Who needs to travel when you have, this? This, is a site called Drive & Listen, which allows you to drive around cities — well, watch vides of people driving around cities — while listening to local radio stations. It’s oddly fascinating in an I-spend-hours-on-Google-street-view… Read More
All posts tagged “berlin”
City guides in the pre-smartphone era
I came across this stack of old Wallpaper city guides while reorganizing a few things over the weekend (because that’s what happens on the weekends now). They are pretty beat up and color faded from travel. It looks like these guides are still being published… Read More
A YouTube channel about simple living and small homes
I just subscribed to Kirsten Dirksen’s YouTube channel. She makes videos about simple living, self-sufficiency, and small homes, among other things. She has nearly 1.3 million subscribers and her videos have almost 500 million views. I think many of you will really enjoy her channel.… Read More
Berlin apartment rent freeze has frozen capital expenditures
Last year, the city of Berlin agreed to a five year rent freeze for some 1.5 million flats constructed before 2014. The way it was initially approved is that it would freeze rents at mid-2019 levels and allow for only 1.3% inflationary increases. All of… Read More
Two-up, two-down
Feargus O’Sullivan is doing a series in CityLab right now on the “home designs” that define four European cities: London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris. The first one is on London’s classic “two-up, two-down” design, which refers to a two storey home with a living room… Read More
Prime residential pricing in 10 global cities
The below graphs are taken from a recent (June 2019) report by Knight Frank on “prime” residential pricing across the world. They define “prime” as generally being the top 5% of each market by value. What these graphs show are the spread between the average… Read More
Berlin approves rent freeze on existing apartment buildings
Berlin just approved a five year “rent freeze” on apartments in the German capital. The rent caps will be implemented on January 1, 2020, but will apply retroactively to all rental agreements from June 18, 2019 onward (which is when the decision was made). It… Read More
One great big exit (not the Brexit kind)
Wired’s oral history of how the London startup scene came to be is a good reminder that, typically, a city needs some great big exits (acquisition or IPO) to really kickstart an ecosystem. In the case of Silicon Valley, you could perhaps trace things back… Read More
What’s in a roof?
Over the weekend I stumbled upon this illustrated Medium post by Alfred Twu comparing sloped and flat roofs. The argument is that these two roof types are coded. In this part of the world, at least, sloped roofs signal low-rise “house” and flat roofs signal… Read More
Multi-Unit Housing in Urban Cities: From 1800 to Present Day
I just ordered a copy of Multi-Unit Housing in Urban Cities: From 1800 to Present Day by Katy Chey. I figured this was a book that we should have hanging around our office. I also like to support the Daniels Faculty. The book covers the following… Read More