Tag: cities

• Spaces between buildings

  Doug Saunders recently published a great piece in the Globe and Mail about the “the dead spaces between buildings” and the architectural revolution that is taking place from Mexico City to Toronto to solve this underappreciated problem.

  The example in Mexico City is that of the San Pablo Xalpa public housing complex where architect Rozana Montiel transformed the underutilized spaces between the apartment buildings into vibrant “common-unity” spaces. 

  This meant removing 95% of the fences and gates that had previously been erected as safeguard against the unsavory people and acts that were taking place in these open spaces.

  The underlying goal was to try and address the socioeconomic decline that had taken root in Mexico’s public housing complexes. And there was a sense that part of the problem was simply their physical design.

  Of course, this is partially about trying to correct the failures of post-war planning. But I think this conversation around the “spaces between buildings” shouldn’t just be a corrective one. It can be broader than that.

  2018.05.28

• Introducing the new Corktown Plaza

  This evening Slate hosted a pre-application community meeting in Corktown, Hamilton, where we presented our proposed design for the redevelopment of Corktown Plaza. 

  There was a short presentation by Slate, GSP Group, CORE Architects, and Janet Rosenberg and Studio, and then we shifted to an open house format where members of the community could speak directly with all members of the project team.

  Below are a few of the project renderings, all completed by our friends at ADHOC Studio. 

  

  The proposed design includes fine grain and large format retail spaces and a 9.5m pedestrian setback along John Street South (rendering #2 and #3); grade-related family-oriented townhouses on Young Street and Catharine Street South (rendering #4); and two 100% rental towers (31 and 34 storeys) to be built over two phases.

  The other notable feature is a mid-block pedestrian connection that will run from John to Catharine and become an important place for local public art. The plan is to work with the community and Councillor Jason Farr to run a separate engagement process for this component of the project. We want to work with local artists. If you have any suggestions, please send them over.

  Here, here, and here are what some people had to say about the proposal on Twitter. Thanks to everyone who attended this evening.

  2018.05.25

• Going dockless

  A couple of months ago I wrote about Bird, the electric scooter sharing company that is trying to solve the last-mile problem. They are expanding across the US and it is seemingly wildly popular.

  But its popularity is also leading some people to call them a public nuisance. Perhaps the biggest contributor to that is the fact that the system is dockless. That is, when you get to your destination you can park the Bird wherever you want.

  That’s obviously a great feature for users (who wants to look around for a docking station?), but it’s also causing a proliferation of “Bird litter” in the cities and neighborhoods where they are widely used. 

  I am sure this will eventually get resolved.

  The other thing about going dockless is that you now have a charging problem. Where and when do these scooters get charged and by whom? Bird solves this problem through decentralized contract workers called “Bird hunters.”

  You register to be one and then Bird pays you $5 to $20 for every scooter charged, depending on how difficult the Bird is to find. And as you can expect, these scooters are getting left all over the place.

  I thought this was a clever solution. And apparently it is popular with high school students looking to earn extra cash. Some are making several hundred dollars a day by spending their evenings picking up and dropping off Birds.

  2018.05.22

• Balkrishna Doshi

  

  On Friday evening, here in Toronto at the Aka Khan Museum, this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize was awarded to Indian architect, Balkrishna Doshi. He is 90 and will receive US$100,000, as well as the honor of being the first Indian to receive architecture’s Nobel Prize. This year was also the first year it was awarded in Canada.

  Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail sat down with Doshi while he was in Toronto. Article here. Doshi also lectured at the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto earlier in the week. 

  Some of you will probably recognize the name because of his collaborations with Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. But as Alex quoted in his article, this year’s prize is about, “expanding the scope of architecture’s usefulness.” Doshi’s architecture is less about objects and more about the public good it creates.

  For more on Doshi, check here.

  On a related note, I was happy to see worlds collide in my Instagram feed this morning with this photo from the event. It’s a picture of Jeanne Gang, Meg Graham, and Andre D’Elia of Studio Gang and Superkul, respectively. 

  We are thrilled to be working on projects here Toronto with both firms.

  Photo via The Pritzker Architecture Prize

  2018.05.19

• How drones will change cities

  Dezeen, the architecture and design magazine, has a documentary out called Elevation – How Drones Will Change Cities. It premiered in Hong Kong in March and is supposed to be widely available this month. I’m not exactly sure when that is happening, but below is a trailer. If you can’t see it below click here.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSlep5XCpaw&w=560&h=315]

  Included in the trailer is footage of a delivery drone concept by design consultancy PriestmanGoode called Dragonfly. Norman Foster also talks about the development of “aerial highways.” It’s 2018 and we were promised flying cars by this point. But flying drones, similar to what’s in the above trailer, seem more probable right now.

  2018.05.18

• Anachronistic employment areas

  Today I was at the Land & Development Conference here in Toronto. I started live tweeting during the breakfast, but my vintage iPhone 6 couldn’t keep up, so I had to stop. Some insights throughout the day. But a lot of what you would expect. I suppose it’s more about the networking.

  I would, however, like to reiterate something that Ken Greenberg mentioned about Employment Areas/Lands in Toronto. For those of you who aren’t familiar, these lands are essentially intended to serve one, and only one, purpose: employment. And the process for introducing a mix of uses, including residential, is an onerous one to say the least.

  I appreciate why this is the case. But I agree with Greenberg in that this kind of single use zoning is antiquated. It does not reflect the realities of the market today. There are other mechanisms we can use to maintain and provide for employment, and ensure that we don’t end up with a city of all residential.

  2018.05.15

• 1 out of 5 commuters in Manila relies on ride-hailing

  Earlier this year Uber sold its Southeast Asia business to Grab. At the time, it was estimated that Grab had 95% of the ride-hailing market in Southeast Asia. That’s why Uber decided to sell. Instead of continuing to bleed, they figured it would be better to instead merge businesses in exchange for a “sizeable stake in Grab.” This is similar to the deal that it struck in China with Didi.

  It’s clear evidence of cultural advantage. Though maybe you could argue it’s first mover advantage. Either way, many, including Wired, have argued that while Uber has dominated in the West, it has often struggled in the developing world. Different markets. When Grab launched you could pay with cash because so many users didn’t have a credit card.

  

  Here is another interesting insight from Bloomberg (see above): Nearly 1 out of every 5 commuters in Manila relies on a ride-hailing service because the public transit situation is allegedly so dire. Grab controls 90% of the market with 35,000 vehicles receiving somewhere around 600,000 requests a day.

  When Uber launched it was positioned as “Everyone’s private driver.” It was expensive. It was luxurious. And it was done because they knew they weren’t going to be able to compete on speed and/or price in the early days. But now ride-hailing services are tackling the very opposite end of the spectrum.

  2018.05.15

• Pre-application community meeting in Hamilton

  

  At the end of last year, Slate hosted a “pre-design community meeting” for the redevelopment of Corktown Plaza in Hamilton. It was the first time we hosted a meeting like this.

  We learned things that evening and this May 24th we’ll be hosting our “pre-application community meeting.” See above for the full invite details. Lots of pre things.

  At last year’s meeting we had no design. It was about learning. At this month’s meeting we will be presenting a design proposal for the site. So hopefully some of you will be able to make it out.

  Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow on the blog.

  2018.05.12

• Everything delivered on demand

  

  Last week I had something delivered from Amazon almost every single day. They weren’t necessarily big things though. One day it was a new corn broom for the patio. Another day it was a small set of hooks that I wanted to hang some lights. And the list goes on. 

  This is what Amazon wants us to do. Order every little thing, instantly, as soon as you think about it. And it’s magically convenient.

  Developers and architects are of course thinking about the implications of this shifting shopping habit on new residential developments. Usually it comes in the form of a large “Amazon room” and/or a parcel locker system. 

  I recently measured the package room in my building (geeky, I know). It’s about 10′ x 6′ and it sometimes isn’t enough for the volume of daily packages generated by ~360 units. 

  The other thing that happened last week is that my concierge said to me: “Brandon, we have become a full fledge post office with the amount of packages that come through here every day.” Every evening there’s a lineup of people waiting to collect their packages. 

  That immediately signaled to me that simply providing a larger room probably isn’t enough. This trend is only going to continue. How could we better design and optimize for this shift?

  I am sure that there many companies working on this problem. Hopefully they will surface in the comments and in my inbox following this post.

  Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

  2018.05.06

• Tech salaries and brain drain

  The Globe and Mail recently ran an article arguing that tech salaries in Toronto are significantly less than those in the US and that it is leading to “alarmingly high rates” of brain drain. The claim is that the average tech salary in 2017 was US$73,000 in Toronto, compared to US$140,000 in the Bay Area or US$129,000 in New York City. 

  However, if you adjust these salaries for each city’s cost of living, the numbers look like this (chart taken from the same article):

  

  Now all of a sudden Toronto is lumped together with the Bay Area and New York City. It was adjacent to London even when you didn’t adjust the salaries. As Tobi Lütke – CEO of Shopify – points out in his Twitter rebuttal of the article, housing is the determining factor in this adjustment: “Toronto is a very expensive city, and Austin isn’t.”

  Lütke also points out, in case you’re in the market, that Canadian-based Shopify pays its tech employees well above market, provides stock compensation, and is currently “hiring like crazy”. But perhaps more importantly, he stresses the importance of Canadians building the economy of the country in which they are from. I feel exactly the same way.

  2018.05.05