Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1178

The world-renowned design firm IDEO is known for hiring people described as being “t-shaped.” Here’s a quote from an interview with CEO Tim Brown explaining what that means:

“T-shaped people have two kinds of characteristics, hence the use of the letter “T” to describe them. The vertical stroke of the “T” is a depth of skill that allows them to contribute to the creative process. That can be from any number of different fields: an industrial designer, an architect, a social scientist, a business specialist or a mechanical engineer. The horizontal stroke of the “T” is the disposition for collaboration across disciplines. It is composed of two things. First, empathy. It’s important because it allows people to imagine the problem from another perspective - to stand in somebody else’s shoes. Second, they tend to get very enthusiastic about other people’s disciplines, to the point that they may actually start to practice them. T-shaped people have both depth and breadth in their skills.”

For an interdisciplinary design firm like IDEO, I’m sure you can see why the above would be important. But I also think it’s hugely important for those of us who work in the arena of the built environment.

City building projects don’t get accomplished by individuals, alone, or “I-shaped people” who don’t play well with others. They get accomplished by people with breadth in their skills and by large cohesive teams with vastly different core competencies. The notion of the individual genius is overplayed.

New buildings, for instance, typically involve a coming together of the project team (hugely diverse in and of itself), the city, the community, and other stakeholders. You can try and bully your way through that process or you can try and navigate through with empathy.

Based on the tremendous success of firms like IDEO, one could certainly argue that creativity and innovation seem to thrive more on empathy.

I was recently introduced to the work of Brenda Case Scheer – specifically a journal article she wrote called The Anatomy of Sprawl . If you’re the kind of person who enjoys geeking out about cities, this is for you. (Thank you Oliver.)

What she does in the article is break down the various components / layers of a city according to the rate in which they change . Her “spatio-temporal urban hierarchy” includes: site (slowest rate of change), superstructure, infill, buildings, and objects (fastest rate of change).

The way to think about this is that the bottom layers of a city – the paths and roads we have chosen to establish – are incredibly persistent. They don’t change all that often.

On the other hand, buildings do change. Old ones get demolished. New ones get built. There’s a cycle. They too probably feel pretty persistent in many cases, but in comparison to our roads, they change far more frequently.

The reason why all of this has bearing is because the paths we choose to carve out at the very beginning will ultimately dictate the kind of city that gets built and rebuilt over time.

The rectangular grid of Manhattan was planned out in 1811 . Central Park was missing from this original plan, but it did establish the street network and ownership lots that are now so central to the identity of New York City. That was a 200+ year decision.

It seems to have worked out just fine for New York. But what if you’re in a position where the existing street network is viewed as failing and/or inappropriate for the future success of the city? 

Well that’s where things get interesting. Now you need to dig down to some of those base layers and work on changing the (frequently) unchangeable. 

One of the most exciting projects under construction right now in Toronto is 1 Spadina Crescent – the new home of the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, & Design  at the University of Toronto. (This must be one of the longest faculty names in existence.)

I am excited to see the existing 19th century structure come back to life by way of a new addition; especially given its ceremonial position within the city. And I am excited – as an alumnus – to see the faculty growing.

On Monday, an event was held at the building to honor the donors and offer a sneak peek of the building. I wasn’t able to attend (as much as I wanted to), so I figured the next best thing I could do would be to write a blog post about it. 

So here’s the official news release and here are some photos from Urban Toronto.