Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1102

I have Richard Florida’s recent book, The New Urban Crisis, sitting on my bedside table. I’m only about ¼ of the way through it, but I’m really enjoying it. I’ll write more once I’m done.

What I instead want to talk about today is a recent (and related) article that Florida published in CityLab called: Did Land-Use Restrictions Save the Rust Belt? 

In it, he leans on the research of two economists – Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago and Enrico Moretti of the University of California at Berkeley – and makes 3 valuable points.

They are:

It is estimated that land-use restrictions (which limit development / supply) have reduced overall GDP in the U.S. by about 9% or approximately $1.5 trillion per year. It is also estimated that housing supply constraints alone lowered overall growth by more than half between 1964 and 2009.

At the same time, these land-use restrictions may have benefited other regions – such as the Rust Belt – that would have otherwise lost more people and jobs to places like New York and San Francisco. The research found that without these land-use restrictions, employment growth between 1964 and 2009 would have been more than 1,000% higher in New York and almost 700% higher in San Francisco.

The final takeaway is one that we’ve talked about before on this blog. One of the most effective things we can do to counteract geographic inequality is to build great transit; transit that connects both people and land to the most desirable areas of our city.

And with that, Happy Canada Day weekend all.

Photo by João Silas on Unsplash

When I was in graduate school in the U.S., I remember it being a pain having to always sign a 1 year lease. I only wanted 8 months so that I could take off during the summers. Too bad Flip  wasn’t around back then.

Flip is a startup that I just discovered, which is positioning itself as the “easiest way to sublet or get out of your lease.” It’s all about reconciling the conflict between lease and life , which don’t always match up.

The platform is free to listers. So you don’t get charged to post a lease or to flip a lease. Renters get charged a service fee equal to 5% of one month’s rent.

It’s interesting to think about the surge in short-term rentals and platforms such as Flip that are effectively helping to reduce lease terms by way of streamlining the “flipping” process. 

Are millennials ushering in a new era of mobility and transience?

One feature that I think is neat and that I would like to point out is “ Bounties .” The platform allows listers to attach a bounty ($) to any listing. Users are then able to grab a unique URL that can be shared around online. If someone takes over a lease via one of your links, you get paid the bounty. Smart.

In case you’re curious – I certainly was – here’s a ranking of all 50 U.S. states according to how friendly they are to subletters . It also summarizes how to legally sublet. On the friendly side is New York and on the less friendly side is Wyoming.

Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash

A few weeks ago Seth Godin wrote a post on his blog called: What 99% looks like . He used the example of a Turkish vlogger who had posted an interview with him to YouTube that received the following view count, up votes and down votes:

The point he wanted to make was that many of us will instinctively focus on that one number: 76. We will say to ourselves that 76 people hated our video, our work, so much so that they felt compelled to give it a decisive thumbs down.

His message was clear: “Ignore it. Shun the non-believers and ship your work.” 76 people out of 108,605 views is not even 1%. And 76 out of (10,827 + 76) interactions is still not even 1%. You could easily say that this video has a greater than 99% approval rating.

I love this message, because there will always be naysayers, especially if you’re doing something interesting and unique. In fact, having naysayers is probably a good litmus test to make sure that you are indeed doing something interesting and unique.

But here’s the thing. 

The YouTube metrics above make for a rather transparent platform. You can see that the video received 108,605 views and that 10,827 + 76 people felt so strongly about it that they wanted to leave a mark by way of a thumbs up or thumbs down. But most importantly, you can see that way more liked the video than hated it.

But what if it wasn’t clear that over 10,000 people were fans of your work? What if all you saw was how many people hated it? And what if those voices were amplified? That would be pretty discouraging, considering that many of us are already focusing on that number to begin with.

I can think of many instances where the fog is thick and we don’t have full visibility. That’s where it gets even tougher, but more critical, to “shun the non-believers.” There may be people out there who truly love your work and what you’re trying to do. You just may not know it, yet.