Tag: financial times

• Berlin approves rent freeze on existing apartment buildings

  Berlin just approved a five year “rent freeze” on apartments in the German capital. The rent caps will be implemented on January 1, 2020, but will apply retroactively to all rental agreements from June 18, 2019 onward (which is when the decision was made). It is estimated that this new law will apply to some 1.5 million apartments.

  The move is in response to rapidly rising apartment rents, which grew about 12% in 2017 alone. So I can appreciate where this is coming from.

  From what I have read, it will not apply to new construction, which is the first thing I checked when I saw the decision. That would have almost certainly choked off any new apartment construction in the city. With a capped top line, it wouldn’t take long for costs to increase and make new rental construction infeasible.

  That said, a similar squeeze is liable to happen for existing buildings. It is one thing to cap rents (revenue), but what about utility, maintenance, labor, and other operating costs (expenses)? As costs rise and operating margins tighten, it can become exceedingly difficult to reinvest in, or even maintain, an apartment building.

  For more on the announcement, here’s an article from FT.

  2019.06.20

• Apple now owns 7,376 acres of land

  In 2011, Apple owned 584 acres of land.

  As of this year, and according to the Financial Times, the company now owns about 7,376 acres. 

  

  Apple uses its “facilities and land for corporate functions, R&D and data centres.” The latter would include server farms for its various online services, such as iMessage, Apple Music, and the App Store.

  It can be easy to think of “the cloud” and the online services we use every day as existing only in some ethereal world up in the sky or in a distant land.

  But the reality is that these services have very real physical space requirements. The above chart begins to speak to that.

  2018.11.10

• Battle of the Bungehuis

  

  This past July, Soho House Amsterdam opened up in the storied Bungehuis building. Not really news, other than the fact that FT just published this article talking about the building’s history and some of the project’s hurdles, which I of course found interesting.

  Completed in 1934, the Bungehuis originally served as the offices for a prominent trading company. The architect was ADN van Gendt. When he died during the building’s construction, Willem Jacob Klok took over.

  Also noteworthy about the building’s construction is that, according to Wikipedia, twenty houses had to be demolished in order for it to be constructed.

  This underscores a point that I have made before on the blog. Cities are not static. Most of us probably look at the Bungehuis and consider it to be quite a handsome piece of architecture. Some of us may even go so far as to say that we don’t make buildings like they used to.

  Soho House is on record saying that they were “not very budget-conscious” during the renovation because of the sense of responsibility that they felt around the building and its history.

  

  But I think it’s important to note that this building was initially built for a for-profit company and things had to be demolished in order for it to come to fruition. 

  I can’t say for sure whether this development was opposed in the 1930s, but it may have been. Cities and buildings have a way of ingratiating themselves over time.

  In any event, starting in the 1970s, the building became home to the arts faculty at the University of Amsterdam. And as recent as 2015, it became home to the Bungehuis occupations – a protest occupation started by students and staff of the University who were opposed to a slew of academic cuts.

  

  Then in a state of poor repair, the building was ultimately sold to Aedes Real Estate, who now leases it to the Soho House Group for their private club and 79 room hotel. Above is a picture of the club’s rooftop pool and lounge.

  The big hurdle, or at least one of them, was the fact that Amsterdam currently has a moratorium on new hotels – as a way to try and mitigate “overtourism” – unless it can be demonstrated that it will represent “an extraordinary addition to the existing stock.”

  Since Soho House Amsterdam opened in July, I guess we know the answer to that test. But it sounds like it may have been a battle. That wouldn’t be a first for this building.

  Images: Soho House Group

  2018.10.09

• Thoughts on labor, and the end of summer

  

  Well, just like that, the unofficial end of summer. Labor Day weekend. But I agree with Shawn Micallef: “Defy the crowd and keep enjoying summer.” There are still weeks of it left.

  But given that it is Labor Day weekend, here are two things to think about. 

  The first is a Financial Times article by Lawrence Summers where he argues that America needs unions more than ever and that, indeed, the central issue of American politics today is the “economic security of the middle class.”

  Here is an excerpt that speaks to declining bargaining power on the part of labor:

  “But I suspect the most important factor explaining what is happening is that the bargaining power of employers has increased and that of workers has decreased. Bargaining power depends on alternative options. Technology has given employers more scope for replacing Americans with foreign workers, or with technology, or by drawing on the gig economy. So their leverage to hold down wages has increased.”

  It’s also worth mentioning that only about 6.4% of private sector workers in the U.S. are in a union today. This is a decline of almost two-thirds since the 1970s and is a good segue into the second thought of this post.

  Two years ago Fred Wilson wrote a post on his blog (which he reblogged today) where he argued that “labor needs a mechanism to obtain market power as a counterbalance to the excesses of markets and capitalism.” 

  But, that this mechanism needs a refresh. He calls it Union 2.0.

  “However, like all bureaucratic institutions, the “Union” mechanism appears anachronistic sitting here in the second decade of the 21st century. We are witnessing the sustained unwinding of 19th and 20th century institutions that were built at a time when transaction and communications costs were high and the overhead of bureaucracy and institutional inertia were costs that were unavoidable.”

  This makes perfect sense to me. 

  At the same time, we can’t forget – and this is how Summers ends his article – that, today, “the most valuable companies are the Apples and the Amazons rather than the General Motors and the General Electrics.”

  That tells me that what may have worked in the past will likely not work in the future.

  Photo by Jonas Viljoen on Unsplash

  2017.09.04

• New ideas need old buildings

  In reading a recent Financial Times article called, Are creative people the key to city regeneration?, I was reminded of a famous line from the late urbanist Jane Jacobs: “New ideas need old buildings.” What she meant by that is the following:

  Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them…. for really new ideas of any kind—no matter how ultimately profitable or otherwise successful some of them might prove to be—there is no leeway for such chancy trial, error and experimentation in the high-overhead economy of new construction. Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.

  And what she was effectively getting at is that we live in a world obsessed with historical data and precedence. To use the words of business thinker Roger Martin: “The enemy of innovation is the phrase ‘prove it.’” Because, if it’s never been done before, how can you prove it? You can certainly imagine it. But you can’t prove it.

  If you’re in the business of building buildings, convincing your lender to give you the money to build something that’s never been done before, is an almost impossible sell. That’s not the way it works. Which is why Jane Jacobs famously said that “new ideas need old buildings.”

  We’ve seen this story play out in countless cities around the world. The creatives move into an scuzzy neighborhood, make it cool and then investment follows. The neighborhood has been proven. But for this cycle to continue, we need a continuous stock of derelict buildings and undesirable neighborhoods, or at least areas that offer the same kind of affordability and flexibility to creative entrepreneurs.

  Often these circumstances have been the result of failure. The proven ideas that got the buildings built in the first place became no longer relevant. And so the buildings were left to expire. But in many global cities, these kinds of areas are an endangered specifies. However, it’s in our best interest to make sure that we don’t lose our creativity alongside them.

  2014.05.22