Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1078

This morning I woke up and decided that I could go for a bagel with lox and cream cheese. I figured, it’s the weekend, I’m going to treat myself. So I walked across the street to St. Urbain Bagel Bakery (see above photo).

My Montreal friends reading this are probably thinking that this is no substitute for a Fairmount or St-Viateur bagel. But I enjoy St. Urbain. They are my go-to place for breakfast in the market .

What I really value, though, is the ability to walk across the street and grab a bagel for breakfast. It’s a pretty simple action. Nothing complicated about it. 

But in our world of constant traffic jams, cars that should soon drive themselves, and near-instantaneous online delivery, it can be easy to forget that there’s still something really nice about just walking down the street in the morning and saying hello to a human.

I feel lucky that my neighborhood allows me do this. Not all do.

We know that educational attainment matters a great deal for the economic success of our cities. In fact, by some measures, it is the single most important factor.

City Observatory found that 60% of the variation in per capita income across large U.S. metro areas could be explained simply by the percentage of the population with a 4-year college degree.

So education matters a lot.

Many of you have probably seen this entertaining TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson called: Do schools kill creativity? It has almost 47 million views at this point. 

Well, he was recently interviewed by Ingrid Peritz of the Globe and Mail and I have to share the following quote, because I think it’s terrific (particularly the part in bold):

“We need to recognize that children have a huge range of natural abilities and they all have them differently. Our education systems are designed to focus on a small band of those. If you have a narrow conception of ability, you end up with a very big conception of disability or inability.”

More people with a college degree seems to be a pretty good thing. But the solution doesn’t start there. Logically, it starts much earlier – with children. 

All of this matters not just because people with a degree should, on average, make more money and have a higher quality of life. 

But because it’s heartbreaking to think that some young child with incredible talents might be being mislabeled as inept simply because we have a system that is, well, inept.

I recommend you read the interview with Ken .

Photo by Christian Fregnan on Unsplash

“Now the trick is that we gotta look like we don’t need this shit and they give us the shit for free.“ - Mike Peters

This is a line from one of my favorite movies, Swingers . Short video clip here . Mikey and Trent are in a Las Vegas casino trying to play it cool. They’re looking to make a scene at a table and Mikey throws out this gem of a line. He knows that people want what they can’t have and that confidence matters.

I was reminded of this line today after Amazon announced its HQ2 Request for Proposal  (full RFP document here ) and every city, from Chicago and Toronto to Philadelphia and Dallas, started swooning over the prospect of housing Amazon’s second headquarters in North America. 

But to be clear, I do not think this is a bad idea. I actually think Amazon HQ2 is an incredible city building opportunity that would generate countless positive externalities for the selected city. I’m thrilled that Mayor John Tory will be personally “ leading the charge ” with respect to Toronto’s response.

Over $5 billion in construction and as many as 50,000 employees making on average over $100,000 per year. Amazon is looking for about 500,000 sf of space in phase 1 (2019) and up to 8,000,000 sf in total. Based on the RFP, they seem to be pegging their capital investment at somewhere around $600 per square foot.

If I’m being as objective as possible, I honestly believe that Toronto is the city to beat in his competition. I think it will come down to access to talent. Human capital is the lifeblood of a company and Trump’s immigration policies simply put U.S. cities at a disadvantage in this regard.

Of course, Toronto is also awesome. So that’s my prediction: Amazon HQ2, Toronto.