Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1108

Dylan Reid of Spacing was recently at the International Transport Forum in Leipzig, Germany and has been publishing some interesting posts related to transit. Here is one about what makes transit systems succeed and fail.

I really like the point that we too often think about transit projects as culminating with a big opening, while overlooking the importance of operations. It’s a bit like focusing on the wedding ceremony and forgetting that the ceremony is only really there to (hopefully) mark the beginning of a lifelong union.

One of the reasons why this is important is because, as Reid points out, “fares need to provide a strong and consistent proportion of the agency’s funding.” So you need bums in seats, which means you need to build the right transit in the right locations. In other words, a new subway line through a low density suburb will probably result in an abysmal farebox recovery ratio .

At the same time:

“…fares will rarely cover all of an agency’s costs. Hong Kong’s Kam noted that, to be truly autonomous, an operator needs an additional dedicated, independent source of revenue. This cannot be based on additional transit-related non-fare revenue (e.g. advertising) – such revenue is helpful but never significant. It needs to be an external source. In Hong Kong, it is based on the agency’s extensive property ownership, but in other cities it could be a congestion charge , a dedicated sales or income tax, or other mechanism. Only with such a source can the agency have the independence to make its own choices for reinvestment and improvements.”

This is one of the reasons why I am such a strong supporter of road pricing .

Another point that Reid makes is that transit agencies should always have a consistent pipeline of new projects, rather than erratic periods of expansion. This makes a lot of sense given what it takes to ramp up for a large infrastructure project. But it’s obviously contingent on having sustainable funding sources.

Click here  if you’d like to read the rest of Dylan Reid’s post.

Last summer, photographer Parker Woods spent two weeks walking over 100 miles in Tokyo with a peach-colored (”momo” in Japanese) backdrop and a metal c-stand. He used this accessory to “contextualize his first encounter with Japanese culture.”

In some cases, it functions as you would expect: as a backdrop for the new people that he encountered along his walking journey. 

But in other cases, the backdrop is simply inserted into the urban environment. Sometimes rolled up amongst a pile of metal tubes. And sometimes fully erected in the middle of a busy road.

This is an interesting photography project based in one of my favorite cities in the world, and so I wanted to share it on the blog. All of his photos were shot on Kodak film. It’s also giving me some ideas for my own photos .

If you’d like to buy a copy of the book ($40), you can do that here . There’s a limited run of only 250 copies. If you’d like to read a bit more about the project (and see a few additional photos), you can do that here  on VSCO.

Image: Parker Woods

We often talk about superstar cities such as New York, London and, in the case of tech, San Francisco. But what about the superstar people that drive these economies?

Aaron Renn recently wrote a post called “ The Superstar Gap ”, where he argues that the interior of the U.S. is suffering from a big handicap because of its lack of superstars. Chicago is one example he gives. Very good, but not the best.

He also cites a 2010 analysis by Carl Wohlt that shows the “100 Most Creative People in Business” predominately living in the West and Northeast, compared to the Midwest and South.

This is interesting because – if we assume this gap to be true – it gets me thinking about a number of important questions:

• Is it that the interior isn’t effectively fostering superstar talent?

• How much superstar talent is actually latent and untapped?

• Is it that superstar talent is getting sucked into a select few superstar cities, away from other places? Definitely happening.
  

• How many superstar cities (filled with superstar people) can sustainably exist in today’s world?

Now by definition, superstar talent is going to be a smaller segment of the population – it’s one tail of the bell curve. 

But I do think we should be careful not to assume that the raw talent doesn’t exist in certain cities. People and place are linked, and superstar cities are arguably just empowering new forms of individual superstardom.

If we are to use successful startups as one measure of superstardom, it’s important to keep in mind that they are incredibly fragile in their nascent stages. The right people need to come together. The right funding has to fall into place. And the list goes on. 

Below is an excerpt from a 2006 essay by Paul Graham (Y Combinator) called, Want to start a startup?

Successful startups are almost never started by one person. Usually they begin with a conversation in which someone mentions that something would be a good idea for a company, and his friend says, “Yeah, that is a good idea, let’s try it.” If you’re missing that second person who says “let’s try it,” the startup never happens.

That someone might have been a superstar.