Tag: cities

• Collective action problem

  I like this excerpt from City Observatory:

  “More broadly, this paper reminds us of the salience of stigma to neighborhood development. Once a neighborhood acquires a reputation in the collective local consciousness for being a place that is risky, declining, crime-ridden or unattractive, it may be difficult or impossible to get a first-mover to take the necessary investment that could turn things around. The collective action problem is that no one individual will move ahead with investment because they fear (rationally) that others won’t, based on an area’s reputation. A big part of overcoming this is some action that changes a neighborhood’s reputation and people’s expectations, so that they’re willing to undertake investment, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

  It’s taken from an article called: Getting to critical mass in Detroit. The article itself is a response to some of the criticism circulating around that Detroit’s rebound is lopsided toward downtown. But Joe Cortright argues

  (rightly)

  that this is indeed the way to go about it. Concentrate efforts. Establish a critical mass. And then expand from there.

  What I like about the above excerpt is that it’s a reminder that optics, storytelling, and identity all have an important role to play in city building. It’s also a reminder that momentum can develop in either direction and that neighborhood reputation’s can get exaggerated.

  2017.03.22

• Landowner vs. city

  

  In my BARED post with Michael Cooper he described real estate development as being one of the most creative things you can do because of all of the constraints that one has to deal with. This certainly feels true on many days.

  A lot of these constraints also create competing tensions. One example is the tension between what landowners want and what the city may want.

  The value of development land is dependent on what you can build on it. It is, in theory at least, the residual claimant once you factor in all of your other development costs. But in a competitive land market, owners will naturally have high expectations around what their land is worth. And telling them about the intricacies of your residual claimant Excel model will fall on deaf ears if the output doesn’t match their expectations. They see what other land is selling for – even if the land use policies are entirely different – and they want the same or more.

  So to make the math work, it often becomes about density. In practice, many financial models are probably working in the opposite direction to what I described above: here’s how much money the landowner needs to sell; now let’s figure out if we can get enough density to make this work.

  Of course, the challenge with this approach is that you naturally start to push up against a ceiling with respect to density. Landowner wants more density. City wants less density. If I ever ran a development model today where this wasn’t the case, I would instinctively worry that my model wasn’t working properly.

  And therein lies the tension: how can I give this landowner the money that she/he wants, but at the same time satisfy the city and the community, and build enough density such that the project doesn’t lose money? For the time being, ignore the archaeological dig that will need to be done on the site and the creek running underneath it that is going to add $2 million to your underground costs.

  This is where you have to get creative. One potential solution is try and make the price dependent on achieved density. But not all landowners will go for this and sometimes the price spread is so great that even a density bonus isn’t going to close the gap.

  I like to believe that there’s always a creative solution to every problem. Try and make it work. Don’t give up. But the reality is that in many cases the land just isn’t worth the asking price and you’re going to need to walk away. That can be sad, but it can also be the smart thing to do.

  2017.03.21

• Why cities are where they are

  I’ve always been fascinated by questions around the origin and location of cities. How did they get their start and why did they get founded where they did? Access to water and resources are obvious factors. But it could have also been for defensive reasons. 

  In some cases, the location makes intuitive sense. Quebec City, for instance, is founded on high ground at the point “where the river narrows.” Both of these elements come in handy when you’re trying to fend off intruders. But in other cases, the exact location of a city or town may not be as obvious.

  Thankfully, Wendover Productions – which is a YouTube channel entirely focused on explaining how the world works – recently published a video called: Why Cities Are Where They Are. (Video embedded below.) It’s about 16 minutes long and it has gotten over 1 million views at the time of writing this post.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PWWtqfwacQ?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

  They also have a video that I watched today called: The Economics of Airline Class. It covers why airlines don’t care about coach and don’t make money off coach travellers. The real estate developer in me enjoyed the part about revenue per square foot for each “class” section of the plane.

  2017.03.18

• Top 10 city regions by GDP (and comparable countries)

  Below is a mapping (by Taylor Blake of the Martin Prosperity Institute) of the top 10 metro economies in the world by GDP at purchasing power parity. In brackets, is a country with a comparable GDP.

  

  Tokyo is the world’s largest metro economy with ~$1.6 trillion in GDP. This is greater than the GDP of all of Canada. New York City is number 2 with ~$1.5 trillion in GDP, which is only slightly less than Canada.

  The point of all of this – which Richard Florida argues here – is that the global economy is, today, powered by metropolitan areas. And yet our governance structures do not reflect this new reality.

  Here’s an excerpt from Florida’s article:

  “Cities really are the new power centers of the global economy—the platforms for innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. But when it comes to fiscal and political power, they remain beholden to increasingly anachronistic and backward-looking nation-states, which has become distressingly obvious with the rise of Trumpism in the United States and populism around the world.”

  Florida has been arguing this for years and I’ve really gotten behind it. The above chart is a good reminder just how big and wealthy some cities have become in today’s economy. 

  2017.03.17

• The winter garden

  Balconies, outdoor spaces and, more broadly, the relationship between inside and outside are important considerations in multi-family residential design.

  Earlier this year, Mansion Global ran a piece talking about a recent trend in cities such as New York, Toronto, and London, where high-rise outdoor spaces often go unused because of the wind and the cold. It’s called the winter garden.

  “So luxury developers are trying an option that they tout as both lush and cozy: the winter garden. Enclosed by glass on three sides, and often designed as an alcove off the living room or bedroom, these spaces can feature fireplaces, radiant-floor heating and sliding glass doors to maximize the breeze, weather permitting. For developers, the amenity can bump up asking prices, because winter gardens add interior square footage to a unit.”

  This, of course, is not a new idea. In fact, solariums are very common in Toronto condos of a particular vintage. But they are rare today, for probably a few reasons. Policy changes removed the incentive to build these spaces. Unit sizes have come down. And many people like the idea of being able to step outside.

  The other way to think about this trend, though, is that it’s about creating adaptability within the skin of the building. You want to be hermetically sealed off in the winter, but you want the opposite in the summer and/or swing seasons. This is about making indoor spaces feel more like outdoor spaces when you want them to be that way.

  There are countless examples of vernacular architecture figuring out how to strike this balance. Today we typically think in terms of mechanical systems. But I love the idea of a building that responds to the changing seasons.

  Thanks for sharing this article with me, Rick.

  2017.03.13

• We’re still on road pricing

  

  The New York Times recently argued that self-driving cars can’t cure traffic, but that economics can. Here is the key soundbite:

  “Maybe autonomous cars will be different from other capacity expansions,” Mr. Turner said. “But of the things we have observed so far, the only thing that really drives down travel times is pricing.”

  The argument here is that capacity expansions – such as additional lanes – never solve the problem of gridlock. Yes lane widening projects increase capacity, but the latent demand is so strong that the problem never gets solved. Even in places like Houston.

  We talked a lot about this phenomenon on the blog a few years ago when Toronto was embroiled in debate over the Gardiner Expressway East. But it’s interesting to think about self-driving cars as simply another incremental capacity expansion.

  I have no doubt that this technology will make more efficient use of our roads. Carpooling will be a lot easier – as is already the case. Cars will be able to drive closer together. We’ll be able to stop abrupt breaking and swift land changes, which actually create systemic traffic problems for everybody else.  And the list goes on.

  But there will still be limits to how many people can be efficiently moved on a particular strip of road. Exactly how there are limits to how many people can be efficiently moved via a particular subway tunnel, streetcar line, and so on.

  So if latent demand continues to outstrip available capacity, which has historically been the case, then we are once again back to the politically unpopular idea of pricing away congestion. As much as people criticize it as regressive, I believe that’s where we’re headed.

  2017.03.11

• The views are different here

  Tourism Toronto launched a new campaign this week and with it came a great video that has been making the rounds online. It feels authentic. It actually feels like Toronto. Watch it here if you can’t see it embedded below. 

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS_tYWIoZzk?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

  But why exactly is it a successful example of place branding?

  Resonance (place branding consultancy) wrote a post about it and also spoke with Tourism Toronto’s EVP and Chief Marketing Officer. Here’s an interesting excerpt about the two things they wanted to achieve in the campaign/video:

  “The campaign—and certainly this video—is trying to achieve two things,” Andrew Weir, Tourism Toronto’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer, tells Resonance. “First, international visitors tend to think of destinations by country, so we had to connect Toronto to the Canadian story.” He says the sprawling, wild country is still generally known for mountains, forests and wilderness, and Toronto wasn’t connecting to that narrative. Enter the “Canada’s Downtown” identity as a way to both incorporate the destination in a national context and differentiate from it. “Toronto is home of the country’s stock exchange, the center of media, the big sports teams are here, we have the long-run theater productions,” Weir rhymes off. “It is the urban center of Canada.”

  The second objective for the campaign (and one held high throughout the commercial) was to be unabashedly proud of the city’s unique alchemy, diversity and inclusivity.

  “We’ve seen the foundation for local pride laid by people and brands like Drake and the Raptors and we wanted to build on that, to separate ourselves from other cities. We tapped into that energy that’s embedded in Toronto’s identity and sense of place.”

  Pride—and a devotion to inclusivity and openness—jumps off the screen. Given the current political direction towards closed borders and suspicion, the goosebumps pop often while viewing.

  At the end of the day though, I think it comes down to the fact that it feels like it captures the zeitgeist of Toronto. As I said at the beginning of this post, it feels authentic. And good place branding doesn’t invent identity. It takes things that are already latent and then exploits them.

  It’s either that or I just like seeing the Chinese food place I go to at 3am featured in a video.

  2017.03.10

• Short term, lasting impact

  

  NXT City and Pavilion Project are hosting an event on March 23, 2017 here in Toronto (at the Drake Hotel) called Short Term, Lasting Impact. 

  It’s all about how “temporary, low-cost and scalable [urban] interventions” can bring about lasting / meaningful change within our cities.

  Here’s some info on the panelists / topics:

  Matt Rubinoff, Tusk Global // STACKT

  This temporary shipping container market proposes a visionary complex with everything from retail and restaurants to studio spaces and a brewery. What are some of the challenges of bringing an unconventional project to life?

  Rui Pimenta & Layne Hinton, Art Spin // IN/FUTURE ART FESTIVAL

  This art experience reclaimed a beloved Toronto space, transforming it briefly through a multidisciplinary art and music festival. What opportunities can site-specific events bring to celebrate underused spaces?

  Michael McLelland, ERA Architects // PORTLANDS PROJECT
  

  There are many long-term and competing visions for Toronto’s Portlands. How do we make best use of this prime city site today? How can short-term planning inform a future agenda and create critical cultural space in the near-term?

  I know the folks behind both of these non-profits (NXT City and Pavilion Project), and so I am happy to support this event. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased here.

  2017.03.09

• Big bad developer

  I just stumbled upon an older (2014) article by Oliver Wainwright in the Guardian called, The truth about property developers: how they are exploiting authorities and ruining our cities. In case the title didn’t give it away, it’s a scathing article about the current state of real estate development and city building.

  Here’s an excerpt:

  “Across the country – and especially in superheated London, where stratospheric land values beget accordingly bloated developments – authorities are allowing planning policies to be continually flouted, affordable housing quotas to be waived, height limits breached, the interests of residents endlessly trampled. Places are becoming ever meaner and more divided, as public assets are relentlessly sold off, entire council estates flattened to make room for silos of luxury safe-deposit boxes in the sky. We are replacing homes with investment units, to be sold overseas and never inhabited, substituting community for vacancy. The more we build, the more our cities are emptied, producing dead swathes of zombie town where the lights might never even be switched on.”

  Now, I’m not that familiar with the London market, so I can’t really comment on the dead swathes of zombie town. But I did enjoy the insights into the UK entitlement process.

  At the same time, my overarching thought as I read through the article was that I don’t believe that making money and doing what’s right need to be mutually exclusively. You can do both in development and in business. Making money as a developer does not mean you have to build shitty buildings.

  Part of the development game is managing an endless number of competing tensions. And profitability and responsible city building is just one of them. Of course, you have to want to do the right thing in the first place.

  2017.03.03

• An Honest Farewell

  

  I spent Saturday evening at Honest Ed’s for An Honest Farewell. It was a lot of fun. There were many familiar faces. And it felt very Toronto. See above photo.

  But part of me felt a bit phony pretending to celebrate the end of 68 years of operations. Truth be told, I’m not sure I ever bought anything from Honest Ed’s. Had it turned into a 3 floor super club sooner, perhaps I would have spent a bit more time there over the years.

  To me, Honest Ed’s was great big signage. 

  When I was a kid, my mom used to work on Bathurst Street just north of Bloor and I would go downtown with her early in the morning before school. It would still be dark out and I remember being so captivated by the bright lights of Honest Ed’s. That’s what the city meant to me. Lights. Flash. Excitement. It was where I wanted to be.

  A portion of the signage is being preserved and moved to Yonge and Dundas. But otherwise, this past weekend was the official end of an era. What matters now is the future of Mirvish Village. And the future is exciting.

  I’ll end with an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail article by Alex Bozikovic:

  “The new development at Mirvish Village, after two years of conversation between developers Westbank, locals and the city, is inching closer to approval, with a new proposal submitted in January to the city. Westbank paid $72-million for the site, a big number, and yet the result is as good as private development gets in Toronto. It features meaningful preservation of heritage buildings, a serious sustainability agenda, and affordable housing – not to mention an architectural and leasing strategy geared at making the place as lively as possible, even a bit weird.”

  2017.02.27