Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1182

When I was in undergrad, I spent a summer in Taipei. One of the things I remember about that summer was how difficult it was to locate building addresses. Sure, there was the whole language barrier thing, but I swear that some of those alleys (which I loved) didn’t follow a consistent numerical logic.

It turns out that a lot of the world is actually poorly addressed. Think about the favelas in Brazil. How are they addressed? (Not actually a rhetorical question; I’ve never been.)

A company out of the UK called what3words is trying to solve this problem. What they have done is created a 3m x 3m grid of the entire world and assigned a 3 word address to each square. Apparently that translates into about 57 trillion squares.

This is similar to long / lat coordinates, except that 3 words are far more user friendly than a string of numbers. They are more easily remembered and more easily communicated to other people. The front door of the Starbucks in my neighborhood looks to be migrate.stunner.racing.

One service that has built upon the what3words platform is a bike taxi service in Delhi that offers female drivers for female customers. It’s called Bikxie Pink  and the 3 word addresses aim to solve the safety problem of inefficient pick-ups and drop-offs.

Even in places where addressing isn’t generally a problem, I could see what3words helping. Interesting platform.

Images: what3words

I came across this discussion on Twitter yesterday about how so many of the spaces we love in cities would not conform to today’s modern city planning practices:

@jonahletovsky we could go all weekend tweeting pics of places that would contravene modern formulaic codes, and yet are amazing envts.

— Gil Meslin (@g_meslin) October 29, 2016

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This is a topic I’ve been thinking about lately and so it’s a timely discussion. In fact, I’ll often come across spaces in Toronto where I’ll think to myself: This is a really great space. But it’s highly unlikely that it could be built this way today. Naturally the question then becomes: What does this say about modern city planning?

City planning is obviously important. But at the same time, we are almost certainly making mistakes and doing things that we will later regret. I say this not because I’m particularly critical of planning today, but because cities are enormously complex entities and it’s difficult to believe that we’ve figured everything out at this point.

One thing I wonder about is if we aren’t over-planning and being too prescriptive about our cities. Some of you will probably argue the exact opposite. But hear me out.

Vancouver is a city that has long been considered to be the gold standard in modern city planning . We talk about its podium + tower building typology. We talk about its “gentle density.” And we talk about its great public and recreational spaces, among many other things.

But when I was there last month having dinner with a friend of mine, she said something to me that stood out. She said: “Brandon, Vancouver is a boring city. If it weren’t for my family being here, I would happily move to Toronto, New York, or somewhere else.”

Cities are amazing places because they unleash human ingenuity. They allow new and unforeseen things to emerge. The challenge, I think, is to not sterilize that away when we plan and build. And all of us involved in the building of cities are probably guilty of doing that to an extent.

Earlier today The Economist published the below chart showing where Canada’s immigrants have come from (place of birth) between 1871 and 2011. So basically from Confederation (1867) to today – almost.

It’s a great chart. It really shows our evolution.

Perhaps the most meaningful date to point out is 1962. That is the year Canada introduced new immigration regulations which effectively privileged skill and talent over race and national origin when it came to deciding who would be allowed to enter the country. 

Look at the impact that had.