Tag: berlin

• Visions of urban living

  This apartment is such a great idea:

  

  Let me explain.

  Freunde von Freunden (FvF) is a Berlin-based publication that documents inspiring people from creative and cultural backgrounds. If you don’t read their stuff, I think you should. Sample: Here’s an interview with Chang Lin. He is Creative Director at Zalando and lives in Mitte, Berlin. I always find it fascinating to see how people live.

  In 2014, FvF decided to bridge the online and offline worlds and open up their first “apartment” in Berlin. They refer to it as: The FvF Apartment – Visions for Urban Living. And they describe it like so:

  “The apartment has been designed to be fully adaptable to the diverse and often unexpected scenarios of everyday life, reflecting how a creative, mobile and digitally-oriented generation lives. It serves not only as a platform for innovative products from friends and partners, but as a unique venue for events, workshops, and presentations.”

  Basically, the space serves as one part apartment and one part venue. They have used it as a pop-up shop, as a stage for photo and film productions, as a place for distillers to host private tastings, and the list goes. 

  Again, I think this is such a great idea as a brand extension. It is giving me all kinds of ideas and so I thought I would share it with you all today as well.

  Image: The FvF Apartment

  2016.06.29

• Automobile vs. tram

  In grad school, I was fortunate enough to be a teaching assistant for a class called Urban Real Estate Economics, which was taught by Dr. Richard Voith. It was one of my favorite classes. So if you ever find yourself at the Wharton School, I would highly recommend it.

  Richard is also the President of a consulting firm in Philadelphia called Econsult Solutions. And I think a lot of what they focus on would be of interest to the audience of this blog. Their focus is on urban economics, real estate economics, transportation, public policy, and – you get the idea.

  Recently, he wrote a post called, Moving Cities: Berlin, where he outlines some of the transportation decisions that West and East Berlin made in the second half of the 20th century. 

  What I found most interesting was how the trams of East Berlin were stigmatized to represent communism and a centrally planned economy. On the other hand, West Berlin was all about the free market, and the symbol for that was none other than the automobile. That meant that the trams had to go. 

  Here is a quote that he shares from B.R. Shenoy, first published in August 15th, 1960:

  “The main thoroughfares of West Berlin are near jammed with prosperous looking automobile traffic, the German make of cars, big and small, being much in evidence. Buses and trams dominate the thoroughfares in East Berlin; other automobiles, generally old and small cars, are in much smaller numbers than in West Berlin. One notices cars parked in front of workers’ quarters in West Berlin… In contrast with what one sees in West Berlin, the buildings [in East Berlin] here are generally grey from neglect, the furnishings lack in brightness and quality, and the roads and pavements are shabby…”

  My favorite line: “…jammed with prosperous looking automobile traffic.”

  Of course, Berlin wasn’t the only city to eschew trams in the 20th century. Detroit and Los Angeles both did exactly the same thing. But in Berlin, this philosophy wasn’t applied equally across the urban fabric. And that’s what makes it a particularly interesting case study.

  I don’t know Berlin well enough to comment specifically, but Richard writes about how parts of East Berlin remained quite pedestrian friendly compared to West Berlin. That makes intuitive sense, given that it didn’t reorient itself towards the car in the same way that the West did. That being the case, I am curious to what extent those parts of the city may be benefiting today.

  In any event, you should also give Richard’s article a read. You can do that here.

  2016.04.23

• Not zoned for dancing

  Yesterday, when I was reading up on Toronto’s “TOcore” initiative, I came across a report from 2014 called Not Zoned For Dancing: A Comprehensive Review of Entertainment in Downtown Toronto. 

  It was prepared by five graduate planning students at the University of Toronto: Anna Wynveen, Brenton Nader, Carolyn Rowan, Chris Hilbrecht, and Kyle Miller. 

  The entire report is fascinating, but here’s one diagram that stood out to me:

  

  It shows the migration of bars, clubs, and lounges westward, away from the downtown core, from 1991-2013.

  This migration doesn’t surprise me at all. I saw it happening and I understand the market forces at play here. There’s also the simple fact that nightlife is often viewed as a nuisance.

  But it’s worth calling this out. 

  Because I don’t think enough city builders appreciate the value of nightlife. It can and has served as a valuable catalyst for urban regeneration and I believe that it should form part of any city’s economic development strategy.

  A lot of cities are focused on things like bike lanes, public spaces, and on becoming the next Silicon Valley. And don’t get me wrong, those are all important things (though we could debate the Silicon Valley part). 

  But let’s not forget about nightlife.

  2016.04.07

• Why Toronto needs a night mayor

  

  Recently I wrote about the first Night Mayor Summit being held in Amsterdam. As part of this, I spoke about Amsterdam’s first night mayor – Mirik Milan.

  Since then (but obviously not because of my post), the idea has seemingly taken off. Below are a couple of excerpts from a recent Guardian article.

  This pragmatic and classically Dutch notion is now being copied across Europe: Toulouse, Zurich, Paris as well as several other Dutch cities have night mayors too.

  This week the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, announced plans for a “Night-Time Commission”, a six-month assessment of how to protect and manage the city’s £66bn night-time economy which is likely to recommend the creation of a “night-time champion” role. 

  Berlin is considering it too, and in April, Amsterdam will host the first global Night Mayors’ Summit.

  Why is this happening? Simple:

  “Late-night people are typically young, educated, creative, entrepreneurial – people you want in your city, and who work in the creative industries and startups you also want. If places like Berlin have flourished, it’s not just because of low rents. It’s because they’re nightlife capitals.”

  So if you’re reading this, Mayor John Tory, now is probably your last chance to make Toronto a North American leader in this regard. 

  It’s great that we are trying to push the Toronto – Waterloo region as a global startup hub, but so is every other major city and region in the world. A focus on startups is so commonplace in today’s economic development strategies, that at this point it almost feels meaningless. What are we going to do to stand out in this competition for the world’s best talent?

  If everyone believes something to be true – such as, there’s value in having a robust startup ecosystem – then it’s no longer innovative. It’s just the way things are. To take it to the next level, we’re going to have to do things that will probably feel uncomfortable at first – particularly for old establishment Toronto.

  I’m not saying that having a night mayor is going to be the silver bullet for our startup ecosystem. There’s no such thing. But I am saying that it should be one component of our larger strategy. 

  Because already there’s a growing number of European cities who have come to this one simple realization: people are drawn to kickass places.

  If you agree with this post, I would encourage you to leave a comment below and also tweet the Mayor of Toronto.

  Image: Berlin nightlife by Tom Stromer

  2016.03.26

• Amsterdam is about to host the first Night Mayor Summit

  

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  What is a night mayor, you might ask?

  Well, just as the name suggests, a night mayor is the chief executive officer of a city’s nighttime activity. And in 2014, Amsterdam became the first city ever to have one.

  Why is this important, you might ask?

  Well, for most cities the night is a blindspot. It’s viewed as something that needs to be carefully controlled as opposed to something that is celebrated and leveraged. Amsterdam saw this opportunity and, in my opinion, is now at the forefront of rethinking the night.

  Here’s an example of the kind of changes that this has meant for the city (via CityLab):

  “Until recently, Amsterdam enforced what by continental European standards is a fairly strict curfew: nightclubs had to close by 4 a.m. on weekdays and 5 a.m. on weekends. The city often had problems with noise and disorder at the exact moment when all the clubs closed, filling narrow inner city streets with rowdy people.

  To solve this problem, the night mayor suggested not less, but more time for people to go clubbing. He has helped push through the granting of 10 24-hour licenses for nightclubs. Crucially, all of them were located not in the dense city center but in thinly populated districts around Amsterdam’s outer ring road. The result was a marked reduction in street noise.”

  Some of you are probably feeling skeptical as you read this. Especially since 4AM and 5AM hardly seem strict when compared to other cities (Toronto’s last call is at 2AM). 

  But I would not underestimate the importance of what Amsterdam is doing. We are living in an era of the 24-hour global city and it’s about time that governments woke up to that. I’m sorry Toronto, but 2AM is an absolute joke.

  The night can be your competitive advantage in attracting human capital. As the CityLab article cited above suggests, a big part of what transformed Berlin into a capital of cool was its nightlife. 

  I wholeheartedly believe that and I have no doubt that the night will start to become a greater focus in city building.

  If you’d like to learn more about the Night Mayor Summit, click here.

  2016.01.30

• 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

• A Detroit story of single family homes and pianos

  

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  I was reading Aaron Renn’s blog this morning and a post called, How Urban Planning Made Motown Records Possible, caught my attention. 

  His argument – taken from a book called Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story – is that the prevalence of pianos in black working class and middle class families was a key ingredient in Detroit ultimately punching above its weight musically.

  Here’s an excerpt that Aaron Renn shared on his blog:

  The family piano’s role in the music that flowed out of the residential streets of Detroit cannot be overstated. The piano, and its availability to children of the black working class and middle class, is essential to understanding what happened in that time and place, and why it happened, not just with Berry Gordy, Jr. but with so many other young black musicians who came of age there from the late forties to the early sixties. What was special then about pianos and Detroit? First, because of the auto plants and related industries, most Detroiters had steady salaries and families enjoyed a measure of disposable income they could use to listen to music in clubs and at home. Second, the economic geography of the city meant that the vast majority of residents lived in single family homes, not high-rise apartments, making it easier to deliver pianos and find room for them. And third, Detroit had the egalitarian advantage of a remarkable piano enterprise, the Grinnell Brothers Music House.

  Detroit is obviously not the only city with lots of single family homes. But it’s fascinating to think that this housing typology, combined with a number of other socioeconomic factors, could be what ultimately led to the creation of the Motown Sound.

  It’s also interesting to think about what kind of talent we might be squandering in our cities. I mean, look what happens when people have access to things like pianos (in the case of Detroit), computers (in the case of people like Bill Gates), and cheap/vacant space (in the case of Berlin and its clubs). They create amazing things.

  This is one of the reasons why I think we sometimes underestimate the importance of small scale moves when it comes to spurring innovation in cities. We forget that people will do incredible things when they are, quite simply, given the freedom to work on projects they are passionate about.

  If we could harness these passions instead of focusing so often on big political announcements, I think we’d all be better off.

  2015.10.24

• Last call at the bar

  Earlier this week I attended the CityAge conference here in Toronto and participated in a panel discussion about talent. 

  The questions were all about how cities can attract and retain talent, and how they can best leverage the talent they already have. These are questions that a lot of cities around the world are thinking about.

  In my responses I talked about things like transit connectivity, which is a problem that all of us in Toronto recognize we have. But I also focused a lot on quality of life, on sense of place, and on being a cool place to live. These are important factors.

  The example I then gave is Berlin. Some say Berlin is now over. But for many years Berlin has been dubbed one of coolest cities in the world. And I personally think a lot of that has to do with the arts, culture, and nightlife scene that emerged in the 90s. 

  But this wasn’t a government initiative to make Berlin a hub for talent. It was largely a grassroots movement that took hold for a myriad of reasons, one of which was simply empty buildings that people could colonize for parties. And it transformed the place into a city that later became known as “poor but sexy.”

  That brought me to another point, which is that Toronto’s 2AM last call at the bar is laughable by global city standards. And we know that. That’s why whenever we host an event of any sort of notoriety – such as the Toronto International Film Festival – we extend it to 4AM. The people coming here from all around the world expect that.

  This may seem like a small thing. And I am sure many of you here in the city would like things to stay just the way they are. But I think we need to loosen up.

  2015.10.10

• Why we should fight the divided city

  

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  There has been and continues to be many divided cities around the world.

  Berlin had the Berlin Wall. 

  Northern Ireland (mostly Belfast) has its Peace Walls that still separate Protestant loyalists and Catholic republicans from each other. 

  Beirut had the Green Line, which separated the predominately Muslim side in the west from the predominantly Christian side in the east during the Lebanese Civil War. And I understand this is still the case today.

  Detroit has 8 Mile Road, which is a psychological barrier rather than a physical one, but one that still sharply separates whites (blue dots, below) and blacks (green dots, below). The image below is from Wired Magazine.

  

  And even here in Toronto you could say that we’ve become a divided city, albeit without the civil wars or race riots that have plagued the other cities listed above. Our voting patterns suggest a real urban-suburban divide and the many ethnic groups in this city continue to concentrate themselves in specific areas.

  I’ve been thinking about this phenomenon in the context of a recent article I read talking about closed vs. open social networks. The article was talking about career success, but I think the lessons are also transferrable to cities.

  The argument made in the article is that people who are able to position themselves in open networks – that is, become the connector between diverse kinds of social groups – are more likely to succeed than people who position themselves in closed networks where they are only surrounded by people they already know and by people who are similar to themselves.

  And the reason for this is because people in open networks end up getting exposed to a broader set of viewpoints and ideas. They get a more accurate view of the world and they are able to problem solve better than those who may be coming at it from a more myopic or singular perspective.

  But the challenge with open networks, is that there seems to be an innate human tendency towards closed networks. We love what is familiar. We love what is comfortable to us. In other words, we are attracted to people that are similar to ourselves. This is known as homophily.

  So it’s not surprising that we tend to cluster ourselves in cities. Yes, there are economic benefits to doing so (known as agglomeration economies), but there’s also a certain feeling of solidarity that comes from being around other people with the same view of the world. There’s no tension because everyone has the same beliefs, whether that be religion or politics or sports or what to eat.

  But just like there’s an argument to be made that successful people should try and resist the pull towards closed networks, I think there’s also an argument to be made that successful cities should try and resist the pull towards closed and divided cities.

  That’s why some people believe that tolerance is a critical ingredient to fostering creativity in cities.

  2015.10.03

• Lisbon is the new Berlin

  

  Tramway à Lisbonne by yannick le goff on 500px

  This morning I stumbled upon a blog post by a Berlin-based venture capitalist (Ciarán O’Leary) talking about how Lisbon feels like the next Berlin. In other words, it feels like the next great European startup hub.

  Here’s his reasoning:

  • The tech scene is organic – it happened on its own, came out of nowhere. That is much more fun and sustainable than any kind of political or targeted economic strategy.
    
  • There are a ton of constraints (funding, local talent base, etc.) so entrepreneurs need to hustle to make things happen. Hustle is good.
    
  • Berlin was an economic void, Portugal had a massive economic crisis and Lisbon sure isn’t letting that crisis go to waste.
    
  • Entrepreneurship has the real chance to be a center stage act, not a side gig. It’s everywhere.
    
  • The city is very, very cool. You just want to be here.
    
  • You can have a great life on a startup salary.
    
  • Everyone speaks english; everyone is welcoming and open. That matters a lot when you want to attract international talent and funding.

  Of course, he’s not the only one calling Lisbon the next Berlin. The EU also named Lisbon “the most entrepreneurial region in Europe in 2015.” Isn’t it interesting what can grow out of economic crisis? See PIGS.

  I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that Monocle held its first ever Quality of Life Conference in Lisbon. It’s a testament to O’Leary’s point above that, “You just want to be here.”

  And while being “very, very cool” may not seem immediately relevant to creating a robust startup environment, it really is. It may be the most important point. It makes the city a magnet for talent. 

  Just the other day I was trying to explain Berlin to someone and I used a similar lexicon. I said: “It’s an unbelievably cool city. It bleeds hipness. You will love it.”

  If you’re a city, that’s a great thing to be.

  2015.04.20