Tag: athiscity

• From art to framework

  Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena has just been awarded the prestigious Pritzker Prize – the highest honor in the world of architecture. 

  Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail has a fantastic write up about it that focuses on how choosing Aravena – an architect known for his social housing – is quite a departure from the “starchitects” of prior years. 

  One of Aravena’s most famous works is known as the “half of a good house”, which I think is an incredibly clever project. The idea here was to literally provide half of a good house but then design in the flexibility for owners to expand as they have the means. 

  The rationale behind this was to get around the fact that poorer Chileans would not be able to afford a full good house, unless of course they went far out of the city. But rather than physically disconnect these people from the opportunities of the city, this was deemed as a better solution. I think that makes a lot of sense.

  But beyond being hyper practical, it also pushes architecture away from being a work of pure art that shouldn’t be meddled with, towards more of a housing framework that is supposed to altered and built upon. 

  Many architects wouldn’t like to give up this kind of control over their capital A, Architecture. But for Alejandro Aravena, he’s clearly about something quite different. 

  Congratulations on winning the Pritzker Prize!

  (I apologize for not having any links or images in this post. It’s because I wrote it from my phone on a flight.)

  2016.01.14

• Additional thoughts on land prices

  Daniel Hertz over at City Observatory just published a post talking about why land costs are so important when it comes to home prices. More specifically though, his post is intended to refute a claim that multifamily housing is always going to be more expensive than single family housing.

  The key concept here – which is critical to understanding urban real estate economics – is that home values are essentially made up of two things: the land and the improvements (i.e. the building). 

  When home prices rapidly appreciate, as has been the case in cities like Vancouver (see below) and Toronto, it’s not the building, but the land that’s really driving the price up. 

  And as you can see from the chart below (which Daniel shared in his post), it is possible for multifamily housing to be less expensive than single family housing. 

  

  So why was someone arguing that multifamily housing is more expensive?

  Well if you look at just construction costs, then this is generally true. Single family housing is typically wood frame construction, whereas multifamily housing is usually reinforced concrete or some other material that allows you to build up. In these latter cases, the price per square foot to build is going to be higher.

  But Daniel’s argument is that when you build multifamily housing, you also begin to amortize the cost of the land over more housing units. So you begin to use land more efficiently and that offsets the higher construction costs.

  However, two thoughts come to mind.

  First, the value of a piece of land is entirely dependent on what you can build on it. And the more you can build on it, the more the land is worth. So as densities increase, so do land prices.

  Second, a big part of why condominiums are so much more affordable is that they’re smaller. In 2014, the average condo size in Metro Vancouver was estimated to be 840 square feet. I couldn’t find the average size of a detached house in the city, but let’s assume for a second that it’s 2,500 sf. 

  If that were the case, then a detached house, despite being more expensive overall, would still be cheaper on a per square foot basis. You would be paying less for every square foot of livable space. True that doesn’t make the house more affordable, but I think it’s a bit unfair to compare apples (small condo) to oranges (large house).

  So what I would really like to see is a graph of all-in low-rise and high-rise per square foot prices over time and for various cities. Because I would be curious to see at what point – if ever – they intersect.

  2016.01.14

• How should cities manage their own awesomeness?

  Conor Maguire introduced me to an interesting site today called Airbnb vs. Berlin. The site does a deep dive into Berlin’s Airbnb market with the hope of answering the question: Is Airbnb contributing to a shortage in affordable housing?

  The site is very well done. It’s filled with lots of great market stats and diagrams such as this one here: 

  

  Of course, the impetus for a site like this is that cities all around the world, from San Francisco to Berlin, are grappling with rising home prices. If you happen to live in a successful, growing city, that’s probably what is happening.

  But when this happens, we seem to want to look for something or someone to blame. In San Francisco it’s the tech workers. They’re the ones driving up homes prices. In Vancouver, it’s the foreign Chinese buyers. And in Berlin, it’s those Airbnb users who are just out to make a profit. In all of these cases, we like to tell ourselves that if we could just get rid of “X”, everything would be much better. 

  But I think sometimes we forget that this is also the result of doing many things right.

  If Berlin wasn’t a brilliantly cool place to visit, then tourists wouldn’t come. And if tourists didn’t come, then Berlin wouldn’t have, by far, the largest Airbnb market in Germany. If Vancouver wasn’t one of the most enjoyable places in the world to live, you wouldn’t have the same attention from overseas buyers looking to snatch up properties. 

  So in a way, we should be asking ourselves: How do we, as a city, manage our own awesomeness?

  The other thing that Airbnb vs. Berlin reminded me of is the viewpoint that profits are some dirty little secret. I hear it all the time in the real estate development business. People will say: “That developer is just out to make money.” Of course she/he is! They operate a business. And like all for-profit businesses, one of the objectives – it may not be the only one – is to make money.

  I say all this not as a direct response to the website. They remained fairly neutral in their analysis. Instead, I raise it as an alternate viewpoint in the seemingly universal battle against “X.”

  In case you’re wondering about Berlin’s Airbnb market, the site estimates that there are roughly 11,701 Airbnb listings in the city out of a total of about 1.9 million flats. Of these listings, it is estimated that somewhere around 30% are by “professional users” who are only out to make a profit and are not participating in the “sharing economy” in its purest sense. That equates to about 0.18% of all Berlin flats.

  Based on this number, I’d say that Berlin’s cool factor probably has a lot more to do with the city’s rising rents than do the profit seeking Airbnb users.

  2016.01.13

• Urbanism Online: #capital

  

  For those
  of you from Ottawa, I’m going to be in town this Thursday evening talking
  at an event put on by the National Capital Commission called Urbanism
  Online. It’s all about how blogging, social media, and online discussions can
  and are contributing to the betterment of cities.

  The other
  bloggers include:

  – Marc-André Carignan, Montreal, Kollectif.net

  – Jillian Glover, Vancouver, This City Life

  – Robert Smythe, Ottawa, UrbSite

  The event is
  now full, but email them or tweet me if you’d really like to come
  and I’ll certainly ask about space availability. I’m sure it’s going to be a great discussion.

  I have a bit of a soft spot for Ottawa. I used to spend a lot of time there when I was working on an office building at 150 Elgin Street. (Key tenants include The Canada Council for the Arts, KPMG, and Shopify.)

  I haven’t been back since the building was completed, so I’m excited to see how it turned out.

  Update: The event will also be streamed on Periscope, here.

  2016.01.11

• Bringing public transit into the 21st century

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  I think we’ve hit peak millennial.

  Last Friday the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and the Metropolitan Transit Authority, announced that 30 subway stations will be redesigned and that “millennial-friendly amenities” would be added throughout the system. 

  As you might guess, this includes adding phone chargers in train cars and buses and wifi throughout all the stations (by the end 2016). They will also be replacing the MetroCard with an all digital fare system that will include mobile payments.

  But the reality is that this isn’t about being millennial-friendly. This is about joining the 21st century.

  Here in Toronto, we finally have our PRESTO card working on all streetcars and in almost 40% of the city’s subway stations. This is a huge improvement over our laughable and antiquated token system, but it’s not enough. I really hope the next rollout is a mobile app that will allow everyone to pay with just their phone.

  We also have wifi in about 30% of our subway stations, but again this is not enough. By the time you get authenticated (do you need to have Twitter now?), your train is usually arriving and then you enter a tunnel where no wifi exists. We need to be looking at the entire tunnel network. (Related topic: LinkNYC) 

  I say all this because I am a big supporter of public transit. Despite all the positive things I write about Uber, ridesharing, and driverless cars, I do not believe that they will eradicate the need for a strong transit backbone. This is fundamental to our city building efforts. 

  So let’s do our best to delight people when they take transit.

  2016.01.10

• The search for perfection

  Two of my favorite things are snowboarding and cities. 

  So the 4K GoPro video below, called Japan Snow – The Search for Perfection, really does it for me. 

  The video is the journey of two GoPro athletes as they go from Tokyo to Hakuba (a village near Nagano, host of the 1998 Winter Olympics) to the northern island of Hokkaido in search of untracked powder. If you’re a snowboarder or skier, you’ll of course appreciate that journey.

  For you urbanists, the city shots are incredible. I also love how they describe Tokyo as a “sophisticated web of innovation and tradition.” I often describe Tokyo in a similar way, but I like their wording better.

  Make sure you full screen this video and turn on your sound. It’s about 14 minutes short. Enjoy.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXpXHoDKL64?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

  2016.01.09

• Urban infill case study: 1234 Howard Street in San Francisco

  Urban infill developments can be tough. The sites are often small and/or narrow and that creates a lot of design challenges. Access to light is a common problem.

  But constraints can also be beautiful, because they have a way of forcing creativity. 

  When I was in architecture school, I used to find it easier to work when I was given constraints and challenges. It gave me something to latch onto, as opposed to just starting with a blank canvas. A big part of design, at least for me, is about solving problems. So give me a problem to solve!

  One of the ways that architects and designers often deal with the access to light problem is by carving out lightwells or courtyards to bring light down into the building. This can be used when you have a deep site or when you’re building right up against the property line and you can’t have any windows.

  One project that I’ve always liked for this reason – as well as the fact that it’s beautifully designed – is 1234 Howard Street in San Francisco. It looks like this from above:

  

  The site is 50′ x 165′ and it spans an entire block. 

  In order to get lots of light into all of the units, the architects (Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects) split the site up into 3 “bars”, each of which would be somewhere around 16′ x 165′. The middle “bar” was then dedicated to a courtyard that cuts through the entire building.

  

  The two flanking bars were then further subdivided into 2 units per bar, which translates into 4 units per floor x 4 floors. The ground floor is just common areas and parking.

  The advantage of this design strategy is that the apartments now have windows running the length of the courtyard, where as typically on narrow deep lots you would end up with “bowling alley” units and windows just on one end.

  The disadvantage of this design strategy is that you’re now just over 16′ away from seeing what your neighbor is eating for dinner, among other things. 

  But with the right window coverings, I’m sure we’d all survive in these apartments with their Bulthaup kitchens and Miele appliances.

  

  I love seeing creative solutions to tight urban sites. And one of the things that I worry about, with things like the Mid-Rise Performance Standards here in Toronto, is that we’re reducing or even eliminating the possibility for these kinds of creative solutions.

  I recognize that 1234 Howard is not the same as an avenue mid-rise site in Toronto with low-rise residential behind it. But the thought still crossed my mind as I was writing this piece.

  All photos via Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects Inc.

  2016.01.08

• Education and economic prosperity

  One of the things that I would like to do a bit more of in 2016 is coding. I used to a bit of it in high school and university, and I’ve taken some online classes since then, but I really feel like I should know more. I like making things and tech is clearly an important part of the world today.

  I mention this because I have signed myself up for an intro to web development class this evening at Brainstation. My plan is to do a few introductory web and mobile development courses and then figure out where and what I want to dive into further. I don’t plan on being a software developer – I’m happy being a developer of the real estate varietal – but I want to improve my literacy.

  I also mention this because I think it’s important to be reminded just how critical education is to urban economic success. Here’s an excerpt from Ed Glaeser’s book, Triumph of the City:

  “Human capital, far more than physical infrastructure, explains which cities succeed. Typically in the United States, the share of the population with a college degree is used to estimate the skill level of a place … Despite its coarseness, no other measure does better in explaining recent urban prosperity. A 10 percent increase in the percentage of an area’s adult population with a BA in 1980 predicts 6 percent more income growth between 1980 and 2000.”

  And if you plot education (people with four-year degrees) vs. per capita income levels for the major US metropolitan areas, which City Observatory did, you’ll see that nothing matters more. Here’s how City Observatory described it:

  “This chart is the first, most important thing to remember about urban economic development in the 21st century: if you want high incomes, you need to have a high level of skills. Cities with poorly educated populations will find it difficult to raise living standards in a world where productivity and pay depend increasingly on knowledge.”

  This, of course, isn’t new information. I’m sure I’ve written about it before. But it doesn’t hurt to be reminded.

  2016.01.07

• The year of the laneway

  Earlier this week, Metro News published an article saying that it’s going to be a big year for laneways in Toronto:

  “2016 is going to be the year where the evolution of our laneways lands at the forefront of our public realm strategy,” said Downtown Yonge BIA chair Mark Garner, who’s heading up the revitalization of O’Keefe Lane near Ryerson University.

  In addition to the Downtown Yonge BIA, much of this is being spearheaded by the non-profit group, The Laneway Project. This year they are expected to unveil plans for the revitalization of 3 laneways in the city – one of which is right in my backyard.

  I have a lot of respect for what The Laneway Project, the Downtown Yonge BIA, and others are doing in support of rethinking our laneways. And so today I just wanted to publicly thank them for their efforts. Thank you 🙂

  2016.01.06

• What do you think of parking stackers?

  One of the things that’s becoming a lot more common in Toronto is parking stackers. For small infill sites there’s simply no other way to fit in the parking. You can’t lay out a traditional parking garage.

  But while it’s still relatively new for Toronto, I think many of you would be surprised by how many projects there are in the pipeline right now that plan to use parking stackers. In the next 5 to 10 years, they are going to be quite common.

  Some of you might be wondering how they work. There are a bunch of different solutions, from stackers to elevators and palettes, but here’s an example of a triple car stacker:

  

  In this case, there’s a below grade pit and an open space that goes up into the second floor. This way each car remains accessible without having to move any of the others. If you want the car on the top shelf, just lower the other 2 into the pit. If you want want the car on the bottom shelf, just raise the other 2 into the second floor space (which is what’s shown above).

  But here’s what I’m really curious about: How do you feel about parking stackers? Would you live an apartment or condo where that was how you had to park your car? Or would it be a deal breaker? Please let us know in the comment section below.

  2016.01.06