Tag: athiscity

• Towards a post privacy world — what the Ashley Madison hack could mean for cities

  

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  Ashley Madison is a website that helps married people have affairs. 

  Recently the website was hacked and over 33 million accounts were exposed. This included full names, email addresses, mailing addresses, and so on. Not surprisingly, this has gotten a lot of press. The site was/is marketed as being private and secure. And clearly that is not what it is right now.

  But there are people in the tech community, such as venture capitalist Albert Wenger, who believe that is merely a glimpse into the future – a “post privacy future.” He even argues on his blog that we as a society should be more accepting of the leak and that the release of this data could lead to a “more measured view of affairs.” (There are many who argue that humans are not intended to be monogamous.)

  For many, or probably most of you, I’m sure this position seems pretty radical. After all, this leak will likely destroy many marriages.

  But Wenger’s position on privacy is a fascinating one and he’s written a lot on the topic. The tension he sees is one between individual privacy vs. collective intelligence. In this part of the world, our society values the former over the latter. But he believes that we are headed towards a world where almost everything, yes everything, will eventually become public. Again, radical position. But consider how much we publicly share about our personal lives today versus 10 or even 5 years ago.

  What’s perhaps more relevant to the Architect This City audience though is what this could mean for many other industries beyond tech.

  I often think about what a “post privacy future” could mean for city building. Imagine if every architect, real estate developer, engineer, and other participant made public all of their work. This would mean that all designs, financial models, sales data, and so on were made widely available to anyone who wanted to see them.

  The thought probably scares many of you in the industry, but consider what it would mean for our collective intelligence. There’s a strong argument to be made that we would all be better off and that the process of building would become far more efficient. In fact, if truly everything were public, it could in theory eliminate most of the market’s concerns about overbuilding, a condo bubble, and all the other stuff that gets talked about.

  The reason people speculate on these market factors is because we don’t have all the data. We don’t actually know what’s going to happen. We have no idea. I know I certainly can’t predict the real estate market.

  So why aren’t we quickly becoming more public?

  Wenger raises the game theory principle known as the prisoner’s dilemma:

  “So one way to think about secrecy is that it leads to lots of prisoner’s dilemma style situations. Individuals (or companies) would be worse off if they were the only ones disclosing, but if everyone disclosed (or at least the majority), then everyone would be much better off. In the language of game theory, we are in a bad equilibrium.”

  In other words, if only one real estate developer disclosed her project’s financial information to the public, then she would probably be worse off against her competitors. But if every developer in the city did it, then the market as a whole would be better off because everyone would then benefit from collective intelligence.

  Using the example of infidelity, if one person is caught having an affair, then that person is more than likely worse off. But if over 33 million people are caught having an affair and it reinforces the statistic that between 30-60% of married people in the United States will have an affair at one point in their lives, then maybe it forces us as a society to rethink what marriage means today. And maybe that makes us all better off.

  This is a pretty far out there argument, though the city building example is probably more palatable than the Ashley Madison one. Regardless, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below. 

  Are we heading towards a post privacy world?

  2015.09.03

• The importance of having your own beliefs

  On Monday I watched the movie Moneyball for the first time. I really enjoy movies, but I unfortunately don’t watch a lot of them, which is why I am only now watching Moneyball. It was released in 2011.

  The movie is based on a 2003 book of the same name that many people believe changed the game of baseball. It emphasizes rigorous statistical analysis (known as sabermetrics) over gut feeling, instinct, and traditional metrics when it comes to assembling winning baseball teams.

  I don’t know a lot about sabermetrics, but I am now excited to read the book. Still, the dichotomy between the New York Yankees and the Oakland Athletics is incredibly interesting to me. And it reminded me of a post I wrote a few months ago ago called: When everyone thinks you’re wrong.

  In the movie, Billy Beane, the GM of the Athletics, realizes that he cannot compete with the Yankees dollar for dollar. The Athletics are a small market team and the Yankees, with their large payroll, will always be able to pay more for players. So he decides that he will need to think about the problem differently to win.

  What’s interesting about this is that it’s exactly the framework I talk about in my post when it comes to buying (real estate) development sites:

  “…you can really only win development sites in one of two ways. Either you’re willing to spend the most money or you see something and have a vision that nobody else sees.”

  Of course, lots of baseball teams today are now employing sabermetrics. But at the time, everyone thought Billy Beane was nuts. It’s hard to try something new and be different. Many of us just want to do what is least likely to fail.

  But there’s so much value in having conviction and being right about something that everyone else thinks is wrong. You won’t always get it right. And that’s okay. But when you do get it right, it’ll be magic.

  2015.09.02

• From stuff to services

  This morning Fred Wilson linked to a Bloomberg article on his blog called, Maybe This Global Slowdown Is Different. There are a bunch of great charts throughout the piece and I’d like to share 3 of them here.

  The first chart shows how per capita energy consumption has dropped remarkably in the United States since the 1990s, but how, not surprisingly, China’s rate is increasing.

  

  The second chart shows car sales in the US. There was a big drop off during The Great Recession, and though sales have rebounded, they still haven’t reached their late 1990s peak. But that’s not to say that they won’t.

  

  And the third chart shows the tremendous shift in the US over the last 65 years from the consumption of stuff to services.

  

  This last one is fascinating. And it ties into the argument that the way value is created in our economy has shifted dramatically.

  But I wonder if this change is really as sharp as it seems. 

  If you look at what makes up “services”, you’ll see that housing (and utilities) and healthcare make up over 50% of what is considered to be personal spending on services. And if you look at housing and utilities spending since the 1960s in the US, it has increased dramatically. 

  

  So how much of this shift from stuff-to-services is actually being driven by housing?

  2015.09.01

• It’s too cold for that

  

  This past Sunday I spent part of the afternoon in Kensington Market (Toronto) for Pedestrian Sundays. 

  If you’ve never been to a Pedestrian Sunday, you’re missing out. The entire neighborhood – which happens to be a National Historic Site of Canada – gets closed to cars, and filled with street vendors, musicians, bands playing on roofs (see above), and so on. It’s pretty wild. And it feels very Toronto to me.

  It happens the last Sunday of the month from May to October. But every time I go I wonder why the area isn’t this way more often or even all the time. It’s a natural candidate. But after 12 seasons of Pedestrian Sundays, it still hasn’t happened. It’s only 6 days throughout the year. 

  I remember being in a meeting early on in my career when I brought up the idea of a pedestrian mall in Toronto for a project I was working on. And I got completely shut down. I was told they don’t work here in our climate and that we should just forget about it. I was told to look at the failure of Ottawa’s Spark Street Mall.

  But I’m still not convinced that’s the case. In fact, I feel even stronger at this point that it could and would work in Toronto. I’ve been to the Distillery District in the dead of winter for the Toronto Christmas Market and I could barely move because of all of the people. 

  Acknowledging climate is important. But it shouldn’t become an excuse for not doing things.

  2015.08.31

• The Starbucks Effect

  

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  This afternoon I was chatting with some friends about Toronto real estate (which is something that happens a lot in this city), and we started talking about “The Starbucks Effect.”

  Basically, we were talking about how this neighborhood just got a Starbucks and how that neighborhood already has one. We were, like a lot of people, using Starbucks as a proxy for neighborhoods that are emerging and neighborhoods that have already arrived.

  There’s been a lot of discussion about the correlation between home prices and the presence of a Starbucks. But the big question is what comes first: the home prices or the Starbucks?

  Earlier this year, the CEO, Spencer Rascoff, and Chief Economist, Stan Humphries, of Zillow.com argued that the mere presence of a Starbucks can cause gentrification. 

  They argued that Starbucks knows the next hot neighborhood before anyone else does and that they are “the fuel, not the follower.” And through their data they demonstrated that homes (in the US) near a Starbucks appreciated significantly faster than homes not near a Starbucks, or even homes near other coffee shops such as Dunkin’ Donuts.

  But I – as well as others – wonder if this isn’t an oversimplification.

  I certainly believe that Starbucks could help fuel home prices in a neighborhood. I think it gives people a comfort level that the neighborhood has arrived and that there are people in the area who are willing and able to spend money on discretionary items.

  But I suspect that for Starbucks it’s a balancing act. They would never want to be late to an emerging neighborhood (and miss that prime corner property), but they also don’t want to be in the business of placing bets on neighborhoods with very few vital signs.

  So I think it’s both. I think Starbucks is analyzing the data and watching home prices like a hawk (the follow) and when it reaches a certain point, they move. And that likely causes a further acceleration of neighborhood change (the fuel).

  What do you think? I would love to learn more about their site selection process.

  2015.08.31

• Uber, commuting, car ownership, and the future of urban mobility

  Earlier this week I wrote a “Tech Tuesday” post talking about Uber’s new Smart Routes functionality, which it is currently testing out in San Francisco. At the end of the post I ended by saying that it’s not just the taxi industry that should be thinking about Uber, it’s also public transit authorities. 

  And that’s because many people in cities rely on multi-modal forms of transportation (I know I do) and in my mind it is clear that Uber is trending away from just “Everyone’s Private Driver” to a service that is starting to look and feel a lot like urban mass transit.

  Then today my good friend Evgeny sent me a post called, “Public Transit Should Be Uber’s New Best Friend.” And it’s one of the best pieces I’ve read on Uber and its impact on urban mobility. I highly recommend you give it a read, particularly if you’re in the city building arena.

  The article does a deep dive into how New Yorkers commute. Here’s how they broke it down.

  

  It then talks about what it will take for a company like Uber to make a meaningful dent in car ownership (which is one of the company’s goals) and how the truly big opportunity for Uber is to go more mass market and tap into the public transit market – either by interfacing with or by building its own version of it.

  Here’s their concluding paragraph:

  But there’s a much wider potential audience if Uber can also reach middle-class customers who want to save money. Perhaps in the distant (or even the not-so-distant) future, Uber can build its own version of “public” transit, making rides so cheap that they cost less than the $4 or $5 that Americans now pay, on average, to make a trip in their personal cars. In the meantime, it might have more success among “car-cutting” customers who can use Uber along with public transit. That might mean Uber’s growth is concentrated more in cities like New York, San Francisco and Chicago — and in Europe and Asia — that already have reasonably strong public transit networks.

  It’s definitely worth a full read. Thanks again for sending this over Evgeny.

  2015.08.29

• 2 years of Architect This City

  

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  On Wednesday, August 28th, 2013 at 8:33am, I wrote and posted this.

  And that started a 2 year tradition of writing something on this blog, every, single, day, no matter how long or short it might be and no matter how insightful or not insightful it might be. It kick started a discipline.

  For the most part, I tend to write about city building and everything that feeds into that, whether it be design, planning, transportation, technology, or real estate. But I also write personal posts, especially when I go snowboarding. And the longer I write this blog, the more comfortable I feel writing those sorts of posts.

  Sometimes I feel guilty about those posts though, since I assume most of you are here to learn and talk about city building things. I assume you don’t want to hear about me. But at the end of the day, ATC is a personal blog. It’s not a business or corporate blog, and I like to think that the personal touches help make the content more engaging over time.

  Regardless, a big thank you to everyone who reads, subscribes, and follows Architect This City. There are few things more gratifying than hearing someone say they love this blog and that they read it every morning when they wake up. 

  That’s a huge commitment on their/your part and I am grateful for that. Because my commitment (writing this blog) wouldn’t be nearly as fun if you weren’t all around to engage with and learn from. And in the early days of writing this blog, there truly was nobody around.

  So for today’s 2 year anniversary post, I thought I would share some readership stats. Last Friday I posted a map of all of this blog’s email subscribers (in anticipation of today’s post). But today we’re going to get into some hard numbers (from Google Analytics).

  Here are the high level stats from the past year.

  

  Here are the number of visitors (users) over the last year. It feels great to see it increasing. The spikes are posts that, for whatever reason, really took off.

  

  Here’s how people discovered this blog. Almost half of the visitors to this blog are just searching around online and stumble upon it.

  

  And finally, here are the demographics. I only turned this feature on a few weeks ago, so the data set isn’t as large as above. Still, it’s probably pretty accurate. I need to work on correcting the gender imbalance here.

  

  

  And there you have it. Thanks again for reading. If you have any suggestions for the third year of Architect This City, I would love to hear from you. Leave a comment below. Here’s to another year!

  2015.08.28

• Cities with the most single men and women

  There are thousands of people who read this blog via email or by following on Tumblr. The rest of the readership just stops by on the web and visits periodically.

  But of the thousands of regular readers, I know that many do not click through to the comment section. And that’s a shame. Because oftentimes I find the comments more interesting than my actual post.

  Take for example yesterday’s post on The Millennial Dream. 

  The initial post was about Millennial housing choices (and some stats on marriage and fertility rates). The comments provided some additional color on the trends, but they also got into mobile dating apps and whether or not it’s easier or harder to meet people in cities, today. It was a fun discussion.

  This got me thinking and reminded me that people come to cities not only because of labor markets, but because of dating markets. 

  So for today’s piece, I thought I would post the following diagram from Richard Florida’s book, Who’s Your City? It shows how many more singles (aged 20-64) there are – according to gender – in the largest US metro areas.

  

  I couldn’t find an equally detailed map for Canada, but based on this, it looks like Toronto is slanted towards single women and Calgary is slanted towards single men.

  Does the above look right to you?

  2015.08.27

• The Millennial Dream

  This evening I was interviewed for a documentary called The Millennial Dream. It’s all about how Millennials – people like me – are rethinking or even rejecting some of the traditional notions of The American Dream. It’s being produced by Hemmings House.

  My part was all about housing. 

  So a lot of it was about how housing preferences have (or have not) changed for Millennials. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’d already be familiar with many of the topics I covered.

  What’s most interesting to me though, is not what Millennials are doing today. We already know that there’s been a return to cities and that many young people prefer walkable and authentic communities. Everyone is talking about it and it’s no longer novel.

  What’s more interesting to me is what Millennials are going to do in the next 10 years when the majority of the cohort is in their 30′s. What percentage will be married? What percentage will have kids? And, where and how will they choose to live in cities?

  Because there are some structural changes happening. Marriage rates in the US have been declining since the 1960s (see New York Times).

  

  And fertility rates are at their the lowest in US history. So in theory, and unless things change, Millennials should on average demand different types of housing. Fewer of them are likely to marry and they’re having fewer kids.

  But at the same time, I also believe that there have been changes in consumer preference that are not going to completely reverse as Millennials age. So city builders will need to come up with new and creative forms of housing for families who want to stay in urban centers. And that’s an exciting challenge.

  I’d be curious to hear thoughts in the comment section below. The documentary won’t be out until the end of the year, so you still have a chance to influence its direction. More voices are better than one.

  2015.08.27

• Tech Tuesday: Uber testing out “Smart Routes” in San Francisco

  Uber is currently testing out something called “Smart Routes” in San Francisco.

  Basically it works similar to UberPOOL (where you carpool with strangers to bring the cost down), except that your pickup location (and trip?) is confined to a specific route. 

  This means less detours and more rides for drivers, as well as even cheaper fares for passengers. But just like public transit, you’ll likely have to walk a few minutes to get to the closest route. 

  Here’s a screenshot of what that looks like (via TechCrunch):

  

  The green line is the “Smart Route.” So all you have to do is select a pickup location somewhere along that green line, and you’ll save a bit a money. Currently it’s “$1 or more” off your fare, but who knows what it might be when this feature actually rolls out.

  This is fascinating to me because it’s starting to look and feel a lot like a conventional bus route. But in this case, the routes can change and new routes can be easily created as demand changes. 

  So it’s not just taxis that need to be thinking about Uber. It’s public transit authorities as well.

  2015.08.25