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.
For the same reasons that I liked the Interlock in London, I am a big fan of this storefront in Amsterdam by UNStudio. It is contextual, but it also something entirely new. To me, it resembles a triptych of curtains being pulled to the side, which is probably a fitting metaphor for a high fashion street. The developer is Warenar and it looks like the space is still available. So if you’re in the market for a retail storefront on Amsterdam’s PC Hooftstraat, here you are.
Photos by Evabloem
Using data from Turner & Townsend, Curbed recently reported that the most expensive city in the world in which to build is now San Francisco. On average, it costs USD 417 per square foot. San Francisco is followed by New York ($368 psf), London, Zurich, and Hong Kong. New York took the top spot last year, but San Francisco shot up this year because of, you know, tech.
This number was calculated using a blend of six different types of construction, everything from apartment high-rise and prestige office to general hospital and warehouse distribution centers.
Now, I’m not exactly sure what this number includes. But I’m assuming it is only direct construction costs and doesn’t include (contractor) general conditions, land, or any soft costs, which are all significant. Once you add in these other cost inputs, I am sure that you can start to see how things — including the cost of new housing — can quickly escalate.
This is a terrific infill project by Bureau de Change (architect) for HGG London (developer). It’s a five-storey mixed-use development in London’s Fitzrovia neighborhood.
The design ambition was to respect the area’s history, materiality, and proportions, but also create something entirely new. The result is a blue clay (brick) facade that transforms and looks like this:
And it was done by inventing a collection of misshapen blocks — 44 of them to be exact. Over 5,000 blocks were ultimately used for the facade and it was assembled on site using a 1:1 printed template. Each block came with a set of instructions.
There’s something nice about working at this scale and being able to get into this level of detail. It’s 21st century craftsmanship (the entire facade was modeled in 3D before it was built).
If you’d like to learn more about The Interlock, click here. All photos by Gilbert McCarragher.
Foster + Partners has just completed its first residential high-rise in London. It’s a 50 storey building with 299 apartments, called Principal Tower. The tower forms part of a broader mixed-use project — that now houses Amazon UK — called Principal Place. The developers were Concord London and Brookfield Properties.
Here’s a short 11 minute video from Dezeen talking about the project:
Since 2005, LSE Cities (London School of Economics) has been collecting comparative data on how global cities perform in terms of key spatial, socioeconomic, and environmental indicators.
This is their latest data matrix:
To be clear, it is not a ranking of cities. It is intended to help us better understand how different cities around the world are performing.
Depending on how you’re consuming this post, the text may be difficult to read. So here’s what each column represents, moving from left to right:
If you’d prefer to download a full PDF of the chart, click here.
Urban environments can be dense in many different ways. This is a topic that we have discussed on several occasions here on the blog. But this working paper by Solly Angel, Patrick Lamson-Hall, and Zeltia Gonzales Blanco — called The Anatomy of Density — is a more scientific way of looking at it. They have come up with six measurable factors that, when combined, define urban density.
What this means is that cities achieve urban density through different kinds of built form. Hong Kong, for example, gets its density from height, even though only about 4% of its land area is occupied by residential buildings. Dhaka, on the other hand, does it through low building heights and high residential coverage. Homes occupy about 20% of the city’s area. Another dimension is crowding.
But here’s something that may surprise you. Most cities are actually becoming less densely populated. And, despite our best efforts to encourage more sustainable forms of development, sprawl has continued to outpace densification in the vast majority of the urban agglomerations that were studied as part of this working paper. The wealthier we become, the more space we want to consume.
Here’s a graph from The Economist that speaks to this trend:
To download a copy of the working paper, click here.
Image: The Economist
The Standard recently opened up its first international outpost in London. It’s a 266-room hotel housed in a 1974 Brutalist office building overlooking King’s Cross. London-based Orms (architect) was the lead consultant and they did an incredible job both preserving and modernizing the existing building.
All of the existing windows were replaced, but otherwise the Brutalist exterior remains more or less intact.
A tasteful 3 storey addition was placed on top of it, which required threading new steel columns through the existing waffle slabs. There’s a 1st floor transfer slab with concrete columns below it in order to pickup these new loads.
A dedicated (and red) exterior shuttle elevator was also added to the north elevation of the building. This takes people up to the rooftop, which is a signature feature of all Standard Hotels.
Brutalist architecture is experiencing a bit of renaissance right now. We are seeing people lament the demise of our concrete blocks from the 60s and 70s. Perhaps it’s because it’s a style/movement that is finally old enough for people to appreciate it. That’s often how these things work.
The Standard in London is a perfect example of how this history might be both respected and repositioned.
Images via Orms
This week Bloomberg reported that Dubai is facing a “housing disaster” as a result of overbuilding. There’s simply too much supply coming onto the market. About 30,000 units are expected to be completed this year, which the industry believes is about 2x actual demand. As a result, the industry — yes, the development industry — is calling for a 1-2 year pause on all new construction in the city so that the excess units can be absorbed and demand can catch up.
I’m not an expert on the Dubai market. And I’ve only been to the city once. But my sense is that there are relatively few barriers to new supply, especially compared to markets like Toronto and San Francisco. And so it’s not surprising to hear that supply is and has been outstripping demand. According to Bloomberg, the market peaked about 5 years ago.
For the industry to call for a moratorium on new construction it must mean that there’s concern of a prolonged housing slump and perhaps even some sort of systemic collapse. But if the objective is more affordable housing, than you might argue that Dubai has been doing a pretty good job of that. Here is a global city with a “housing crisis” on the opposite end of the spectrum. So what is it that makes Dubai different than, say, London or San Francisco?
Photo by David Rodrigo on Unsplash
This UN report (2018) on urbanization trends is a fascinating way to understand how our world is growing and changing. So today’s post is about some of my takeaways. If you have others, feel free to add them to the comment section below.
But first, some definitions.
The UN report considers 3 ways to measure the size of a city, all of which we have used before on this blog. The first is the “city proper.” That is the current administrative boundary of a city. The second is the “urban agglomeration” area, which is a city’s contiguous built-up area. And the third is the “metropolitan area,” which is the approximate area of economic and social interconnectedness.
Above is what these 3 boundaries might look like for Toronto (which is the example they use in their report). About the only one that isn’t debatable is the “city proper” boundary; but it really doesn’t capture the full extent of a city. Wherever possible, the UN report relies on the city’s urban agglomeration area. They also define a “megacity” as a city of over 10 million people.
The largest city in the world is currently Tokyo. However, from 2018 to 2030 it is expected to decline by almost 900,000 people. Whereas, the city in 2nd position — Delhi — is expected to add more than 10 million inhabitants during this same time period. By 2030, these are expected to be the largest cities in the world:
Most current megacities are located in what the UN refers to as the “Global South.” And 9 out of the 10 cities projected to become megacities by 2030 are located in developing countries. The one exception is London. Though all regions in the world are becoming more urban, the real population growth is happening in Asia and Africa.
Most cities — 59% of cities with 500,000 or more people — are at risk of at least one natural disaster. And 3 megacities — namely Manila, Osaka, and Tokyo — are high risk for 3 or more types of natural disaster.
Going through the report’s data charts, it’s also interesting to note that Toronto is not projected to become a megacity by 2030. However, the Toronto area already represents over 20% of Canada’s entire urban population.
In the United States, Chicago’s urban agglomeration is projected to continuing growing and does come close to megacity status by 2030. The Miami region is similarly expected to grow and is actually right on top of Toronto in terms of population. But the fastest growing regions are, of course, expected to be the city’s that can more easily sprawl (Las Vegas, Phoenix, and so on).
Bogotá, Colombia is already a megacity and is expected to add almost 2 million people by 2030. It currently represents about 26.5% of the country’s entire urban population. São Paulo remains one of the top 10 largest cities in the world and is similarly projected to add over 2 million people in the same time period, but to a much larger base.
In Europe, it’s London, Paris, and Moscow, with the latter two already in possession of megacity status.
Now quantity isn’t everything. Despite not ranking in the top 10 in terms of population, both New York and London are widely considered to be the world’s preeminent global cities. At the same time, we do know that the size of a city does create certain socioeconomic benefits. Urban agglomerations create agglomeration economies.
If you’d like to download a copy of the World’s Cities in 2018 (United Nations), click here.
Charts/Maps: United Nations
Over the weekend, Qantas Airways set a new record with a nonstop ultra long haul flight from New York to Sydney. At a distance of 16,200 kilometers and a duration of 19 and a half hours, this is now the world’s longest flight. Though, this was still a test voyage. It remains to be seen whether this will be a commercially viable route. The company also plans to offer a similar ultra long haul from London.
It’s fascinating to think about the logistics that go into a flight like this. The flight took off with its fuel tanks maxed out at 101 tons. But according to Wired, the loss factor on each additional ton of fuel is about 60% simply because of the additional weight. In other words, most of the incremental fuel to get all the way to Sydney just gets cannibalized by the heavier load. Wow. That doesn’t feel all that sustainable.
Similarly, every ten passengers roughly equates to one ton (200 pounds per person). So there’s a balancing act between reducing weight (optimizing fuel consumption) and maximizing revenue (adding lots of people). There’s also a question of how best to price discriminate across economy, premium economy, and first class.
Initially these ultra long haul flights were imagined to be flying hotels, where people could sleep, workout, and do all sorts of other things while they traveled halfway around the world. But the economics didn’t work. Too much wasted space on non-revenue generating items.
The other interesting thing about these ultra long haul flights is how much work goes into passenger comfort, specifically around our body’s natural rhythms. Angus Whitley of Bloomberg was onboard this maiden voyage and he talks about how the food they served — spiced with things like chili and lime — was designed to fire up your clock when you shouldn’t be sleeping.
And this isn’t new a feature of ultra long hauls. Qantas already employs things like hot chocolate laced with tryptophan in order to help people sleep onboard. I’m not great at sleeping on planes, generally because I don’t fit in the seats very well. But maybe it’s because I’ve been passing on the hot chocolate.
Image: Qantas via Bloomberg
