Tag: location

• Location always matters

  Well this is interesting, yet not surprising: According to RBC’s annual “Home Ownership Poll”, three out of every five respondents (so nearly 60%) said that location is more important than buying a larger home. Now, there’s only so much you can glean from a single survey question, but the overarching sense is that people’s home-buying attitudes are now starting to revert back to pre-pandemic levels.

  Other evidence includes how quickly urban residential rents/prices have bounced back and, in many cases, now exceed their pre-pandemic levels. Below is a chart from the WSJ showing residential net-effective median rent prices in Manhattan. The low came in November 2020 when the median rent price hit $2,743 per month. But today it is well over $3,500, which is the highest it has been in a decade.

  Is this what a pandemic-induced death of central cities looks like? Chart via @WSJ. pic.twitter.com/T4bpRbBAyD

  — Brandon Donnelly (@donnelly_b) March 23, 2022

  Certain aspects of how we will continue to live and work in our cities is admittedly still evolving (see my recent post on office utilization). But part of our pandemic narrative was that location was no longer going to matter, or at least not matter nearly as much. New York City, to give just one example, had died forever. But that was obviously bullshit. And what we are seeing in the residential space is an important leading indicator. Location always matters.

  2022.03.26

• Will autonomous vehicles make location irrelevant?

  I am not convinced that autonomous vehicles will make “location” irrelevant. 

  But I do agree with the following line from this recent Bloomberg article called, A Driverless Future Threatens the Laws of Real Estate.

  “The link between property and transport has been perhaps the most durable in human history.”

  So this remark by David Silver could very well be correct:

  “Real estate might be the industry that is most transformed by autonomous vehicles.”

  Technological advances in mobility have historically brought about decentralization because each advance – from streetcars to the automobile – made it reasonable to travel further distances.

  Of course, autonomous vehicles are also expected to free up our time and focus while in transit – although trains do that for us today albeit with that pesky last mile problem.

  But just like the internet in the late 90′s didn’t make location irrelevant (the opposite appears to have happened), I am similarly unconvinced when it comes to autonomous vehicles. What we consider a desirable location may simply shift.

  So this is not to say that the won’t see profound change in our cities. We will. Which is why we’re all trying to get ahead of it.

  2018.02.06

• A new chapter

  

  St. Lawrence by Ralph Sobanski on 500px

  I have an announcement to make on Architect This City today.

  Next week I’m joining the development team at CAPREIT (TSE: CAR.UN) here in Toronto. CAPREIT is one of Canada’s largest residential landlords. They are a growth-oriented real estate investment trust with over 41,839 residential units in major urban centers across both Canada and Ireland.

  They also happen to be headquartered in the St. Lawrence Market area, which means I now live and work in the same neighborhood. As we discussed here, location matters a lot.

  So here’s to a new chapter. I’m looking forward to diving into the multi-family business. Change is good.

  2015.05.04

• How does your city address its streets — literally?

  

  Depending on where you live, street numbering may not be something you’ve given a lot of thought to. In Canada, and in many other places in the world, the convention is usually to start on one end of the street and count up – with even numbers on one side and odd numbers on the other.

  In many cities in the US, they’re even more rational. The streets themselves are numbered and the addresses indicate location. For example in Philadelphia, where I used to live, if you were going to let’s say 1750 Walnut Street, you would know that it’s between the cross streets of 17th Street and 18th Street. It’s a kind of hyper-rational approach, which lets you know precisely the number of blocks you need to go to get to your destination.

  But not all countries and cities are this rational.

  According to this Economist article – which a friend of mine forwarded me over the weekend – Costa Rica actually had no street numbering system until about 2012. Which means that directions were all based on landmarks: “100 metres south of the McDonald’s.” It seems almost hard to believe. But I guess that’s why ¼ of all mail was getting lost.

  Of course, there are also lots of variations in between these two extremes.

  Japan numbers its buildings, but they’re often clustered together in blocks and have no particular order or logic to them. Brasilia (Brazil) also assigns numbers based on sectors, quadrants, and blocks. And in Ireland, where I also used to live, they actually never adopted postal/zip codes. They’re one of the few developed countries in the world not to do that – though it’s coming next year.

  If your city or country has a unique numbering system or you’ve come across one in your travels, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.

  There are obviously practical reasons to adopt an easy to understand numbering system. People need to be able to figure out where they’re going. But I would also imagine that there are spatial implications to the way you number and the way you organize your city.

  Image: Flickr

  2014.09.29