Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1027

The 2018 Winter Olympics start this Friday, February 9 in PyeongChang, South Korea . Unlike the past couple of winter games, which struggled with warm temperatures, this should be a cold one .

The Winter Olympics tend to be less popular than the Summer Olympics, with fewer athletes and countries participating. 207 countries participated in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, but only  88 countries participated in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. A big part of this has to do with the fact that winter sports generally require winter and snow and not every country has those things.

I like the Winter Olympics. And perhaps not surprisingly, my favorite sport is snowboarding. This year I’m really rooting for Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris . If you don’t know who Mark is, watch this short video . He has had a tough time over the years with a number of serious injuries, but he managed to bounce back and qualify for the Olympics. He won bronze in Sochi and is hungry for gold.

The Olympics are always a good reminder that if you want to be the best, you’re going to have to be prepared to work beyond hard and make many many sacrifices in your life. And even then, there are absolutely no guarantees. 

So what’s your favorite Olympic winter sport?

About a year ago, Portland enacted “Inclusionary Housing” policy requiring new apartment buildings of 20 units or more to offer up a portion of the units at below market rents.

Developers are able to select from a few different options and the rents are calculated according to a percentage of the city’s median family income (30-80%). I’m not sure how this policy would apply to new condo buildings.

This is an interesting account by The Portland Mercury of what this policy may be doing to the housing market. I say may because it’s only been a year and there could be other factors at play.

Between 2013 and 2017, Portland typically built between 3,000 and 6,000 new units per year. Since the IH policy went into effect on February 1, 2017, 682 new units have applied for permit. 

About half are coming from one developer who appears to be building the requisite affordable units in exchange for no parking minimums. They are now proposing buildings with zero parking.

Again, in all fairness, it’s only been a year. But already Mayor Ted Wheeler is looking at other incentives to encourage more new construction in the central city. The biggest levers: height and density.

All of this begins to speak to the very real impact of inclusionary zoning on development feasibility .

Photo by Zach Savinar on Unsplash

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.