Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1076

Earlier this week, Apple let us know that it is now calling its stores “town squares.” Not surprisingly, this elicited more than a few reactions. The Verge called it a “ pretentious farce .” Others called it arrogant. Who is Apple to think that its stores could ever come close to a real town square?

It also raised important questions around the actual “publicness” of the spaces within our cities. Traditionally, town squares have indeed been public. But our cities are now also filled with many privately owned public spaces (POPS). Most of the time you don’t know the difference. Though sometimes you do . 

The reality is that there is a longstanding tradition of private retail-oriented spaces trying to simulate the experience of a town square, and certainly of a gathering space. The creator of the modern mall, Victor Gruen , always thought of his “ garden courts ” as a kind of substitute for traditional urban spaces. This was him trying to nobly urbanize the suburbs.

What is perhaps unique about Apple’s town square nomenclature is that – beyond simply wanting to be a Starbucks-esque “third place” – they seem to be telling us that they want to usurp the public nucleus away from the proverbial “garden court” and place it in their individual stores. 

And the reactions we have seen are because that feels far fetched.

However this plays out, this is a very clear acknowledgement by Apple that in today’s world being a store simply isn’t enough. That’s no longer interesting. Consumers have far easier options at their disposable. You need to give us more of a reason to visit you in your store or, dare I say, your town square.

I just discovered a new video series by TVO called, The Life-Sized City . It’s all about the “anatomy of the modern metropolis.” The first episode – which was released on Sep 13 – is on Medellin and is just under an hour long. I have a feeling that many of you will like this video series.

Whenever I watch videos like this, it makes me think that I should be starting a city building-focused vlog . I am a big fan of this format. I follow a handful of vloggers. And I think it could be a lot of fun. But sometimes you just have to say no .

For those of you who aren’t longtime readers, I would also like to point out that my good friend Alex Feldman wrote a guest post on this blog over 3 years ago following a trip to Medellin. It’s about what cities could learn from Medellin’s extraordinary turnaround. If you missed it, click here .

Social Capital  (Silicon Valley VC firm) recently published an interesting series on (economic) bubbles: what they are, how they form, when they are useful, and so on. It’s worth a read – you can  start here .

Here’s a taste:

“Prices in markets turn out to have two roles: they tell us something about the past, and they influence our actions — and therefore, their own price — in the future. Sometimes, in a big way, this dual role makes a particular asset class — tulip bulbs, railway stock, Canadian real estate, a digital token — become attractive solely because its price is going up. George Soros characterized and mastered this phenomenon, known as Reflexivity: when our views and our actions reinforce each other. If an expensive price means that something is high quality or otherwise attractive, we will tend to buy more of it and drive the price higher, independently of whether or not the thing is any good. It’s true for sunglasses, it’s true for ICOs, and a whole lot more.”

For obvious reasons I couldn’t resist posting this quote. Notwithstanding the shot at Canadian real estate, bubbles are a fascinating topic. They happen time and time again because we are greedy.