Tag: cities

• We’re hosting a pre-design community meeting in Hamilton

  This fall Slate acquired a retail center in Hamilton called Corktown Plaza. It is the block bounded by John Street South, Young Street, Catharine Street South, and Forest Avenue. It is just south of the Hamilton GO Centre in downtown.

  It is currently a much used single storey retail plaza with a large surface parking lot facing John Street South. It’s still early days, but the long-term plan is to redevelop it into a mixed-use retail and residential complex.

  Before putting pen to paper, the team is hosting a “pre-design community meeting” this Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7pm at the Church of Ascension down the street. Address is 64 Forest Avenue (accessible entrance at 258 John Street South).

  Here is the invite (embedded tweet):

  Kudos @SlateAssetMgmt for hosting a “pre-design” community meeting before “putting pen to paper” … a best practise in meaningful public engagement pic.twitter.com/w07paBeoyp

  — Jason Thorne (@JasonThorne_RPP)

  November 30, 2017

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The purpose of the meeting is to gather feedback from the community before beginning design. We want to know what’s working today, what’s not working today, and what would be ideal for the future. 

  CORE Architects and GSP Group (planning) will be in attendance along with the Slate team. The format will be brief presentations followed by interactive breakout sessions. There will be trace paper on hand so that we can all put pen to paper.

  If you live and/or work in the area or are simply interested in the future of Hamilton, please feel free to join us on Tuesday evening. If you can, send a quick email to rsvp@kga-inc.com letting us know you’ll be coming. But just showing up is also perfectly fine.

  2017.12.09

• Land use restrictions and upward mobility

  Throughout US history, economic growth has typically spurred an “enormous reallocation of population.” Here is a graph from a recent New York Times article called: What Happened to the American Boomtown?

  

  The argument, here, is that restrictions on development have made it so that the most prosperous cities are actually the slowest growing cities in terms of population. Here is a chart, from the same article, comparing population growth to average annual pay:

  

  And here is an excerpt:

  But these productive places aren’t growing as fast now as economists believe they should — and as they would if they didn’t impose so many obstacles on new development. Since the 1970s, land use restrictions have multiplied in coastal metros, making it harder to build in, say, San Jose, Calif., than in Phoenix. And the politics of development have become tense, too. In the Boston suburbs, the Bay Area, Brooklyn and Washington, people who already live there have balked at new housing for people who don’t.

  We often talk about the impact of land use restrictions on supply and overall housing affordability. But here is an argument that it could also be impacting upward mobility.

  2017.12.08

• What cars can tell you about a neighborhood

  This is an interesting study from a team of AI researchers at Stanford. What they did was use car images taken directly from Google Street View (so images of cars parked on-street) to predict income levels, racial makeup, educational attainment, and voting patterns at the zip code and precinct level.

  Admittedly, it’s not a perfect survey, but when they compared their findings to actual or previously collected data (such as from the American Community Survey), it turns out that their study was actually remarkably accurate. Google Street View allowed them to survey 22 million cars, or about 8% of all cars in the US.

  Here are some of the things they found:

  –  Toyota and Honda vehicles are strongly associated with Asian neighborhoods.

  – Buick, Oldsmobile, and Chrysler vehicles are strongly associated with black neighborhoods.

  – Pickup trucks, Volkswagens and Aston Martins are strongly associated with white neighborhoods.

  Interestingly enough, the ratio of pickup trucks to sedans, alone, is a pretty reliable indicator of voting patterns. If a neighborhood has more pickup trucks than sedans, there’s an 82% chance it voted Republican in the last election.

  Perhaps this isn’t all that surprising given that car purchases are highly symbolic. But given that the American Community Survey costs $250 million a year to administer, this study is a good preview of what cheaper and more realtime data collection might look like.

  2017.12.07

• The geography of innovation and equality of opportunity

  The Equality of Opportunity Project has a recent paper out called: Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The importance of Exposure to Innovation. Vox also has a summary of the findings, here.

  The overall goal of the project is to “use big data to identify new pathways to upward mobility.” And in this particular study, they discover that in America there are many “lost Einsteins” – people who have the ability, but not the opportunity.

  Not surprisingly, socioeconomic class, race, and gender play a significant role. Children from high-income families are 10x more likely to become inventors (measured in patents) as compared to children from low-income families.

  Geography, place, and environment also matter. Where and how a child grows up has a significant impact on future outcomes. If a child grows up in a city/network that exposes them to other inventors, it increases the likelihood that they too will invent. 

  Where a child grows up also has an impact on the types of inventions, even if the child move cities as an adult. For example, the study found that if a child grows up in Silicon Valley but moves to Boston as an adult, it is still more likely to author patents related to computers because that’s what it was exposed to as a child.

  These associations also impact in a gender-specific way. Women are more likely to invent in a particular technology if they grow up surrounded by similar female inventors. The presence of male inventors has no impact. This makes a powerful case for better gender diversity and strong role models.

  If you would like to read the full paper, click here.

  2017.12.05

• How’s your PTAL these days?

  

  As I was going through the new London Plan yesterday I noticed a number of references to PTAL. I didn’t know what this was, so I obviously had to look it up.

  It stands for Public Transit Accessibility Level. It’s a methodology that was developed in London in the 90′s. And it’s a measure of access to public transit, or of the density of the public transport network at any given location.

  There are 6 levels, though two of the levels are further subdivided into 2 sub-levels for greater precision:

  • 1a and 1b
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6a and 6b

  1 is bad. 6 is good. 

  What’s captured in this measure are the walking times from a particular location to the nearest transit access points; the reliability of the available services; the number of services available; and the average wait times.

  Historically, this measure has helped to determine how much density could be built on a particular site, how much parking should be provided, and so on. 

  For example, in the new London Plan, PTAL 5 and 6, as well as Inner London PTAL 4, are expected to see development with no residential parking. Once you move to PTAL 3, the parking maximum moves up to 0.25 spaces per unit. 

  In the draft London Plan you’re also supposed to use the highest existing or planned PTAL. So if transit improvements are planned for the area, you factor those into the calculation.

  Seems quite rationale (though it’s probably not a perfect measure of access and connectivity).

  If you’d like to determine the PTAL for a particular address in Greater London, you can do that here. Unfortunately, I don’t have a calculator for you if you happen to live outside of London. But there is one simple check you can do.

  The PTAL methodology assumes an average walking speed of 4.8 kph. The maximum allowable walk time for buses is 8 minutes and the maximum walk time for subway and light rail is 12 minutes. These numbers translate into distances of 640m and 960m, respectively.

  How far do you have to walk to access good transit?

  Photo by Bruno Martins on Unsplash

  2017.12.01

• Stockholm’s congestion charge reduced car traffic by 20%

  Stockholm has a congestion charge that is used to reduce traffic volumes in the center of the city. Toronto does not. We looked at it, actually fairly recently, but then we lost our nerve.

  Stockholm’s congestion charge was first implemented on a trial basis starting in January 2006. Trials and pilots have become a common way to actually create positive change. Otherwise the status quo bias may simply be too strong.

  When Stockholm started the trial back in 2006, public support was very low. Maybe 30%. But as soon as it was implemented, car trips dropped overnight by 20%. Once people saw the benefits, support grew – hitting around 70% by 2011.

  Here is a brief Street Films video with Stockholm’s Director of Transport, Jonas Eliasson, talking about their experience with congestion pricing. If you can’t see the video below, click here.

  [vimeo 244771087 w=640 h=360]

  2017.11.29

• An even longer view on home prices — this time in Amsterdam

  In the comments of my recent post about Manhattan real estate prices during the Great Depression, a regular reader of this blog shared this terrific blog post (and corresponding research paper by Piet Eichholtz) about house prices along the Herengracht canal in Amsterdam from 1628 to 1973. Later it was updated to include up to 2008. It’s a long run house price index.

  Probably the first thing you’ll notice is that the index is highly volatile. Amsterdam enters its Golden Age, creates the world’s first stock exchange, and becomes the wealthiest city in the western world – house prices go way up. The tulip mania bubble pops – house prices go way down. It’s not until after World War II that prices sort of start to stabilize and increase, maybe, more consistently.

  In nominal dollars, the house price index increases 10x over the study period. But in real dollars most of that disappears. The biennial increase (that’s how the study was done) over the same period of time is just 0.5%. That translates into a doubling of house prices, which may seem quite good, except that remember it’s over a 380 year time period.

  

  The Herengracht canal is a particularly good study because it was and has remained (or so I’m told) a desirable part of Amsterdam. This is an attempt to control for the variable that maybe some of the volatility could be explained by the area simply falling out of favor. (As a quick sidebar, the Herengracht was one of the first canals laid and dug out around the original city center of medieval Amsterdam during its Golden Age.)

  Generally, this finding is in line with one that economist Robert J. Shiller famously published a number of years ago where he argued that, when you correct for inflation, home prices actually look remarkably stable over long-run forecasts. In one study, he looked at 100 years of US home prices ending in 1990. Real home prices increased about 0.2% a year. What an outstanding hedge against inflation.

  2017.11.28

• Manhattan real estate prices during the Great Depression

  

  I was searching around trying to find data on long-term real estate prices and I came across a paper by Tom Nicholas and Anna Scherbina called, Real Estate Prices During the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression.

  Here are some stats about Manhattan real estate (from the paper) that you all might find interesting:

  – In 1930, Manhattan housed 1.5% of the US population, but had approximately 4% of all US real estate wealth.

  – To construct their price indices the authors randomly collected 30 real estate transactions per month in Manhattan between 1920 and 1939. The mean price per square foot in 1929 was $6.91 (year of Black Tuesday). And the mean price per square foot in 1939 – 10 years later – was $2.29.

  – Buildings containing a store at grade tended to sell at higher prices. The authors speculate that this could be because a zoning change in 1916 made it difficult to open stores in “residential” areas.

  – Buildings with three, four and five storeys tended to sell at a discount. Six storeys or higher and the buildings generally had an elevator, which resulted in higher pricing.

  – Manhattan real estate prices reached their highest level in Q3-1929 before falling 67% by 1932. Prices remained more or less flat during the Great Depression.

  – If you bought a “typical property” in 1920, it would have retained only 56% of its value (in nominal dollars) by 1939. In fact, it took until 1960 for assessed property values in Manhattan to exceed their pre-Depression pricing.

  – An investment in the stock market index during this same time period, 1920-1939, would have outperformed real estate by a factor of 5.2x.

  Much of this probably seems hard to believe given the market today. Imagine waiting 40 years for the value of your property to come back.

  Photo by jesse orrico on Unsplash

  2017.11.26

• Saks x Dim Mak

  Steve Aoki was in Toronto today for a collaboration with Saks Fifth Avenue – namely the launch of his fall/winter Dim Mak Collection. 

  The after party was at Junction House (the pre-development version). Here is a photo:

  

  I actually wasn’t there (because I’m fighting off some sort of cold), but a friend sent me this photo. 

  It’s such a great space for events and production. It used to be an artist studio, but they moved out because they outgrew the space.

  If you have a need for a large warehouse space, you can actually rent it by visiting here.

  2017.11.22

• End of the automotive era

  

  Bob Lutz is a former vice chairman and head of product development at General Motors. Recently, he had this to say about the future of the auto industry. 

  Here are a couple of powerful snippets:

  It saddens me to say it, but we are approaching the end of the automotive era.

  The auto industry is on an accelerating change curve. For hundreds of years, the horse was the prime mover of humans and for the past 120 years it has been the automobile.

  Now we are approaching the end of the line for the automobile because travel will be in standardized modules.

  Everyone will have five years to get their car off the road or sell it for scrap or trade it on a module.

  Bob is 85 years old. This is somebody who spent his entire life in the auto industry telling us that the old model is now done. 

  It reinforces something that I wrote about here, where the “end of the automotive era” was pegged at around 2021. 

  And it is part of the mental model that I have started relying on today for decision making.

  Photo by Alessio Lin on Unsplash

  2017.11.19