Tag: bloomberg

• Tech and the City

  

  I’m reading a great book right now called Tech and the City. I’m only 31% of the way through it (according to my Kindle app), but already it’s been an interesting read. It’s about the making and rise of New York City as a technology and startup hub – which, is fairly recent phenomenon. There aren’t too many cases where New York plays second or third city, but tech is one of those instances. Silicon Valley dominates.

  The book talks about the deliberate efforts that were made, by the Bloomberg administration as well by many others, to diversify New York’s economy away from financial services and towards technology, startups, and entrepreneurship. It gives you all the backstory about the rise of Silicon Alley in the 90s, its subsequent crash in the dot com era, and all the players involved. And yes the reference to Sex and the City is both on purpose and explicit throughout the book.

  But at a time where cities all around the world are trying to replicate the success of Silicon Valley, the takeaways from this book are perhaps universally applicable. It certainly got me wondering if, here in Toronto, we’re doing enough to prepare our city to dominate in the 21st century.

  Image: Stephen Wilkes

  2014.06.26

• Culture in our society and economy

  Last week I was reading the blog of James S. Russell, who used to be the architecture critic for Bloomberg News. He’s no longer the architecture critic, because Bloomberg got rid of his column:

  My column, along with almost all cultural coverage, was eliminated at Bloomberg late last year in favor of a yet-to-be completed revamping that focuses on luxury and lifestyle. 

  Obviously, the decision saddens me personally, but it’s also a regrettably powerful signal that culture doesn’t matter in our society and economy.

  As someone who spent a great deal of time studying art, architecture and design, his post really resonated with me. This is a depressing thought. It may be hard to measure the ROI of the arts, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a return.

  Ironically, Bloomberg–the former mayor of New York–understood this:

  As Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, the company’s founder, championed arts as valuable to the vibrancy of the city and as a powerful force for economic development. The city has seen unprecedented growth in arts facilities, thanks both to his administration’s efforts and his personal philanthropy. His post-mayoral activities are intended to nurture cities as fields of wealth creation by helping them become cauldrons of innovation, which he recognizes is entwined with vibrant cultural and lifestyle trends.

  That sounds about right.

  2014.04.06

• Why Toronto should stop complaining about all its condos

  Below is my latest post from the TAS blog. You can find it cross-posted here.

  Last week I wrote a post on my personal blog about housing policy in San Francisco. My argument was that the backlash against the tech community (for allegedly driving up real estate prices) is actually misdirected and that housing policy should be the target. 

  The reasoning behind this is simple: More people are moving to San Francisco than new housing is being provided. And so regardless of whether you have tech workers or not, you have an environment where the rich are always going to outbid the poor for housing.

  If you look at the numbers from the past 2 decades, San Francisco on average builds 1,500 new housing units a year. And yet the city gained approximately 25,000 new people between 2010-2012 (that’s roughly 8,300 people per year). So what you have is a perpetual housing supply shortage.

  To correct this problem, San Francisco needs to start building. And I’m stealing this idea from Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, who wrote an article on this very same topic back in December of last year for Bloomberg (and a book called Triumph of the City). His argument was that “the surest way to a more equitable housing market is to reduce the barriers to building.”

  Now, if you compare San Francisco’s situation to Toronto’s, we’re almost on the opposite end of the spectrum. Toronto doesn’t have a problem building. We’re building lots. So much so that it’s become fashionable to joke around and complain about all the condos going up in this city.

  But it’s important to remember that all of these condos are making us a relatively affordable city by global standards. We have more people moving to this city every year than San Francisco and yet home prices are less. We’re also less expensive than Vancouver, where there are strong natural barriers to building, namely water and mountains.

  So rather than complain, I’m going to be the contrarian. I like seeing new housing built. I like knowing that the neighborhoods I love in this city are becoming home to more and more people.

  At one point, my home (which is in the St. Lawrence Market) was a “new development” and somebody could have fought and opposed it. But it was allowed to be built and I was allowed to move in. I’m thankful for that. And so my plan is to be just as gracious to the next person who wants to join the neighborhood.

  2014.01.31

• I don’t get Las Vegas real estate

  If you had to pick an epicentre for the housing bust of 2008, I’d say that Las Vegas would be a pretty safe bet.

  Las Vegas home prices doubled between 2002 and 2006 (the peak), and then fell 62% through to 2012! According to RealtyTrac, Las Vegas saw the highest rate of foreclosure (in 2009) compared to any other major city in the US. 1 out of every 13 properties was in foreclosure. That’s pretty incredible.

  Now, hindsight is always 20/20, but from the beginning I had a hard time understanding Las Vegas from a real estate standpoint. You have a city that’s running out of water and who’s major economic drivers are tourism, gambling and conventions. Not only are these industries highly cyclical, but they don’t create a lot of high paying local jobs.

  So for home prices to double in the span of 4 years, it must mean that there’s a lot of investor activity in the market. But how much is a lot? As one example, the 678 unit Meridian Private Residences, which was a condo conversion done by American Invsco, apparently only sold 14 units to end users. The remaining 98% of the units were bought by investors.

  Those are pretty scary numbers – both for investors and end users. And while times today are certainly nowhere near as frothy, I still don’t get Las Vegas real estate.

  2013.09.14