Tag: cities

• Enemies of the High Line

  Despite not being the first example of infrastructural adaptive reuse, the High Line in New York has certainly kickstarted an urban trend. Cities all around the world now want their own “version of the High Line.”

  Philly is working on a new “rail park.” I toured the space last summer and it’s very similar to the High Line in terms of existing infrastructure. Rome and Toronto are both working on “under” spaces, which are beneath an old viaduct and elevated expressway, respectively. And the list goes on.

  But I think it’s worth remembering just how contentious the High Line was before it was built. For some people it was just an eyesore and a public safety hazard. Here’s a excerpt from a New York Times article dated 2002:

  “This is a terrific win for us,” said Michael Lefkowitz, a lawyer for Edison Properties, one of 19 businesses that own land beneath the High Line.

  Janel Patterson, a spokeswoman for the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said an agreement to share the $11 million cost of dismantling the High Line was being circulated among the property owners and the rail bed’s owner, CSX, of Richmond, Va. “It’s about eliminating a public safety hazard,” Ms. Patterson said, “but it’s also about enabling the city to move forward and better develop the area.”

  It’s also worth mentioning that former Mayor Giuliani supposedly favored demolition of the High Line. Former Mayor Bloomberg, however, did not:

  …Mr. Bloomberg said: "Today, on the West Side of Manhattan, we have an opportunity to create a great new public promenade on top of an out-of-use elevated rail viaduct called the High Line. This would provide much-needed green space for residents and visitors, and it would attract new businesses and residents, strengthening our economy. We know it can work … . I look forward to working with Friends of the High Line and other interested parties to develop a feasible reuse scenario.”

  The challenge with these sorts of things – that is, new ideas – is that we live in a world of proof and precedents. We want to see that it has been successfully done before, because, otherwise, we might be wrong. So now that New York has shown what is possible, it has cleared the way for other cities.

  Rethinking old infrastructure is a sound urban strategy. But we also shouldn’t forget that it’s less valuable to be right about something that every other city already believes to be true. The real value is created when you’re right about something that most other cities don’t yet believe.

  2016.05.09

• Prime property appreciation around the world

  Every year for the last decade, Knight Frank has published something called The Wealth Report. I’ve written about it before, but it’s basically a look at “prime property” and global wealth.

  As part of the report, they have something called the PIRI 100. It’s their “Prime International Residential Index”, which looks at luxury residential property prices around the world. They generally define “prime property” as being the top 5% of each market according to value.

  This year, the top 25 locations in their PIRI 100 are as follows (for the most part, the data is up to December 2015):

  

  Here in Canada, we like to talk about the insanity of the Vancouver and Toronto real estate markets. This list helps to put that into perspective. Even by global standards, Vancouver is at the top of the pack by quite a significant margin. 

  It’s worth noting that since this is a “prime property” index, it’s pretty safe to assume that the buyer profiles for these sorts of properties would have a significant international bias. So in a way, this list is really about global capital flows.

  Here are the bottom 10 locations on this year’s list:

  

  If you’d like to see the full list, click here.

  2016.05.09

• Is Toronto a world-class city?

  

  Earlier this week I was on a panel discussion called Building Toronto Tomorrow. One of the questions was about whether or not Toronto is world-class city. It elicited a good discussion, so I thought I would talk about that today on the blog.

  Shamez Virani, President of CentreCourt Developments, responded by saying that he thinks Toronto is the greatest city in the world and that he wishes more people would just accept how incredible this city is. I agreed with him.

  I also responded by saying that I hate this question. I think it reeks of insecurity and I think it’s a bit of a red herring. It distracts from more direct and meaningful questions – questions such as our livability and our position as a global city.

  Because the reality is that Toronto is one of the most livable cities in the world and, in my view, we are the only true global city in Canada. We are an important node in the global economy for the flow of goods, people (we’re particularly good at this), capital, and now information. There’s a lot to be proud of.

  But that’s not to say that we’re perfect. Everyone knows we need better transit. And to name a few others (non-exhaustive list), I also think we need to:

  • Get a move on road pricing.
  • Loosen up our archaic alcohol laws and start using nightlife as a competitive advantage for attracting talent.
  • Acknowledge through our governance structures that cities are what drive today’s information economy.
  • Stop thinking about the Canadian/Toronto value proposition as being about cost savings. That is, buy this from us because our currency is weaker than yours. This is anti-innovation and there are much better ways to create sustainable value. (Innovation is still a weak spot.)
  • Focus on developing an information economy that leverages the unique talent and knowledge base of Toronto. For example, I think we’re in a great position for real estate + tech innovation.
  • Do everything we can to encourage big tech IPOs in this city. They are critical to developing the ecosystem.

  There’s a saying in Silicon Valley that you “make what you measure.” It means that whatever you decide to focus your attention on, is invariably what you end up making – regardless of whether or not you happen to be focusing on the right metric.

  In the context of Toronto, I think we’d be better served if we focused on and quantified our position in the global economy, as opposed to chasing some idea of “world-class.” The latter will grow as the former grows.

  I also think that this needs to be balanced against our livability. Sometimes there’s a tension. But there are cities – the best example is perhaps Tokyo – who have managed to pair a high quality of life with one of the strongest positions in the global economy.

  Is there anything else you think we should be doing? We can talk about it in the comments below.

  Image: Building T.O Toronto (BuzzBuzzHome Event)

  2016.05.07

• De Rotterdam…

  

  “Manhattanism is the one urbanistic ideology that has fed, from its conception, on the splendors and miseries of the metropolitan condition – hyper-density – without once losing faith in it as the basis for a desirable modern culture. Manhattan’s architecture is a paradigm for the exploitation of congestion.” 

  –Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, 1978

  Image: De Rotterdam by photographer Ossip Van Duivenbode via The Architectural Review

  2016.05.07

• Happy 100th Birthday, Jane Jacobs

  “We came to Toronto,” she says, “because it’s a place where you can work, it’s a place where you can live well, it’s a place where there is hope.” –Jane Jacobs (1971)

  It was my birthday this week (May 2nd). But it was also the birthday of someone far more noteworthy. This past May 4th marks what would have been Jane Jacob’s 100th birthday. (She passed in Toronto in 2006.)

  In commemoration of this, Toronto Life published a photographic essay, along with a short piece by Joe Berridge. Joe is a partner at the urban design and planning firm Urban Strategies. He’s also a great storyteller.

  Here’s an excerpt:

  Jane didn’t do nice—Toronto’s default emotional setting. She was cantankerous and argumentative: once you got on the wrong side of her, that was that. About 20 years ago, when I was working as an urban planner, we were on a panel together at Boston College. I was making some remarks about city planning she clearly thought rubbish—and she just interrupted me. “Joe, Joe, Joe,” she said (her squawky Scranton, Pennsylvania, accent made it sound like “jaw, jaw, jaw”). “You’re tacking nansense.” The audience agreed. After I spoke, an incomprehensible social science professor took the stage. Jane wasn’t fond of academics—she didn’t think they knew much—but to make matters worse, he kept addressing her as Professor Jacobs. “Staap calling me prafessa,” she barked. “I barely graduated high school.” He and I both slunk offstage in shame, clutching our notes.

  Jacobs was certainly a force to be reckoned with. Without a doubt, she left her mark on this city, as well as others, like New York. And I believe that she is part of the reason why – almost 50 years after she first moved to Toronto – we remain a city where you can work, live well, and where there is hope. I like that simple characterization.

  If you’d like to read/see the full piece by Toronto Life, click here.

  2016.05.05

• Politics and bike lanes

  

  Recently a good friend of mine told me that I had conflicting views in the world of politics.

  She more or less said to me: I know you’re a real estate developer and obviously a capitalist (read: right of center), but you also support what are often considered to be left of center issues. Issues like tearing down the Gardiner Expressway and building more bike lanes.

  I thought this was an interesting comment because, regardless of whether or not you agree with the categorization she was making, the unfortunate reality is that sometimes (oftentimes?) city building issues do become about left vs. right. Bike vs. cars. Urban vs. suburban. And the list goes on.

  My response to her was that I don’t care about what side of the political spectrum an issue supposedly falls on. That’s a distraction. When I think about something, I try and apply rationale thought and facts to the best that I can. 

  For instance, in the case of bike lanes, I have asked myself: would cities be better off if we had more, or less, people cycling? Simple question. And when I think about this and look at some of the numbers, I see a lot of benefits (this is a non-exhaustive list):

  – More people cycling means we’re moving people more efficiently, which you could argue improves urban productivity and overall quality of life. 

  – More people cycling means we will naturally start prioritizing more compact types of urban form, which in itself has a myriad of socioeconomic benefits. 

  – More people cycling means we’re actually taking action to try and fight climate change.

  – And more people cycling means we’re improving health outcomes. Given that public spending on health care is one of the largest government expenditures in OECD countries, I bet you could find measurable financial savings.

  With all of this, I am not naively suggesting that all cars should disappear from our cities and that everyone should only cycle. I think electric vehicles and self-driving vehicles are going to be an important part of the mobility equation in the future. But I am saying that more, not less, cycling strikes me as an obviously positive thing for our cities. 

  On that note…

  Toronto City Council voted today in favor (38-3) of a pilot project that will bring separated bike lanes to Bloor Street. The image at the top of this post is how each Councillor voted. So today, we appear to have not fallen into the divide that my friend was talking about. And that makes me, as well as many others, quite happy.

  Im looking forward to riding #bikesonbloor and shopping on Bloor and hanging out there. I might buy a piano. #topoli

  — Cherise Burda (@CheriseBurda) May 4, 2016

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  I would be curious how all of you feel about this particular issue. And I would also be curious if you find yourself being more issued based rather than aligned across the political spectrum. That’s certainly how I feel these days.

  I bet we could have a great discussion on this topic in the comment section below 🙂

  2016.05.05

• Lisbon creates 24-hour district

  

  About a year ago I wrote a post called, Lisbon is the new Berlin. The timing of the post happened to coincide with Monocle’s first ever Quality of Life Conference, which was held in the city.

  Since then, I’ve been keeping an eye out for all things Lisbon and the city has quickly jumped to the top of my list of places I want to visit. I am obsessed with understanding the triggers that catalyze change within a community and/or city.

  On a related note, Lisbon has recently put in place new regulations to control nightlife in the city. Bars in certain areas must now close at 2am on the weekdays and 3am on the weekends. Outdoor patios must close at midnight. If you have the right kind of soundproofing though, your bar can remain open until 4am. The impetus for these changes was to address nightlife noise complaints – a perennial problem in many cities.

  However, Lisbon has also created a 24-hour district along a supposedly underdeveloped area of the waterfront. This means that bars and clubs in this area will have the option of staying open 24/7. At the same time though, investments are being made (Portuguese article) to transform the area into something more than just a place for drinking and dancing.

  I am noticing a real trend in European cities around using nightlife as a strategic lever to attract talent and revitalize neighborhoods. Oftentimes the knee jerk reaction is to simply focus on the negative externalities associated with nightlife. But there are strategic benefits. Many cities today recognize that.

  Image: Mhx on Flickr

  2016.05.01

• 100 years since Cincinnati tried to build a subway

  

  I can get lost on Google Maps for hours on end. I love looking at maps and I love using Street View to virtually explore cities. This morning I’m honed in on Cincinnati, Ohio (a city I’ve never been to) while I listen to this podcast about their unfinished subway.

  In 1916, the city voted in favor of spending $6 million on a new subway. But it was never finished and so today – 100 years later – it has the dubious distinction of being the largest abandoned subway tunnel in the United States. 

  The podcast I’m listening to is with a fellow by the name of Jake Mecklenborg. He has written a book on the subway’s history and has emerged as the expert on this topic. And it all started with him just throwing up a website.

  One particularly interesting aspect of the subway is how it tied into the city’s flooding problems. At the time, the population density of the constrained downtown was surging and the subway was viewed as a way to stitch together desirable land and relieve some of those urban pressures.

  I’m also very interested in understanding how cities got founded in the locations that they did. As in, who was the person who dropped their bag and said: “yup, this, is the spot.” Somebody had to have made a decision.

  Oftentimes there were specific strategic, economic, and/or environmental reasons for a certain location. And this is something that Jake touches on. In the case of Cincinnati, flooding was again a major determining factor. 

  If you can’t see/listen to the podcast through the embed below, click here.

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  Image: Jonathan Warren via Wikipedia

  2016.04.30

• Project Sidewalk

  One of Alphabet’s subsidiaries is a company by the name of Sidewalk Labs. Some of you, I’m sure, have been following it. The goal of the company is to leverage technology in order to solve some of our biggest urban challenges.

  Initially, they were fairly under the radar, but more recently they’ve become a lot more public with their projects and their mission. Here is a snippet from a recent blog post written by their CEO, Daniel L. Doctoroff: 

  “The world is poised for a fourth urban-tech revolution — an age of connectivity capable of reshaping cities as much as the steam engine, electricity, and automobile have in the past. New technologies will help citizens and elected officials tackle those intractable urban challenges that Larry outlined last summer, but making sure this age imposes fewer social costs than those previous shifts is critical.”

  Earlier this week it was also announced that the company is likely to enter the real estate development business and construct a new city precinct in order to pilot some of their ideas and projects. The initiative is called Project Sidewalk. 

  Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

  “According to people familiar with Sidewalk’s plans, the division of Alphabet is putting the final touches on a proposal to get into the business of developing giant new districts of housing, offices and retail within existing cities.

  The company would seek cities with large swaths of land they want redeveloped—likely economically struggling municipalities grappling with decay—perhaps through a bidding process, the people said. Sidewalk would partner with one or more of those cities to build up the districts, which are envisioned to hold tens of thousands of residents and employees, and to be heavily integrated with technology.”

  When I read this, I immediately thought of the Port Lands area in Toronto. Not because Toronto is decaying – far from it – but because it’s a massive 880 acre site that is both adjacent to downtown and entirely underutilized. I can’t wait to see this area transformed into a thriving waterfront community.

  In any event, if or when Project Sidewalk gets off the ground, it will be very interesting to see what a Google-backed real estate development company looks like.

  2016.04.29

• America needs a new map

  

  Parag Khanna recently published an article in the New York Times calling for a new map for America. 

  Here’s why:

  “The problem is that while the economic reality goes one way, the 50-state model means that federal and state resources are concentrated in a state capital — often a small, isolated city itself — and allocated with little sense of the larger whole. Not only does this keep back our largest cities, but smaller American cities are increasingly cut off from the national agenda, destined to become low-cost immigrant and retirement colonies, or simply to be abandoned.”

  This is something that I’ve been writing about for awhile on this blog. As we continue to transition to an urban-based information economy, it strikes me that, here in North America, we’re going to need to refocus our governance structures around cities. We’re going to need to place our metropolitan regions at the fore if we want to continue competing with rising powers like China – which, by the way, seem to be adopting a megacity model.

  Here’s another snippet from the article:

  “While Detroit’s population has fallen below a million, the Detroit-Windsor region is the largest United States-Canada cross-border area, with nearly six million people (and one of the largest border populations in the world).

  Detroit’s destiny seems almost obvious if we are brave enough to build it: a midpoint of the Chicago-Toronto corridor in an emerging North American Union.”

  I’ve argued for this before and I continue to believe that it makes a lot of sense.

  Image: New York Times

  2016.04.28