Tag: new york

• Is Trump good for Canada?

  Richard Florida and Joshua Gans just published an article in Politico called: Trump Is Making Canada Great Again. The overarching argument is that as the US closes its borders, Canada benefits. The best and brightest from around the world are coming here.

  This fall, international student applications at the University of Toronto were up 70% compared to last year. And numerous companies in Toronto are reporting “steady, double-digit increases” in the number of job applications from Americans.

  This is exactly what I was getting at when I made the pithy prediction that Amazon is going to choose Toronto for HQ2. It’s about access to human capital (though I acknowledge the political reality of selecting a city outside of the US). 

  Perhaps here or here might work for a location.

  Here is an excerpt from the Politico article that starts to speak to the importance of foreign-born workers in the US:

  As of 2013, foreign-born workers in STEM fields—science, technology engineering and math—accounted for nearly a fifth of workers with bachelor’s degrees in the United States, 40 percent of those with master’s degrees and more than half of those with Ph.D.s. In the San Jose metro area, consisting largely of Silicon Valley, immigrants comprise more than 55 percent of adults who hold advanced degrees.

  Here is a chart showing the US and Canadian metros with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents:

  

  And here is a chart showing which metro areas receive the most venture capital dollars (in millions of US dollars):

  

  As to be expected, Toronto, Vancouver and Miami lead in terms of the percentage of foreign-born residents. Though, I would bet that Toronto’s foreign-born population is far more diverse than those of Vancouver and Miami.

  However, when you look at venture capital dollars invested, Toronto is nowhere near the top. Vancouver isn’t even on the list. And I suspect that some of you are surprised to see Miami sitting in between Chicago and Seattle (arguably a city that overperforms in tech relative to VC dollars invested). I was.

  Perhaps Trump will help with this by making Canada great again.

  2017.10.03

• Starchitecture is dead — how OMA thinks about preservation

  

  I somehow stumbled upon this transcript from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), covering a talk that architect Rem Koolhaas did at the school back in, I think, 2014. 

  The title: “Preservation is overtaking us.” It’s all about how his firm OMA thinks about and approaches preservation. 

  The overarching theme is that preservation, for them, has become a kind of refuge from the market forces – which they call the “The ¥€$ Regime” – that currently drive architecture and demand constant novelty. It is refuge from “starchitecture.”

  Here is an excerpt:

  At some point, I don’t know who was responsible, the word, “starchitect” was invented. And we all know what it is: a term of derision. And at some point, it becomes very hard to avoid. I would say that preservation is, for us, a type of refuge from this term. What we are hoping to do is propose a number of strategies in which we are working to undo, or escape, from this label.

  And here is a summary of “OMA’s Preservation Manifesto” taken from the GSAPP transcript:

  1. Starchitecture is dead
  2. New forms are no longer relevant
  3. Preservation is architecture’s saving retreat
  4. Preservation creates relevance without new forms
  5. Preservation is architecture’s formless substitution

  It’s a substantial read, but a fascinating one. In case you don’t get to it (understandable), I would like to leave you with this final excerpt:

  What we started to do was look at preservation in general and look a little bit at the history of preservation. Now, the first law of preservation ever defined was in 1790, just a few years after the French Revolution. That is already an interesting idea, that at the moment in France when the past was basically being prepared for the rubbish dump, the issue of preserving monuments was raised for the first time. Another equally important moment was in 1877, when, in Victorian England, in the most intense moment of civilization, there was the second preservation proposition. If you look at inventions that were taking place between these two moments—cement, the spinning frame, the stethoscope, anesthesia, photography, blueprints, etc.—you suddenly realize that preservation is not the enemy of modernity but actually one of its inventions. That makes perfect sense because clearly the whole idea of modernization raises, whether latently or overtly, the issue of what to keep.

  I like the notion that preservation is one of the inventions of modernity, rather than an enemy of it.

  Photo by Reginar on Unsplash

  2017.09.24

• A generation of architects

  The New York Times just published a piece called “a generation of architects making its mark at dizzying speed.” It’s a current list, albeit not an exhaustive one, of notable architects and their projects. 

  Included on this list is One Spadina, home of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, which was designed by Nader Tehrani and the Boston practice NADAAA.

  Some of the best architecture in the city is being built on this campus.

  One thing you’ll notice about this summary of architects is the emphasis on age. Architecture is a slow process. This is true for buildings in general. So historically it has been the case that architects usually don’t hit their stride until later in their career.

  The youngest architect on the list is Bjarke Ingels at 42. An outlier for sure. He saw tremendous success in his 30s, and even in his 20s with the firm PLOT. I think great storytelling had a lot to do with this.

  Tehrani is 53. And the author rightly points out that Frank Gehry didn’t become Frank Gehry until he renovated his own house at the age of 48.

  2017.09.11

• North America’s second city?

  

  Over the weekend Richard Florida sent out a tweetstorm that compared Toronto and New York City, and made the argument that Toronto’s “incredible diversity, density, and industry mix” is making the city feel a lot more like New York and London compared to any other North American city. 

  He even went so far as to say that, even though it may not be the bigger metro in terms of raw population, Toronto increasingly feels like North America’s second city after NYC. I’m obviously incredibly biased in this discussion, so I would be curious to get your thoughts in the comment section below.

  If you can’t see the embedded tweetstorm below, click here. Regardless, you’ll likely need to click through to see the entire thread.

  1. Just back to Toronto after a week in NYC: Got me thinking about what Trump could mean for US cities.

  — Richard Florida (@Richard_Florida)

  August 5, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  2017.08.09

• International and domestic migration in the US

  In response to President Trump’s proposed immigration bill, Brookings recently analyzed census data from earlier this year to demonstrate the importance of immigration for growth within much of the United States. 

  I’d like to share three tables from their analysis.

  The first two look at international migration grains and domestic migration gains over the last 3 decades (the last decade isn’t quite a decade).

  

  Here you can see that New York, Los Angeles, and Miami (all port cities) have dominated international migration to the US since 1990. But at the same time, international migration has become less geographically concentrated. From 1990-2000 the top 5 cities received almost half of all immigrants moving to the US. More recently, that number has dropped to 34%.

  Domestic migration is different in that it’s a zero sum game. When one US city gains, another US city loses. Here there is a very clear migration trend toward cities in the southwest – arguably because of weather, job growth, cheaper housing, and probably a bunch of other factors.

  If we look at actual international and domestic migration numbers over the last 6 years, the 12 largest metropolitan areas look like this:

  

  The key takeaways here are that 8 of these cities are losing people to domestic migration and only 7 of these cities have a positive net migration number – meaning their population is actually growing.

  What is clear is that the international migration column is a pretty important one if you believe that growth is valuable. 

  If you’re Dallas, Houston or Atlanta, maybe you care a little less about that column. But for most of the other cities, international migration is either the only way you’re growing (look at Miami go) or keeping your population losses in check (see Philadelphia).

  2017.08.06

• Video: Brooklyn Navy Yard

  

  Monocle recently published a short 4 minute video tour of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It covers a bit of the area’s history and the kind of businesses that are flocking to the area today.

  One of the reoccurring themes in the video is a feeling of stability. The local businesses feel secure in their space and some even believe that the area is somehow immune to gentrification.

  Monocle doesn’t allow embedded videos, so you’ll have to click here to watch.

  2017.07.15

• Crane capital of America

  When people like Richard Florida talk about today’s “superstar cities”, the usual suspects include London and New York for finance, the San Francisco Bay Area for tech, Milan for fashion and design, and so on.

  And you can certainly find the data to back up these claims. For instance, if you look at venture capital dollars invested, many of these same cities reappear near the top: San Francisco, San Jose, New York, etc.

  One city that doesn’t often appear on these sorts of lists, though, is Seattle. 

  However, clearly something special is taking place in the city. For the second year in a row, Seattle has been named the construction crane capital of America. No other American city comes close right now. (However, Toronto is still #1 in North America.)

  At the same time, if you think about all of the companies that have come out of Seattle over the years, you start to realize that maybe VC dollars invested isn’t enough to tell the entire entrepreneurial story.

  Venture capitalist Fred Wilson once said on his blog that if you look at dollars in and dollars out, Seattle outperforms – by a lot. And that’s very interesting to me. Is this simply the lasting legacy of Microsoft? Or are there other – transferable – lessons to be learned here?

  2017.07.14

• Am I being too subtle?

  Billionaire Sam Zell has a (relatively) new book out called, Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel.

  I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve added it to my queue. I can, however, tell you that I always enjoyed listening to Zell speak candidly about business and real estate when I was in graduate school and he would come in. He was never one to mince his words.

  He’s making the rounds right now to promote this new book and he recently sat down with William D. Cohan of the New Yorker. Not surprisingly, the Chicago Tribute debacle formed a large part of the conversation – up until Zell got tired of talking about it.

  “That is the L.B.O. that drove this company into bankruptcy.” Zell said, of the Tribune experience, “I made a bet. I thought the bet was reasonable. I underwrote it appropriately. I was wrong.” He lost his entire investment.

  But this misstep did nothing to phase Zell’s contrarian approach to business and life:

  Zell attributes his wealth to a prescription articulated by any number of successful business people: zigging when everyone else is zagging. It’s a replicable formula, he says, and he has little patience for people who complain that it was somehow easier in the good old days, or that the moment for such opportunities has passed. (His earliest successes came from investing in real-estate assets that others shunned.)
  

  He refuses to listen when he’s told he can’t do something. “I spent my whole life listening to people explain to me that I don’t get it,” he says. “I look at the Forbes 400 list, and if I eliminate the people who inherited the money, everybody else went left when conventional wisdom said to go right. How did I do what I did? By not listening to anybody else.”

  It’s the Sam Zell way.

  2017.07.04

• What land-use restrictions are doing to our cities

  

  I have Richard Florida’s recent book, The New Urban Crisis, sitting on my bedside table. I’m only about ¼ of the way through it, but I’m really enjoying it. I’ll write more once I’m done.

  What I instead want to talk about today is a recent (and related) article that Florida published in CityLab called: Did Land-Use Restrictions Save the Rust Belt? 

  In it, he leans on the research of two economists – Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago and Enrico Moretti of the University of California at Berkeley – and makes 3 valuable points.

  They are:

  It is estimated that land-use restrictions (which limit development / supply) have reduced overall GDP in the U.S. by about 9% or approximately $1.5 trillion per year. It is also estimated that housing supply constraints alone lowered overall growth by more than half between 1964 and 2009.

  At the same time, these land-use restrictions may have benefited other regions – such as the Rust Belt – that would have otherwise lost more people and jobs to places like New York and San Francisco. The research found that without these land-use restrictions, employment growth between 1964 and 2009 would have been more than 1,000% higher in New York and almost 700% higher in San Francisco.

  The final takeaway is one that we’ve talked about before on this blog. One of the most effective things we can do to counteract geographic inequality is to build great transit; transit that connects both people and land to the most desirable areas of our city.

  And with that, Happy Canada Day weekend all.

  Photo by João Silas on Unsplash

  2017.06.30

• Video: New York 1911

  

  The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) recently restored and published a “documentary travelogue” of New York City from 1911. 

  It was originally filmed by a Swedish company, called Svenska Biografteatern, that went around the world filming noteworthy places such as Niagara Falls, Paris, Monte Carlo, and Venice.

  

  Not surprisingly, New York City is a vibrant and bustling place at the beginning of the 20th century. But it somehow feels serene. Maybe it’s the soundtrack. It’s also interesting to think that this was filmed only 3 years before World War I broke out.

  

  I particularly enjoyed seeing all of the streetcars (trams) and elevated rail running through the streets.

  Below is a screenshot of a young girl – clearly bored and/or disinterested – being chauffeured down Fifth Avenue in what was almost certainly a fancy convertible at the time.

  

  MoMA doesn’t allow you to embed the video, but you can watch it here through July 14. It’s 9 minutes and, if you’re a city nerd like me, I think you’ll really enjoy it. The street life footage kicks in around the 3 minute mark.

  Screenshot Images: MoMA

  2017.06.20