Tag: urban

• Why traffic fatalities are lower in Canada than in the US

  

  We’ve talked about this before. If you live in New York City, you’re probably about a third as likely to die from a transportation-related accident as compared to the average American. And if you live in Paris, you’re probably about a third as likely to die from a transportation-related accident as compared to the average New Yorker.

  These stats might feel a bit intuitive to you. Both New York and Paris are big and dense metros with high public transit ridership. And that usually translates into less car accidents. As for the divide between these two cities, Paris is in Europe. It’s old. Most of its streets were built before the car had been invented. And all of these things are generally good for pedestrians. Makes sense.

  But David Zipper asked a good question today: So what’s going on with Canada? Canada is not in Europe (though some might argue that it sits culturally somewhere between the US and Europe). It’s not that old. And it generally has a car-oriented landscape just like the US. So why is it that in 2020, Americans were 2.5x more likely than Canadians to die in a car crash? The trend lines are also diverging between these two countries. Between 2010 to 2020, US road deaths increased 19% on a per capita basis, whereas Canada’s rate declined by about the same rate, according to David.

  Ultimately, we are probably going to need Malcolm Gladwell to write a book about this so that we can really figure out what’s going on. But in the interim, David does propose a few possible explanations ranging from Canadians buying slightly smaller vehicles to Canadians being slightly more law-abiding than Americans and so less likely to run people over. But one of the most persuasive explanations for me is that maybe our urban landscapes aren’t actually the same.

  More than a third of Canadians live in our three biggest cities: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. And this number would be even higher if you looked at the full urban catchment areas of each. Either way, this is a significantly higher concentration than in the US, where about 13% of Americans live in the metro areas of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

  Part of this difference is because the US has almost 9x more people and has many more big cities to choose from. But it doesn’t change the fact that, despite our reputed love for things like forests and beavers, Canadians are actually quite urban. And as we have discovered, that’s a good thing for pedestrians.

  Photo by Jamshed Khedri on Unsplash

  2022.07.01

• 🧢 Burger Joint

  

  Le Marais, Paris

  2021.09.26

• The urban spectacle

  

  The term flâneur is a French noun that more or less translates into lounger or saunterer. Its origins date back to probably the 16th century, but it was really during the 19th century that it was imbued with its new modern associations. A flâneur is a person about town, a person of leisure, and a kind of urban explorer. Their goal is to take in city life.

  In the middle of Haussmann’s overhaul of Paris, the flâneur emerged as an important literary and artistic figure in the new modern metropolis. They showed up everywhere from poems to Impressionist paintings. The flaneur was both a spectator, as well as an urban detective of sorts, responsible for hanging out and surveying the changing nature of city life.

  Being a modern-day flâneur is one of my favorite things to do. I love to do it when I’m traveling, but I also love to do it when I’m at home. Always with a camera. (The last year has been particularly helpful at encouraging aimless walks outside.)

  The flâneur is also a reminder that city life is indeed a kind of spectacle. Sometimes we walk around just to be seen and sometimes we walk around just to see others. Presumably, it is one of the reasons why many cafes in Paris arrange their seating so that you face outward toward the street. That’s the important view.

  When the flâneur figure was coming into its own, Paris was going through a profound transformation. And it was unsettling to many. These urban detectives were grappling with modernity and trying to make sense of where city life was heading.

  Though the causes are very different, we are similarly living through a period of adjustment. What will our cities be like in the the post-COVID world? That is, of course, the question. But we shouldn’t forget that our desire for urban spectacles is deeply entrenched. And I am certain that the spectacles will return much faster than most people think.

  This weekend, I set out with a couple of friends to be flâneurs. We came with cameras and drones and with the goal of documenting construction and real estate activity in a chosen meetup spot. Everything was then posted to a shared Twitter account (@unlyst). We’d like to make this a habit. So if any of you would like to join our next meetup, drop me a note @donnelly_b.

  Photo by Latrach Med Jamil on Unsplash

  2021.04.24

• The views from Capital Point

  

  

  These are two photos taken from the roof of our Capital Point project (office strata) in Burnaby, BC. They represent the views from about 19 storeys up. In the first photo you can see downtown Vancouver and the mountains that surround it. And in the second photo you can see the Metrotown town center (second largest in the region) and the SkyTrain station that services it. It’s certainly hard to beat British Columbia on a beautiful sunny day.

  2021.03.29

• Why urban density is good for innovation

  One of the reasons why I remain so bullish on cities is because we know that new ideas disproportionately come from cities (typically big and dense ones). Matt Clancy does an excellent job of explaining this in a recent post. In it, he cites a number of studies that suggest density is pretty good. It’s good for not only increasing innovation, but also for increasing the diversity of innovation.

  One of the studies found that, all else being equal, doubling the number of jobs per square mile resulted in 20% more patents per capita. Matt argues that the reason for this is that density allows us to meet and collaborate with new people. With this is mind, what do you think that working from home (which is the opposite of job density) might do to innovation/patents?

  Another one of the studies that Matt cites in his article deals with the correlation between patents and street grids. Denser street networks seem to have a marginally positive relationship with innovation.

  But Matt surmises that this may not be because it means we’re all serendipitously bumping into each other all over the place; instead a denser street network is likely symptomatic of other things — namely an increase in “third places.” Because if you consider which census blocks have a concentration of restaurants, cafes, and bars, the number of patents then goes up meaningfully.

  As further evidence of this, Matt cites a fascinating paper from 2019 which looked at the effects of early 20th century prohibition on patents. Turns out that this is a pretty good experiment, because you can examine the impacts of prohibition, as well as compare counties that were already dry (i.e. unaffected by prohibition) against counties that were wet prior to prohibition.

  What the study found was that (1) prior to prohibition wet counties were producing more patents per capita (where they bigger and denser?) and (2) wet counties saw a meaningful drop in patents right after prohibition. Previously dry counties went unchanged in terms of innovation.

  If you’re skeptical of the relationship between bars and innovation, I would encourage you to check out Matt’s full post. But know that there is overwhelming research to suggest that new ideas tend to flourish in the big and dense places that we call cities.

  2021.02.22

• Rightsizing in Kits Point

  

  Architect Michael Green’s new house in Kits Point, Vancouver was recently featured in the Globe and Mail. He and his family went from a 3,500 square foot home in the suburbs to a 1,500 square foot semi-detached home in the city, close to downtown. The house is simple, sparsely decorated, and about 13-feet wide.

  Here’s why he decided to do it: “I didn’t want to have to commute by car any more,” he says. “I wanted to be able to bike everywhere. I also wanted my kids to be able to bike everywhere. I wanted them to develop a sense of freedom, to have mobility, something too many kids don’t get these days.”

  As we all know, there is typically a very real trade-off in cities between space and location. The further you move out from the core (a generalization), the more affordable space usually comes. But at the same time, your transportation costs also increase — both directly and indirectly if you factor your time and your quality of life.

  Depending on how you value each of these items, you might be inclined to pursue more space or pursue more reasonable transportation costs. A 2,000 square foot reduction in space might seem like a lot. But if you’re heavily weighted toward freedom and mobility, as Green clearly is, it could be a perfectly rational decision.

  Photo: Ema Peter via the Globe and Mail

  2020.02.19

• Look what fits in a parking lot

  Brent Toderian likes to start Twitter hashtags that revolve around city building. One of his most recent is #LookWhatFitsInAParkingLot. For this one, he asked the Twittersphere to consider the things we love in cities that might fit inside a parking lot.

  Here is one of the best responses — Dodger Stadium edition:

  https://twitter.com/pw3n/status/1176349879154556931?s=20

  Venice, Amsterdam, and Shibuya (Tokyo) were all overlaid — at the same scale — on the surface parking surrounding Dodger Stadium. There are about 16,000 parking spaces, which actually take up more land than the stadium itself.

  To be fair, I bet if you overlaid parts of Los Angeles on this same parking, it would look similarly astounding. But that shouldn’t change what you take away from this post: parking is very land consumptive.

  2019.10.12

• Solving the rubik’s cube

  

  Developing a building can often feel like you’re trying to solve a rubik’s cube. Among other things, you have to manage a myriad of different stakeholders, all of which — naturally — operate in their own self-interest. There’s the city, community, politicians, various agencies, consultants, tenants, purchasers, lenders, investors, the market at large (of which you really have no control of), and many others. Oftentimes you even have stakeholders whose interests are mutually exclusive. Indeed, the things that they want can sometimes be at odds with each other. Your job is to figure out a solution that satisfies as many of these interests as possible.

  To give you an example, let’s say that you’ve been asked to introduce a stepback into your building in order to break up the elevation. From an urban design standpoint, this may make perfect sense. Hello, datum line. But now your construction costs just went up. You have to transfer your mechanical lines, insulate the roof, introduce new bulkheads, and, for the purposes of this example, let’s say you now need to introduce a structural transfer. This is big cost item that you hadn’t accounted for. And because you just reduced the height of the building to satisfy another stakeholder, you don’t have the excess clear height to accommodate the additional depth required by this new structural element. There is, of course, always a solution. But usually something will need to give.

  At the same time, this raises some interesting philosophical questions. What’s more important in this example? The urban design move or keeping construction costs low so that the building can be delivered more affordably? The cynics will argue that this is a moot point because developers will always profit maximize. But I would encourage you to check out some of my past posts, such as “Cost-plus pricing” and “The impact of inclusionary zoning on development feasibility.” This problem solving dynamic is one of the things that makes development so challenging. But it is also one of the things that makes it incredibly rewarding.

  Photo by Ivan Bandura on Unsplash

  2019.09.14

• Art vs. transit

  This September 25, 2019, the Bronx Museum of the Arts will be opening up a new exhibition called, Henry Chalfant: Art vs. Transit, 1977-1987. Henry is a renowned photographer who is most known for his work on graffiti, breakdance, and overall street culture. This exhibition is about all of this, but there’s a particular focus on the subway car art that was once ubiquitous in New York City.

  There’s also a Kickstarter campaign if you’d like to support this exhibition. What struck me as I watched the campaign video, was that the “urban street culture” of this era doesn’t seem to exist in quite the same way today (or maybe I’m missing it). In the video, Henry talks about things like the birth of hip hop, which he documented outside, on the street.

  We shouldn’t forget that New York was also a scary place at this time. Removing the subway art that Henry fastidiously documented was one of the ways in which the city is thought to have broken its patterns of crime. But at the same time, there’s something really special about new ideas forming out in the public realm.

  It’s also a uniquely urban phenomenon.

  2019.08.30

• How Cubans transformed Miami into a global city

  

  I have a large, and growing, stack of books sitting beside my bed. It is a symptom of my interest in reading exceeding my actual capacity to read, given all the other things I’m doing. However, summer is a good time to get caught up and over the long weekend I did finish reading, The Global Edge: Miami in the Twenty-First Century. It was great, and so now I can confidently recommend it to all of you.

  The most interesting storyline for me was the leading role that “pre-Mariel” Cubans (more on this below) played in transforming Miami from a winter destination to an emerging global city. According to 2015 figures, the City of Miami’s population is 70% Hispanic, of which 34% are Cuban. About 70% of the city’s population speaks Spanish at home. And only about 11.9% of the population is white (non-Hispanic).

  But the bit that really intrigued me was the distinction that Alejandro Portes and Aerial C. Armony make between the “pre-Mariel” Cubans who arrived in the 1960s and 1970s — many of whom became successful entrepreneurs — and the “Marielitos” who arrived in the 1980s onward. This latter group has, on average, not seen the same kind of financial successes as its predecessors.

  The other thing that I think many of you will appreciate is that the authors recognize that all urban phenomena are inherently spatial. And so almost everything they discuss is described in terms of its physical manifestation within the city. Perhaps the most stark is the region’s growing inequality. Wealth along the water; poverty inland.

  Here’s some more information on the book if you’re interested.

  Photo by Alejandro Luengo on Unsplash

  2019.07.02