Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1160

At the end of last year, Buffalo, New York approved the first major overhaul to its zoning code in 63 years old. 

It is officially called the Buffalo Green Code Unified Development Ordinance, but, not surprisingly, most people seem to be just calling it the Buffalo Green Code. Its name should give you clues as to what it is trying to accomplish.

Here’s a snippet from a City Journal article by Aaron M. Renn :

The Green Code is a so-called “form-based code,” encouraging mixed uses. Buffalo will be only the third major city in the U.S. to adopt a citywide form-based code. The goal is to encourage development of buildings in a more traditional, Main Street style.

As an older city, Buffalo is already built like this in many areas. But past zoning choices have had lingering negative consequences. “Sixty years ago planners sought to replace the city with a suburban auto-dominated (dominated, not oriented) model,” says Brendan Mehaffey, Buffalo’s executive director of strategic planning. “Most of the city as built was non-conforming with the existing development. Through urban renewal and other programs, planners sought to replace the city’s built environment block-by-block.”

Perhaps one of the most noteworthy changes being ushered in with the Green Code is the complete elimination of parking minimums . This change makes Buffalo the first city in the United States to remove this requirement on a citywide basis.

The Green Code also dramatically simplifies the current code, taking it down from 1,802 pages to 338 pages .

I haven’t yet gone through the Green Code in detail (you can do that here if you’d like). But already other cities are starting to look to Buffalo as a model for how to rewrite their own zoning codes.

Cadillac is just about to launch a new subscription-based car service in New York City. It’s called “BOOK by Cadillac” and the inspiration for the idea is as follows (taken from this Cool Hunting interview ):

“We believe there is an as-yet untapped space between traditional ownership (leasing, financing, buying) and the rental, ride or car sharing options available today (Car2Go, rental, Zipcar, Uber) — a space where experience is more important than ownership, but a luxury experience is paramount.”

The way it works is that you pay a flat fee of $1,500 per month, which includes repairs & maintenance, insurance, taxes, unlimited mileage, and the ability to swap out your Cadillac vehicle 18 times per year . The idea here is that you can have one car in the city, one car when you drive to the mountains, and one car when you land in LA and are just feeling something a little different. It’s also commitment-free. Cancel any time.

It’s all done through their app and there’s a concierge to take care of every little detail, including moving your stuff (sunglasses, phone charger, and so on) to whatever new car you’re swapping to. My understanding is that you can also make the swapping as carefree as you’d like. Meaning: “Oh look, there’s a new Escalade in my parking spot.”

Here’s their marketing video ( click here if you can’t see it below):

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-2c6BsqRYU?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

Now, $1,500 is not cheap. But the value prop here is effortless luxury. I think it’s interesting to see car companies experimenting with new and different business models. 

My view has always been that the most cost effective way to have a car is to buy a 2-year old model, pay it off, and then drive it for as long as it remains respectable. I am currently in that camp. But even that approach is starting to feel antiquated to me. 

So much is changing in this space. Pretty soon, I don’t believe we’ll be thinking about car ownership in the same way.

Most of us know what déjà vu means. Quite literally, it means: already seen. What you may be less familiar with is the idea of “vuja de.” 

The term was coined by the late comedian George Carlin (above), but it has been appropriated by design and innovation firms such as IDEO , as well as many others. 

Here is one way to describe the difference (taken from a blog post by Andrew Chen):

Deja vu is when you see something new, but feel like you’ve already seen it before.

Vuja de is when you’ve seen something a million times, but see it like it’s the first time.

Why vuja de is valuable is because it can help you and I spot opportunities. If the best ideas are indeed the ones that are non-consensus  (they sound stupid at first), then it pays to see things differently, with fresh eyes.

I also think it’s a valuable concept because – as Andrew explains in his post – we have a natural tendency over time toward becoming more, as opposed to less, closed off to new ideas.

As we gain more life and work experiences, we start to become entrenched in how we view the world. We believe that we know what will work and what will not work. Nobody will rent their home to strangers. Nobody will get out of their car and ride a bike to work. And so on.

But the problem with that thinking is that it leads to consensus, rather than non-consensus, outcomes. And as we’ve discussed before, those aren’t as valuable (or cool, depending on what we’re talking about).

So vuja de is not just a great platform for telling jokes. It is something worth working on in business and in life.

Image: HBO