Tag: atc

• Introducing Polyform Labs

  

  A few weeks ago I had coffee with a friend of mine who is a partner at a Toronto-based enterprise software company called Polyform Labs. Their products are geared towards the commercial real estate industry and, since I’m a big proponent of introducing more technology into the real estate space, I thought I would share a little bit about them with you all today.

  The first of their 4 main products is called Lingo, which is a machine learning tool that helps companies quickly review legal documents and contracts. In the case of commercial real estate firms, the most obvious use case is leases. These documents are often hundreds of pages long and, if you have a big portfolio of properties, I’m sure you can imagine how quickly these pages add up.

  What’s neat about Lingo is that you basically upload a lease and then the tool interprets and summarizes all of the clauses for you. It then tells you where you’re potentially exposed and where your risk factors are. And if by chance it gets it wrong, you can correct it and the system will actually get smarter – hence the machine learning part.

  I’m not going to go through their entire product line, but I did also want to mention one more called Aura. They call it a “location-aware loyalty engine”. And you may have heard of similar products out there in the marketplace. What it does is use the MAC address on mobile phones (which is a unique, but anonymous, identifier) to track how people and crowds move through spaces.

  The most common use case I’ve come across is within shopping malls and retail spaces. It’s used to determine which stores have the most foot traffic, which departments and aisles draw the most people, how long people stay in each store, where they buy, and so on. So even if you didn’t already know about this technology, you may have already been giving up your location data. There are lots of mall landlords using it.

  And it’s producing some interesting data. For example, as soon as somebody buys one thing in a mall, their propensity to buy something else grows exponentially. This is what the data tells us and I can certainly relate to it from my own experience. So as a mall landlord and tenant, you are obviously trying to figure out ways to encourage people to make that first purchase. 

  The other use case that (obviously) came to my mind was with respect to city planning and urban design. How could we harvest anonymous location data to improve the way we design both our private and public spaces? Imagine if we had this data for subway stations, public parks, public plazas, and so on. I bet we would discover all kinds of ways to improve the experience within our cities. I’d like to see the location data for Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto on a sunny summer day.

  But I digress.

  If you’d like learn to more about Polyform Labs and their real estate products, click here. 

  Image: WPC

  2014.06.24

• Why Vancouver’s housing market hinges on China’s economy

  Last week a friend of mine sent me a really fascinating article from The Economist talking about the role of foreign investors in Vancouver’s housing market. If you subscribe to The Economist, you can click here to read the article. If you don’t subscribe, you’ll have to rely solely on what I’m about to say.

  In case you weren’t aware, Vancouver is an incredibly expensive city when it comes to real estate. The average price for a single-family detached house is now around C$1 million. By some measures, that makes it the most expensive housing market in North America. Here’s a chart that looks at house prices as they relate to household income:

  

  According to The Economist, the median household income in Vancouver is $68,970. This places them 23rd out of 28 in terms of Canada’s major cities. So how is it that homes are, on average, selling for $1 million? The locals don’t seem to be able to afford them.

  Well, it’s a well known fact that Chinese buyers continue to be an integral part of Vancouver’s housing market. In fact, up until this year, Canada offered a fast track option for citizenship applications if you brought at least $800,000 into the country.

  So we know that foreign buyers are having an impact. It’s a phenomenon we’re seeing in many other cities around the world, such as London. But to what extent is hard to measure–which has forced analysts to get creative.

  To try and figure out what percentage of homes are going to foreign buyers, analysts have been looking at macro data, filing through sales records, and even monitoring utility bills to see which homes might be sitting empty.

  What they found is that there’s a fairly significant correlation between economic activity in China, and Vancouver’s housing market. When the Chinese economy does well, so do Vancouver homes. Interesting. Still, that doesn’t quantify impact.

  When analysts looked for utility bills that would suggest an empty home, they found that only about 8% of high end downtown condos were likely sitting empty. That’s a relatively small amount. It could be vacancy rate.

  But when they looked for “mainland Chinese-sounding names” on sales records, they found that for homes priced $3M and up, almost ¾ of the buyers could be from mainland China. Now that’s a significant number!

  I found this all rather fascinating and I thought you all might as well. It yet again reminds me of how much opacity there is in real estate markets. We’re all craving better data. Why else would people be scouring utility bills?

  2014.06.24

• The birth of tall buildings

  As an architecture and city lover, it’ll probably surprise you that I’ve never been to Chicago. I think it may have to do with the fact that it has always felt like a sister to Toronto–another Great Lakes city of comparable size. And when you travel, you often want something novel.

  But that’s no excuse. 

  Thankfully I’m happy to report that last week I booked a trip to Chicago for this August. I’ll be there for an extended long weekend. But since it’s for a bachelor party, it remains to be seen how much archi-touring I’ll actually get a chance to do.

  Chicago is a hugely important city in the world of architecture and city building. From Frank Lloyd Wright to Mies van der Rohe to Louis Sullivan, the city has deep architectural roots.

  When most people think of skyscrapers they think of New York. But in actuality, if there’s one city that gave birth to the modern skyscraper I would argue that it was Chicago. And it was made possible by the steel industry.

  Before the late 19th century, tall buildings were largely built with their exterior walls supporting most of the loads. This meant that the taller you went, the thicker the walls had to be near the bottom of the building. This is why older buildings often feel so heavy and permanent.

  But when structural steel became widely available, a new building form was created. All of a sudden architects and builders could create relatively light weight structural steel frames to support the building. The skin, or outside of the building, was no longer carrying the weight.

  That made images like this possible:

  

  For most of us today, this building under construction looks fairly typical. First the structure goes up and then it gets clad with its window and exterior skin. But at the time, this sort of construction technique–with the 3rd and 4th floors still unenclosed and the upper floors finished–would have blown people’s minds. It was an entirely new way of building.

  Steel framed buildings removed the technical limitations of building tall and also opened up entirely new possibilities for architectural expression–such as the all glass building. Today, there’s a lot of criticism around our glass buildings. But it’s interesting to note that it started as the futuristic dream of architects.

  

  Freed from the technical limitations of load-bearing exterior walls, architects such as Mies van der Rohe began dreaming of transparent, all glass buildings. For them it represented modernity. It was the future. Above is an early charcoal sketch of that dream by Mies.

  But our fixation with glass and transparency has never been because of environmental efficiency. It was about light, transparency and feelings of modernity. So as sustainability becomes increasingly critical, we should remember that there’s still lots of innovating left for us to do.

  Art and architecture has always been a representation of the time and era in which it was created–which is one of the reasons I’m so interested in technology today. It’s our era. It’s our “structural steel”. And it’s going to impact our cities.

  When posterity looks back on us and what we’ve done, I’m sure that will be clear.

  2014.06.22

• Stuck in condoland?

  Toronto Life recently published an interesting article called Stuck in Condoland. A lot of people have mentioned it to me, so there seems to be a lot of interest in the topic. It basically profiles the lives of a few young families who live downtown and are trying to raise young children in relatively small condos (think 700 square feet).

  I thought it was interesting because I like the idea of small and efficient living. The average post-war bungalow in Toronto was probably less than 1,000 square feet. And so this modern notion that you need a big house in order to properly raise a family is a relatively recent phenomenon. Although we’re a richer city today and that’s what happens when people become wealthier: they consume more.

  But the article also makes it seem that developers only want to build small condos and that larger condos and single-family homes just aren’t profitable enough. Thus the reason all these families are being forced to into tiny shoeboxes in the sky. But that’s not really true.

  Look, just like every other for-profit business on the planet, developers are concerned with making money. And so they will always look for ways to increase efficiency, drive down costs, and so on. But there are certain realities of the market that developers don’t have control over.

  First, developers aren’t building new single family homes in the city (at any sort of meaningful scale) because there’s no land to do so. And because the land use policies in place and the current thinking around how we can more sustainably build our cities for the future dictate that we should be building more intensely. In other words, building up. So it’s not a question of developers not wanting to build single family homes; it’s a question of not being able to.

  Second, trust me when I say that if the market wanted large 3 bedroom family units, developers would build them. Mandating them is a useless exercise if people don’t want them or are unable to afford them.

  The challenge we face is that a reinforced concrete condo tower is more expensive to build than a wood-framed single family house. So until land values get to a point where single family homes become the more expensive option (compared to condos), I don’t think we’ll see a huge rush towards 3+ bedroom suites.

  This is my hypothesis at least. Because when you buy house, you’re really buying two things: the house itself and the land. If the house itself (wood) is cheaper to build on a per square foot basis than a condo (concrete), then the variable that will make a difference is the land. And as people like to say: “buy land, they ain’t making any more of it.”

  So what I’m saying is that I just don’t think the situation is as simple as: “developers are bad, all they want to do is build tiny condos and make lots of money.” It’s more complicated than that. But I do believe the question of how families are going to live in the city is an important one.

  2014.06.21

• MBA

  

  Today was my MBA convocation at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School. Though I actually finished my degree last year (with a bit of fast-tracking), I had to wait until today in order to formally graduate with the rest of my cohort. I did what’s called the 3-year morning MBA. What that means is that I took most of my classes at 7am.

  The picture above is from our weekend retreat right before we started the program (I’m in the back row in the middle). It was taken in the summer of 2011. That feels like eons ago. It has been a tough slog.

  So today I’m taking the day off from writing about cities. Instead, I’m just going to enjoy the day off and the closing of this chapter in my life. An MBA is something I had been planning on doing even while I was in architecture school–so it’s nice to be able to check it off. But as I told my parents today after convocation: you ain’t seen nothing yet.

  2014.06.20

• What makes a city great? [Video]

  

  Each year Monocle publishes a ranking of the top 25 cities around the world in terms of quality of life. Different than most city rankings, the survey goes beyond the more typical metrics around crime, education and so on, and also looks at some of the softer aspects of quality of life. Metrics such as: Can I get a good glass of wine at 1am? What they’re after is a more truthful ranking of the cities that people actually want to live in.

  This year Copenhagen took the number one spot. Vancouver took first in North America. And Tokyo took first in Asia. All 3 cities have scored well since they began the survey. Monocle also released a short video that looks at these 3 cities and explains a bit about their ranking methodology. Click here to watch the video. It’s only about 7 minutes long, but it’ll probably make you want to visit all 3 cities. I’ve never been to Copenhagen, but it’s certainly on my list.

  2014.06.17

• What the hell does gesamtkunstwerk mean?

  

  I’m a big fan of Canadian developer Ian Gillespie and his firm Westbank. They are the developers behind projects like the Shangri-La Vancouver, the Shangri-La Toronto, the mixed-use Woodward’s complex, and the upcoming Vancouver House (shown above) designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels (who just so happens to be one of my favorite architects). I would easily count them as one of the preeminent city builders in the country today.

  In support of their commitment to city building (and as a way to offer the public a peek of Vancouver House), they recently staged an exhibition called Gesamtkunstwerk. I think this is great on so many levels. Not only was it probably a great sales tool, but it’s also introducing the public to a largely obscure and academic term, and showing off a deep commitment to design. Unless you studied art, architecture, or something like the philosophy of aesthetics, you probably haven’t come across this term before.

  Gesamtkunstwerk is a German word, which literally translates into a “total work of art.” It was introduced in the 19th century by an opera composer by the name of Richard Wagner, who felt that opera represented a total, or complete work of art. Later, the term was picked up by architects. Some interpreted it to mean that architects should be responsible for everything from the building itself to the furniture and everything else that goes inside of it. Everything was art.

  Westbank now wants to introduce the idea of gesamtkunstwerk into the real estate development business. They want to use it as a guiding philosophy for all of their projects. And what that means is that the building itself and its relationship to the greater city should be thought of as a “total work of art.” They seem to be reintroducing the term with an inherent city building tinge–one that I don’t think was ever there before. 

  What a great philosophy.

  Image: Westbank

  2014.06.17

• In your place

  

  Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always enjoyed seeing people’s places. I like seeing different homes and I like seeing how people decorate them. Which is why I’m a big fan of photographer Todd Selby’s project, The Selby Is In Your Place. 

  Starting in June 2008, Selby has gone around and photographed the personal spaces of creative people all around the world–everyone from fashion designers to artists to entrepreneurs. The most recent is the home of Carolina Castiglioni, who is Director of Special Projects at Marni in Milan.

  

  The project has been a huge success for Todd and his website now receives over 100,000 unique visitors a day. He’s also gone on to publish 3 books. The first was simply called ‘The Selby is In Your Place’. If you’d like to pickup a copy for your coffee table, you can do so here.

  2014.06.14

• Telling Toronto’s story

  If you’re a regular reader of ATC, you’ll know that I often talk about cities in the same way that many people talk about products and services. (See: The business of cities.) And I do that because cities are our new economic unit and so I find it helpful to think of them as businesses fighting to attract and retain the best talent and win over customers (i.e. residents and businesses).

  Which is why I’m intrigued by Jason Logan’s pitch to invent the position of Creative Director at the City of Toronto. Here’s his pitch:

  “This is an open challenge to the all the mayoral candidates. In the past 10 years, Toronto has undergone a cultural, artistic, and technological renaissance: The ROM, the AGO, and OCAD U all underwent architectural makeovers; TIFF rose to prominence as one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world; Nuit Blanche was unleashed in 2006, and Luminato in 2007, both to huge acclaim; the high-tech industry has created 30,000 new jobs; and The New York Times admitted that Toronto’s culinary scene is more ethnically diverse than the five boroughs. But here’s the thing: The story we tell ourselves and the world about our remarkable city needs an overhaul. Toronto Needs a Creative Director is a campaign committed to building a better story by better mobilizing the arts, culture, and technology sectors to enhance civic engagement. The CDTO (the office of Creative Direction for the City of Toronto) would function as a lab for incubating ideas where art, culture, politics, science, and technology intersect.”

  Truthfully, I’m not yet sure if a Creative Director is the ideal approach. I haven’t had a chance to give it enough thought. But I am certain that Toronto would benefit from a bunch of smart people who were focused on telling our story to the world, crafting our brand and identity, and honing the experience of living or visiting this great city.

  2014.06.13

• Why buy a car when you’ve got mobile apps

  One of the things that many city planners, transportation experts, and municipalities are trying to figure out is how to successfully shift people away from driving towards alternative modes of transportation, such as biking and transit. Now, this is no easy task. There are a myriad of factors that influence a person’s decision to drive or not drive–or if they should even own a car in the first place. Though, land use and density are, in my opinion, probably the biggest.

  But of all the solutions thrown around, mobile apps are typically not within the playbook. However a recent New York Times article is making the argument that it should be, because car-sharing services and apps like Uber seem to be indeed having an affect on people’s decision to own a car. And that’s because in some cities it’s actually cheaper to use Uber every day (than to own a car) and because taxi use has been shown to correlate with other (non-driving) forms of mobility.

  Paradoxically, some experts say, the increased use of ride-sharing services could also spawn renewed interest in and funding for public transportation, because people generally use taxis in conjunction with many other forms of transportation.

  In other words, if Uber and its ride-sharing competitors succeed, it wouldn’t be a stretch to see many small and midsize cities become transportation nirvanas on the order of Manhattan — places where forgoing car ownership isn’t just an outré lifestyle choice, but the preferred way to live.

  And to be honest, I don’t think this is all that far stretched. More and more I find myself wondering why I even own a car. It’s not appreciating sitting downstairs in my garage and, given the frequency in which I use it, I would definitely be better off financially if I simply used an app like Uber or Hailo more often. About the only thing those apps aren’t great for are trips to Home Depot and snowboard trips to the mountain. 

  2014.06.12