulate around the room and find your own spots. If nothing is available, you simply hover over a communal table until something opens up.
This also means not waiting for the dim sum carts to come around to your table. If you do that, none of the good stuff will be left. Pull out your sharp elbows and go to work as soon as you see one come out of the kitchen. This is how most of Hong Kong seems to work. There’s too many people in too little of a space to be a polite Canadian.
I thought the whole experience was great. Although, I could have probably done without the laundry (underwear included) hanging up in the bathroom.
Take a look at this photo from Central in Hong Kong and note the MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) systems running up the cutout in the middle of the tower. Also note the bamboo scaffolding next door and the epic terrace on top of the ground floor bank. The building on the opposite side put parking on top of its podium.
I was told that systems are commonly run on the outside of buildings here to maximize interior square footage. Again, space is a precious commodity in this city. But it also speaks to not having to worry about freeze-thaw cycles. Winter in Hong Kong has so far equaled me walking around in a t-shirt.
These exposed systems look ugly as all hell, but I suppose they also mean not having to break open drywall when you have a problem.
I am fascinated by the relationship that buildings have between interior and exterior space. In cold cities like Toronto we are forced to hermetically seal off our buildings from the elements. We have to worry about thermal bridging and about heat tracing cold spots.
But in a city like Hong Kong I would imagine that the greater concern is stifling heat and humidity. All of this comes through in the built form.
One of the things that I noticed yesterday morning on my walkabout from Wan Chai to Causeway Bay is that some/many of the buildings in Hong Kong actually step-in, as opposed to step-back, once you get above the base or “podium.” In many cases the step-in comes out almost to the curb line.
(Note how the reference point is the public realm. You step back from it or you step into it.)
Here is an example:
Setbacks and step-backs are longstanding urban design tools because they can allow more light to reach the street and they can visually break-up the mass of a building and establish clear datum lines, among other things.
We’re obsessed with them in Toronto because everyone is always trying to hide building height. But in Hong Kong, space is such a rare commodity that it seems to be about filling in every available inch.
I posted this remark on Twitter yesterday and it was suggested that some of these step-ins may have been the result of additions made after the fact. They seemed original to me, but whatever the case may be, they are an existing condition that I have started calling the inverted podium.
It’s about 6:30 am on new year’s eve day and I’ve been awake since around 4:00 am because of jet lag. I initially resisted, but now I am up and starting my day.
The coffee shop downstairs doesn’t open for another hour so this is coming to you live from my surprisingly spacious hotel room. (I’ve been in far smaller both here in Hong Kong and in New York.) There’s a wide array of teas available in this room, but sadly no coffee. I could go for a coffee right now.
I took the express train in from the airport last night, which is what I did the last time I was in Hong Kong over a decade ago. It takes just over 20 minutes and it is a great way to get into Central. It immediately signals to you that this city thinks and cares about efficiency.
The experience of landing and getting into a city is an important, but often neglected, consideration. For many people this is their first impression of a place and so it only makes sense to pay attention to it.
Think of it like fine dining. Most nice restaurants will greet you at the front, take your coat, and show you to your table. Few expect you to come in the backdoor and wander bewildered through the kitchen. But that’s what some cities ask you to do after you land.
Come to think of it, I left Toronto aboard our own airport express train. That’s standard practice for me. And so I started and ended my 2-day journey on efficient rail. I’m good with that.
Before signing off for today, I would like to apologize for missing yesterday’s post. I was in the air for over 19 hours without internet. I also didn’t have much to say. As always, you should expect me to show up here every day. But expect more travel-related posts over the next week to go along with my Instagram posts.
I would also like to point you toward this tweet storm by Shawn Micallef (discovered during jet lag haze). Please do me a favor and check it out. It is a hilariously accurate satire about many of the city building challenges that cities face today, told by way of a miniature “Dickens Village.”
Mildly proud of the “Dickens Village” I set up. Mom collected in 90s. Is like Victorian London ceramic Sim City. pic.twitter.com/TPEVKT8GJA
— Shawn Micallef (@shawnmicallef)
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And with that, I wish you all a happy new year. See you on the other side. Bring on 2018.
Photo: Night shot of Gloucester Road from pedestrian overpass
This morning Fred Wilson posted this chart on his blog:
What is clear is that when it comes to US digital ad revenue, it’s the Google and Facebook show, followed by everyone else. Microsoft/LinkedIn is a distant third. Fred calls it “the digital advertising duopoly.” And his view is that the tech industry needs to figure out new approaches to monetization that still allow free content to be consumed.
I’ve said this before, but Facebook buying Instagram for $1 billion seems like a bargain when you look at a chart like this and you see what they were able to do with the platform. Instagram’s 2018 revenues are projected to be bigger than every other company on the list minus Google but including YouTube.
Also notable are the flatlining of Twitter and the projected growth of Snapchat. 2017 was a rough year for $SNAP. But it appears that somebody believes they’ll be able to turn things around with their app redesign and reconstituted ad platform. Be that as it may, it’s still the Google and Facebook show – at least for the time being.
I just finished going through my list of 2017 goals. I didn’t accomplish everything I wanted to, but I did manage to check off a number of professional and personal goals.
Some of the remaining goals have been pushed to 2018. But there are also items that I have since realized aren’t worth pursuing and so I have dropped them from the list.
All that said, it was a great year. Here is a rapid-fire summary of 2017 told through posts from this blog.
Thanks for reading. Onward my friends.
Here are a couple of cut-up snippets from a recent post by Seth Godin titled: “Waste and the new luxury.”
Luxury goods are built on a foundation of waste.
The front lawn is a luxury good, a sign that you don’t need to graze your cows on every square inch, and that you’re willing to waste the lawn.
There’s a new luxury that’s occurring, though, one that’s based on efficiency.
A luxury that’s based on investing in renewables, in resources that might be seen as endless, in smart design, in the satisfaction of knowing that others are benefitting, not paying, for the experience or the object you’re buying.
Waste vs. efficiency.
(Above is a photo I took this week in Dundas Square.)
I took the above photo on Christmas Eve in Toronto’s Distillery District (one of my favorite neighborhoods in the city). It was before the snow had really started falling. We got a white Christmas this year – the best.
This is one of the first photos with my new Fujinon 23mm f/2 (35mm equivalent) lens. I have come to realize that if I’m not photographing people, 35mm is the right focal length to have on my camera for the types of photos I seem to gravitate toward.
And now back to eating. Merry Christmas everyone. If you’re reading this post in your inbox and it feels late, then: Happy Boxing Day 🙂
It’s that time of year again. Time to get contemplative about the last year. Bloomberg recently posted this: 2017 – The Year in Money. Below is a capture from the real estate section.
Here you can see the run up to the 1997 Asian financial crisis and also the Hong Kong “handover”. Initially, I thought the uncertainty of the handover would have reduced demand, but I guess there were other factors.
According to the book Hong Kong 20 Years after the Handover, the property and stock markets at the time were being fuelled by high inflation and low interest rates. This made real interest rates negative and created a strong incentive to borrow and invest.
I love seeing longer range indices because it helps to put things into perspective. If you started your career in real estate in Hong Kong around 2003-2004, you might think that prices generally always go up.
But consider how long it may have taken to get back to where you were if you had instead bought at the peak of 1997-1998.
