This could be a good idea: New York City Mayor Eric Adams today appointed Ya-Ting Liu as the city’s first-ever chief public realm officer, delivering on a key promise from his State of the City address. In this newly created role, Liu will coordinate across city… Read More
I haven’t seen this sort of data before and it’s an interesting way of looking at job access, transit connectivity, and overall built form: The above is a table from New Geography (using data from the University of Minnesota). And what it shows is how… Read More
Property rights, whether for real world things or for digital things, are the foundation of developed economies. Because if you don’t feel like your property is going to be safe and secure, why would you bother investing and trying to accumulate assets? Above is a… Read More
Wired published a great article last week talking about “the 10,000 faces that launched an NFT revolution.” What they are of course talking about are the CryptoPunk NFTs that I think most people would agree are one of the “OGs” of NFT art. Initially minted… Read More
People move to cities for a whole host of reasons, whether it be for more money, more affordable housing, and/or better weather. The fastest growing cities in the US, for example, tend to be in the south where it’s warmer and where housing supply is… Read More
As I am sure you have all heard, there’s a lot of debate in New York right now (city and state) about whether they should reject Amazon’s decision to open up a new headquarters in Queens. Urbanist Richard Florida has been arguing that one of… Read More
So I was wrong. Amazon didn’t pick Toronto for HQ2. It instead picked Crystal City, Virginia (Washington) and Long Island City, NY (New York City). More on that, here, in the NY Times. Confession: My prognostication was at least partially about trying to create a… Read More
As part of the Amazon HQ2 bid process, a number of cities produced videos. I only discovered them today and so maybe some of you also missed them when they were released last fall. There are videos from Detroit, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las… Read More
Dan Doctoroff, the CEO of Sidewalk Labs (and the former deputy mayor of New York City), was recently interviewed by BNN Bloomberg about the company’s plans and ambitions for Quayside here in Toronto. He talks about the project; their interest in timber construction; how the… Read More
I spent this evening reading about Opportunity Zones, or “O-zones”, in the United States. For a census tract to become an O-zone, it has to have a poverty rate of 20% or higher, or the median household income has to be less than 80% of the… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 