Tag: atc

• Crowdsourcing unsafe cycling conditions with a small yellow handlebar button

  Hövding – a Swedish company best known for its radical airbag cycling helmets (definitely check these out) – is currently crowdsourcing unsafe conditions and cyclist frustration in London.

  Working with the London Cyclist Campaign, they distributed 500 yellow handlebar buttons. Cyclists were then instructed to tap these buttons whenever they felt unsafe or frustrated with current cycling conditions. 

  Here’s what the button looks like:

  

  Every time the button is hit, the data point gets logged to a public map and an email gets sent to the Mayor of London reminding him of his promises around cycling. Both of these things happen via the rider’s smartphone.

  Here’s what the public map looks like at the time of writing this post:

  

  Not only does it tell you pain point locations, but it also seems to suggest the primary cycling routes. I think this is a brilliant initiative because, it’s entirely user-centric. It’s telling you how people feel on the ground.

  Supposedly, Hövding is actively looking for other cyclist groups around the world to help them distribute their buttons. So if you’re a group in Toronto or in another city, I would encourage you to reach out to them. The more data the better.

  2016.06.15

• Rental apartment expansion in Detroit

  The Detroit Free Press recently published a summary of some of the new rental apartments coming online in and around downtown Detroit. Here’s the map that they published along with their piece:

  

  Based on this article, demand is outstripping new supply and rents are starting to push above $2 per square foot. This strikes me as a solid number given that there are also for sale lots/houses in the city going for $10,000.

  Going back to some of the posts I have written about rental apartment development in Toronto, you might remember that $3 psf is roughly our magic number given current cost structures.

  In some special circumstances you might be able to get a project off the ground with rents closer to $2 psf, but that’s an exception to the rule. There are many areas in the Toronto region with $2 psf rents and few, if any, new rental apartments.

  But Detroit is obviously a different city, as is every real estate market.

  Land would be cheaper. Many of these new rental apartments are conversions of existing buildings (which were probably bought for cents on the dollar). And I wouldn’t be surprised if there are tax abatements and other incentives to encourage more development. 

  I also wonder if people in the city aren’t being at least partially drawn to multi-family buildings because of the safety and security benefits. That’s something that certainly came up when I was in Detroit last weekend.

  Regardless, this is a good news story for Detroit, which is not always the story you hear people telling of the city.

  2016.06.05

• 133 Wai Yip Street, Hong Kong

  Dutch architecture firm MVRDV recently converted an old industrial building in Hong Kong into new office space. The overall project size is roughly 200,000 sf. What’s unique about the project is the obsessive focus on transparency and glass.

  Here’s what the interior looks like:

  

  And here’s how the architect has described the project:

  “We are moving into a transparent society, businesses are becoming more open with the public, and people care more about what goes on behind closed doors. In that way, a clear workspace leaves nothing questionable, nothing hidden; it generates trust.” Tells MVRDV co-founder Winy Maas, “But also it is an opportunity for the building to become a reminder of the industrial history of the neighbourhood, monumentalised in a casing of glass.”

  I have written quite a bit about how I believe we are shifting towards a more transparent world – perhaps even a radically transparent world. And so it’s interesting to see an architect pick up on this broader theme and translate it into physical space.

  The floor is transparent. The partitions are transparent. The furniture is transparent. And you can clearly discern the interfaces between old and new.

  Good architecture, at least in my opinion, should reflect what is happening in our broader society. That’s why I believe that studying the history of art and architecture is really like studying the history of the world.

  For more photos of the project, click here.

  Image by Ossip van Duivenbode via MVRDV

  2016.06.04

• Event: Community Consultation for Mirvish Village

  

  One June 13, 2016 from 6:30 to 9:00 pm, the City of Toronto will be hosting a community consultation meeting for the proposed redevelopment of Honest Ed’s / Mirvish Village. 

  The meeting will be held at the Bickford Centre Auditorium at 777 Bloor Street West (across from Christie Pits Park).

  The purpose of the meeting is to present Westbank’s revised development proposal, which was submitted to the city last month. Their first proposal was submitted last summer (July 2015). 

  Some of the key changes include a new on-site public park, the retention of additional heritage buildings (now 21 in total), more pedestrian porosity, and the retention of Honest Ed’s alley in its current location.

  I consider Westbank to be one of the most thoughtful developers in the city and so I’m pretty excited to see this one evolve. I’m planning to attend the community meeting and maybe I’ll see you there.

  Below are a couple of other renderings to give you a taste.

  

  2016.06.02

• More thoughts on inclusionary zoning

  Alan Ehrenhalt recently published a balanced piece in Governing that largely reflects my own views on inclusionary zoning. It’s called: Why Affordable Housing Is So Hard To Build.

  His argument is that there are lots of cities trying to build more affordable housing, but that most strategies have not yet proven to be all that successful.

  I’ve written a few posts on inclusionary zoning. The most recent is this one. And though I believe that a mix of incomes is a critical component of good city building, I am having a hard time believing that inclusionary zoning is the silver bullet that will get us there. Admittedly, it sounds like a great idea. But how does that translate into reality?

  Here’s a snippet from Alan’s article (shout out to Daniel Hertz of City Observatory who seems to get cited in almost every article I read these days):

  Just about every city that has tried an inclusionary zoning law in recent years has had a similar experience. In some cases, the results have been much worse. According to BAE, Chicago’s inclusion law produced $19 million in 11 years, but only 760 affordable units. Thirteen years of inclusionary zoning in Seattle brought the city $31.6 million in fees and a grand total of 56 units. As the urbanist Daniel Hertz wrote recently, inclusionary zoning has been “more powerful as a symbol than as a way of helping people.”

  Of course, the devil is in the details. Many inclusionary zoning policies allow cash in lieu of actual housing:

  San Francisco actually has had an inclusionary zoning law since 2002, and it has been a flop. It mandates a 12 percent affordable set-aside, but allows developers to escape the mandate by paying a fee to the city. As in Arlington, this is what they have done. A study by the research firm BAE Urban Economics found in 2014 that after 12 years the San Francisco law had brought in $58.8 million in developers’ fees and had generated 1,560 units. That’s better than nothing, but it’s a drop in the bucket for a city facing an affordability problem in virtually every neighborhood.

  All this said, I’m still not so sure that it’s as simple as eradicating the cash in lieu option and forcing mandatary inclusionary zoning. As Alan rightly points out in his article, if we set the bar too high, then all of a sudden it starts making some market rate housing infeasible to build. 

  And if this ends up lowering the overall supply of new housing, then we could be hurting affordability while at the same time trying to mandate more of it. Does that make sense? Clearly this is not as simple as it may seem.

  I get the appeal for cash poor cities. It sounds like free affordable housing. But I’m always suspect of “free” lunches. In any event, I think we can all agree that this is an important discussion to be having.

  2016.06.01

• Towards car-free living

  Right now, there’s an apartment building in San Francisco that is trying to encourage car-free living by offering residents a $100 per month credit that can be used for Uber and/or for public transit. Prospective residents can even get a $20 credit to go check out the community. (The program is a partnership with Uber.)

  The reason this leasing strategy caught my attention is because we’re at a point where city builders are now trying to recalibrate themselves to this new emerging world. 

  When I was at the Land & Development conference earlier this month, one developer brought up this exact point. He more or less asked: If you’re starting development on a new building today and you’re expecting approvals in 2 or so years and completion in another 3 or 4 years, what do you think the state of cars/driving will be at that point? Should you really be building all that underground parking?

  These are great question. And they highlight one of the challenges of development. It takes a long time to bring new supply to the market and a lot can change during that time period. My sense is that we are pretty clearly seeing downward pressure on driving and car ownership.

  That said, this isn’t the case in every city or in all parts of a particular city. I just got back from a trip to a Detroit where it’s pretty hard to imagine the city being oriented around anything but the car. But in cities like San Francisco and Toronto, car-free living is already a reality for many people and so we need to respond to that.

  How do you see yourself driving, or not driving, in the next 5 to 10 years?

  2016.05.31

• Architect Profile: Omar Gandhi

  

  This week – thanks to an introduction from a mutual friend – I had the pleasure of having lunch with architect Omar Gandhi. 

  Based in both Halifax and Toronto, the Globe and Mail has called Omar one of Canada’s next top architects and Wallpaper Magazine has named him one of the top 20 young architects in the world. So if you haven’t yet heard of him, consider this post as your heads up.

  What’s exciting about his work is how it really reflects the ethos of the places he works in (east coast Canada in many cases). At the same time though, his works seems to define a new modern and Canadian design sensibility. 

  And this is what I believe great architecture should do. It should respond to and reinforce local cultures, but also help to shape them as they invariably evolve. Architecture and culture are inextricably linked.

  I love seeing local talent thrive, so I hope you will take a minute to visit Omar Gandhi’s website.

  Image: Modern Cabin in Cap Breton from OG

  2016.05.27

• Towards decentralized city building

  One of the
  most profound shifts taking place today – because of new technologies – is
  that of decentralization. I’ve written about this before, but I keep coming
  back to it because I find it so fascinating.

  It’s
  happening to varying degrees, but as a general trend, I believe it is leading
  to better data (less information asymmetries), more efficient markets, and the
  removal of many middle people. In the past, some intermediaries were necessary in
  order to act as proxies for portions of the market. But I believe that is
  changing.

  So what’s
  an example of this? Bitcoin. Bitcoin is an example of decentralization because
  no one entity controls it. It operates through a decentralized public ledger.
  And because of this, it has the potential to be highly disruptive to the way we
  think about currencies today.

  Put another
  way, I see decentralization as a way to leverage the wisdom of crowds. I am
  convinced that large groups of people can be incredibly intelligent when they’re
  allowed to contribute in the right ways. And I think this could solve many
  different problems, from the infighting we see within cities to broader market phenomena.

  As another example,
  there’s something new in the venture capital space called DAO – which stands
  for Decentralized
  Autonomous Organization. Essentially it’s a decentralized VC platform based
  off of a Bitcoin derivative currency.

  But perhaps
  the most noteworthy and relevant feature is that it allows its large pool of
  investors to anonymously vote on which investments to pursue. This is in
  contrast to a more centralized approach where an investment committee would
  meet behind closed doors in a big boardroom and make a decision. This would be the
  more typical approach.

  If you’re
  not in the tech space, the above may not seem all that exciting to you. But I
  see many parallels between venture capital and real estate development, which is
  one of the reasons I follow the space. So I can’t help but wonder what this
  trend could ultimately mean for real estate, design, and other city building industries.

  I can
  certainly imagine a world where the forces that shape our cities are more
  collective and decentralized in nature. It’s already starting to happen through crowdsourcing, social media, ridesharing, and other online platforms.

  2016.05.24

• In support of a super-metro

  

  I just got home from a couple of coffee meetings, an afternoon bike ride and an impromptu basketball shootaround. Toronto is a different place in the summer. And it feels great to be biking everywhere.

  But Toronto is more than just Toronto. Toronto is at the center of a much larger urban agglomeration. And our continued success is going to partially hinge on our ability to work together in a coordinated way.

  Greg Spencer of the Martin Prosperity Institute recently published an interesting article called: Is it time to create a super-Metro? Here’s what it’s about:

  Our research at the Martin Prosperity Institute shows that economic competition is now primarily between cities rather than countries. To be successful in this environment, Toronto and its neighbours need to find a way to erase local divisions and solve their problems together. 
  

  Toronto is a wildly successful city, world-class in many respects. When our current institutional arrangements were forged, no one predicted the level of growth the region is experiencing. Status quo local government arrangements cannot adequately deliver the level of co-operation and collaboration needed to cope and plan for the future.

  Greg believes that the answer is a new regional authority that could give “democratic legitimacy to the very important decisions being made for the benefit of the wider region.” 

  I’m not going to comment on how all of this should be executed, but I fully agree that we need to think and act as one consolidated urban entity.

  Cities are the economic driver of the new global economy, but many (most?) of our governance structures do not properly reflect that reality. And the risk is that we are allowing arbitrary municipal boundaries and lack of coordination to hinder our ability to compete globally.

  This goes for Toronto and it goes for every other city region around the world.

  2016.05.22

• Empire and ego

  This morning I stumbled upon an old New York Times article from August 7, 1983 called: The Empire and Ego of Donald Trump.

  Here’s an excerpt you might find interesting:

  The essence of entrepreneurial capitalism, real estate is a business with a tradition of high-rolling megalomania, of master builders striving to erect monuments to their visions. It is also typically dynastic, with businesses being transmitted from fathers to sons and grandsons, and carried on by siblings. In New York, the names of Tishman, Lefrak, Rudin, Fisher, Zeckendorf come to mind.

  And now there is Trump, a name that has in the last few years become an internationally recognized symbol of New York City as mecca for the world’s super rich.

  “Not many sons have been able to escape their fathers,” said Donald Trump, the president of the Trump Organization, by way of interpreting his accomplishments. Three of them, built since 1976, stand out amidst the crowded midtown landscape: the 68- story Trump Tower, with its six-story Atrium housing some of the world’s most elegant stores; the 1,400- room Grand Hyatt Hotel, and Trump Plaza, a $125 million cooperative apartment. And more is on the way.

  “At 37, no one has done more than I in the last seven years,” Mr. Trump asserted.

  As I read this, 3 things came to mind.

  1) One could argue that, as real estate development institutionalizes, the megalomanic and dynastic nature of the business is being somewhat muted.

  2) I hope we are well beyond the point where a “dynasty” has to be transmitted only through men. We are, right?

  3) Trump sounded the same at 37.

  2016.05.21