Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1097

I am a big fan of avocados, as I’m sure many of you are as well. But why the obsession these days? Consumption is very clearly up. Sure they’re healthy, but what else is driving their celebrity status?

Here’s an excerpt from a recent New Yorker essay called, A Grand Unified Theory of Avocado Toast :

Today, nine out of ten imported avocados in the U.S. are from Mexico.

The change resulted from the North American Free Trade Agreement. Their effects on the consumer avocado market were profound: from the mid-nineties through 2014, the United States’ avocado consumption nearly quadrupled . Average consumption rose from less than two pounds per person per year to about seven. In the nineties, the United States was producing more than eighty per cent of the avocados that it ate. More recently, it has grown fewer than twenty per cent. The twenty-first-century explosion of avocado smoothies, avocado ice cream, avocado life, in other words, is not in your imagination. It reflects a foreign influx of the fruit, mostly made possible by NAFTA.

If you also love avocados and you’re curious as to why avocado toast has become the poster child for Millennial self-indulgence, you may want to read the full article .

When people like Richard Florida talk about today’s “ superstar cities ”, the usual suspects include London and New York for finance, the San Francisco Bay Area for tech, Milan for fashion and design, and so on.

And you can certainly find the data to back up these claims. For instance, if you look at venture capital dollars invested, many of these same cities reappear near the top: San Francisco, San Jose, New York, etc.

One city that doesn’t often appear on these sorts of lists, though, is Seattle. 

However, clearly something special is taking place in the city. For the second year in a row, Seattle has been named the construction crane capital of America . No other American city comes close right now. (However, Toronto is still #1 in North America.)

At the same time, if you think about all of the companies that have come out of Seattle over the years, you start to realize that maybe VC dollars invested isn’t enough to tell the entire entrepreneurial story.

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson once said on his blog that if you look at dollars in and dollars out, Seattle outperforms – by a lot. And that’s very interesting to me. Is this simply the lasting legacy of Microsoft? Or are there other – transferable – lessons to be learned here?

Last night I received an email from a 27 year old woman in Virginia Beach that really made my day. With her permission, I am sharing that email in full here on the blog, but redacting her identity. Here it is:

Brandon,

You don’t know me, but I just wanted to take a moment and say, thank you. I am a 27 year-old woman living and working in Virginia Beach, VA, with a Civil Engineering degree from Virginia Tech. Up until recently, I have been trying to “find myself” in my career with little success. I always had a feeling that I was “meant to do something” with my career. The problem was that I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do. 

Anyway, fast-forward to November 2016, and I decided to start applying to real estate development companies in the area. After all, it seemed like a pretty cool job. I began sending random emails to a few companies to see if they would hire me…. There wasn’t a real position open - I sort of just begged. Through all my random internet searches, I happened to find your blog one day… And to be honest, you have become a great inspiration to me.

I began to love real estate development. Not just normal development, I want to make a difference. I began to feel excited and passionate about a science, a line of work, and an end vision and goal that several people share. I want to build these wonderful, competitive, beautiful, sustainable cities. I want to make our world better and more beautiful one place at a time. I was finally able to find myself through your work, so I thank you. You have helped me to commit to a career switch, be patient with my job hunt, and apply for an MBA program.

Thank you for doing what inspires you because by doing it, you are also inspiring this crazy girl down in Virginia Beach! Keep it up.

I wanted to share this email for two reasons.

One, if you’re a firm in the Virginia Beach area, you should consider meeting her for a coffee. Send me an email and I’ll forward it along to her. It’s always challenging breaking into a new industry.

And two, her email does a great job illustrating how important it is for people to feel fulfilled with their work. People want to make a difference. And some would argue that this desire is even more pronounced in the next generation coming up and entering the workforce.

I feel lucky that I love what I do. And I know that many of my colleagues feel the same way. 

Sometimes my friends in the development business will say to me that it’s hard not to become cynical and jaded over time. You start out wanting to change cities for the better and you think you’re doing the right thing, but then it feels like you’re getting punched in the gut every step of the way trying to do exactly that.

That’s what life will do to you every now and then: It will punch you in the gut. If you want to accomplish great things, you have to take those. But it’s a hell of a lot easier to take them when you’re fulfilled by the work you do. 

Trying to build better cities is pretty damn fulfilling. I am sure that many of you would agree, regardless of what side of the industry you happen to be on.

Photo by Ravali Yan on Unsplash