Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
I’m in Savannah, Georgia right now. See above (iPhone) photo taken from River Street. My dad and I are road tripping from West Palm Beach to Toronto in order to bring his car back to the city. So why not check out a few, new, cities along the way? I have my Fujifilm with me, but I won’t be posting any of those photos until I’m back in Toronto. Happy Canada Day weekend.
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 Vegas, Louisville, Atlanta, and maybe others that I am still missing.
Some of the videos are bad. (I’ll let you make your own judgement calls.) I like the idea behind Atlanta’s video, which is the journey of someone named Georgia physically delivering their bid to Seattle. And Philadelphia’s video made me feel really nostalgic about my time there. Those were some great years.
But my favorite video is Detroit’s video. It feels authentic. The footage is outstanding. And it feels powerful. Though it is probably too long. It was a good reminder that I’m overdue for a visit. So here is Detroit’s video. If you can’t see it below, click over to YouTube.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO4J_PC1b5M&w=560&h=315]
Do you believe that human action has caused and is causing negative outcomes with respect to the environment?
The New York Times published a feature piece this week on the flooding of the US east coast.
Associated with the article is a fantastic infographic that shows all of the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) tide gauges up and down the eastern seaboard. It then zooms in to a few locations and shows mean sea level rise (in inches) since 1950 and the number of days of “nuisance flooding.”
Here’s a sample screenshot:
If you don’t feel like reading the full article, at least check out the infographic. The increase in nuisance flooding for some cities – such as Wilmington, N.C. (shown above) and Annapolis, MD – is astounding.
What’s frustrating about the whole climate change debate is that it remains not only a debate, but an ideological debate. Here’s a quote from the article that stood out for me:
“I’m a Republican, but I also realize, by any objective analysis, the sea level is rising,” said Jason Buelterman, the mayor of tiny Tybee Island, one of the first Georgia communities to adopt a detailed climate plan.
In other words: I’m not supposed to think this way, but I do.
Politics.
As I was browsing Tumblr this morning, I came across this image (linked from Quora):
On the left is portion of Florence. And on the right is a single highway interchange in Atlanta. Both maps are at exactly the same scale.
It’s a stark reminder of how varying land use patterns can be. On the left you have a dense and walkable city, and on the right you have an area that would be entirely inhospitable to pedestrians.
