Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1064

I have been traveling since the weekend and so I am behind on my reading. One of the benefits of writing this blog every day is that I am forced to read as much as I can. I have to be a sponge.

Right now, I am still reeling in excitement over the  Sidewalk Toronto  announcement and getting caught up on that reading. 

This week Sidewalk Labs published the entire vision section of their RFP response to Waterfront Toronto. This is the response that won them the Quayside partnership . It’s 196 pages and can be downloaded here .

I’m still making my way through the package, which I am obviously going to do, but I thought this was a great diagram:

As is stated in their RFP response, inclement weather affects pedestrians and cyclists more than drivers. Toronto’s most notable response has been our PATH system, which pulls both people and retail below grade, away from the elements.

But Sidewalk’s research suggests that with the right wind, sun, and precipitation strategies, they may be able to 2x the number of comfortable outside hours per year here in Toronto. That’s what the above diagram shows.

Of course, there is so much more in their RFP response. But I need more time to digest it all. I’ll be sure to report back to all of you once I have done that. If you don’t feel like going through all 196 pages yourself, you can watch this 4 minute YouTube video instead.

Daniel Doctoroff (chairman and CEO of Sidewalk Labs and former deputy mayor of New York City) and Eric Schmidt (executive chairman of Alphabet and former CEO of Google) recently contributed a piece to the Globe and Mail about “ why Toronto is the ideal place to build a neighborhood of the future .” 

It’s about the partnership they working on with Waterfront Toronto. I wrote about that announcement, here .

Here is an excerpt from the Globe article:

“The eastern waterfront will be a place where residents, companies, startups and local organizations can advance new ideas for improving city life. It’s where a self-driving test shuttle will take its first steps toward becoming a next-generation transit system that’s cheaper, safer and more convenient than private car-ownership. It’s where new insights into advanced construction methods will start to reveal a path toward more affordable housing development. It’s where explorations into renewable energy and sustainable building designs will show promise toward becoming a climate-positive blueprint for cities around the world.”

These are some of the first details that I have heard about their vision for Toronto’s eastern waterfront. 

Some of you are probably worried – after reading the above excerpt – that by focusing on self-driving vehicles, we are setting ourselves up to repeat our previous mistakes. But if self-driving vehicles are destined to become a reality (and it certainly feels that way), it is critical that we understand their impact and how they might best dovetail with the public transit systems we already have in place.

I am thrilled that all of this will be happening right here on our doorstep.

Photo by Brxxto on Unsplash

Below is a chart from Benedict Evans comparing annual revenue from the Wintel era (Microsoft + Intel) to the current GAFA era (Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon). 

His argument is that, today, “ the scale of tech winners ” is about 10x what it was during the previous cycle.

And here is a chart, from that  same post , showing how the internet ate print ads when it comes to global revenue:

A lot of this has to do with the unprecedented growth of smartphones and the sheer number of people who came and are coming online. Mobile is 10x the PC market.

But the other interesting narrative from the post is the argument that these companies (GAFA) have learned from previous generations just how aggressive you need to be to survive.

The shift to mobile posed a structural threat to Facebook. At the time of its IPO, there were serious doubts as to whether the company would be able to pull off this transition.

Which is why the founder went out and spent 10% of the company to acquire companies that would help with this transition and ensure its survival. That seems to have worked.

In the words of Andrew Grove : “Only the paranoid survive.“ And in today’s tech world, the rewards for surviving are that much bigger.