Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1047

This month is the 50th year anniversary of the Jacques Tati film, Playtime . Initially released in December 1967, Playtime is a French comedy that is often considered to be director Tati’s most notable work. Apparently it was commercially unsuccessful at the time of its release. But it has since become recognized, at least by some , as one of the greatest films ever made.

The film is a satire of modern society. And so it’s also a funny critique on modern architecture and the prevailing ideologies at the time. Watch the trailer below and you’ll very clearly see this relationship: a Frenchman lost in a new, modern Paris. I remember watching one of his earlier movies – Mon Oncle – in one of my undergraduate architecture classes.

If you can’t see the trailer below, click here :

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrYB8hgyq4s&w=560&h=315]

This fall Slate acquired a retail center in Hamilton called Corktown Plaza. It is the block bounded by John Street South, Young Street, Catharine Street South, and Forest Avenue. It is just south of the Hamilton GO Centre in downtown.

It is currently a much used single storey retail plaza with a large surface parking lot facing John Street South. It’s still early days, but the long-term plan is to redevelop it into a mixed-use retail and residential complex.

Before putting pen to paper, the team is hosting a “pre-design community meeting” this Tuesday, December 12, 2017 at 7pm at the Church of Ascension down the street. Address is 64 Forest Avenue (accessible entrance at 258 John Street South).

Here is the invite (embedded tweet ):

Kudos @SlateAssetMgmt for hosting a “pre-design” community meeting before “putting pen to paper” … a best practise in meaningful public engagement pic.twitter.com/w07paBeoyp

— Jason Thorne (@JasonThorne_RPP)

November 30, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The purpose of the meeting is to gather feedback from the community before beginning design. We want to know what’s working today, what’s not working today, and what would be ideal for the future. 

CORE Architects and GSP Group (planning) will be in attendance along with the Slate team. The format will be brief presentations followed by interactive breakout sessions. There will be trace paper on hand so that we can all put pen to paper.

If you live and/or work in the area or are simply interested in the future of Hamilton, please feel free to join us on Tuesday evening. If you can, send a quick email to rsvp@kga-inc.com letting us know you’ll be coming. But just showing up is also perfectly fine.

The World Economic Forum recently posted the below chart showing that 1/5 of all grocery purchases in South Korea are done online. The calculation is e-commerce revenue as a percentage of total fast moving consumer goods revenue in the country.

The explanation they give for this high percentage is that South Korea has some of the fastest and most ubiquitous internet access in the world. 

But as soon as I read this I thought to myself: This can’t be the only reason. When was the last time you really wanted to order groceries online but your internet connection was too slow? 

Also, if you look at all online shopping (not just FMCG), South Korea no longer shows up as such an outlier. So what’s happening with grocery?

Without actually knowing the market, I would imagine that there are companies in South Korea who have simply figured out how to offer a great online grocery shopping experience.

South Korea is also one of the denser countries in the world at about 513 people per km2. That would help with distribution. 

But then again, the Netherlands is also quite dense (414 people per km2). Why are they only at 2.6%? (For comparison, the US is about 33 people per km2.)

If any of you are familiar with the South Korea market I would love to hear from you in the comments. If they really are at 20%, I am surprised more people aren’t talking about this.