Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1202

This past Sunday was the 3rd anniversary of this blog. That is 3 years of me writing something here every day (I think I’ve only missed 2 days in the past 3 years). So I have now written almost 1,100 blog posts.

Admittedly, they weren’t all masterpieces. But that doesn’t really matter. To do good work, I think you have to be prolific and show up every day.

The big change this year was that I “unbranded” this blog and started writing just under my personal name, as opposed to Architect This City. I got some initial pushback when I did that, but I continue to believe it was the right decision for what I am trying to achieve here.

I recently had someone ask me if there was any change in traffic after the switch. And the answer is no. If anything, traffic increased. 

Over the last year, this blog received about 225,000 page views. Of course, this doesn’t include the 14,000 or so people who read via email subscription and Tumblr, and never actually land on this site.

But honestly, I don’t care about the numbers anymore. I used to. But not anymore. I blog because it:

- Forces me to stay current on the topics that matter to me

- Allows me to clarify my thoughts in a way that thinking alone can’t do

- Holds me publicly accountable for the things I say and the stances I take

- Connects me with people I would never otherwise meet

- Exposes me to new business opportunities

- Gives me a distribution channel for discussion and sharing

- Allows me to learn from readers who know more than I do

- Feeds my desire to create things ( creating > consuming )

- Allows me to exert my personal independence (I write what I want here)

- Promotes greater transparency and, hopefully, better city building

I could go on, but those are some of the most salient points.

At the same time, the world of blogging and social media is all about giving first. So I do try to curate content and posts that I think would be valuable to the readership of this blog. If there’s something else you’d like to see on here, I am always open to suggestions.

Thanks for reading! Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow. And yes, those are my old skateboard decks hanging on the wall behind my desk.

I know it’s only August, but I am already thinking of snowboarding.

And I just recently learned that the British Columbia government has given the go ahead for a new multi-peak and year-round ski destination near Valemount, BC. The summits will include Mount Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Twilight Glacier, Glacier Ridge, and Mount Arthur Meighen.

Here is a photo of Mount Meighen (taken in September) from the project’s master plan .

Here is where Valemount is situated. It’s a 7 hour drive from Vancouver and a 5.5 hour drive from Edmonton.

Here is the mountain range in relation to Valemount. Right hand side of the image. Sorry, I know it’s small.

Here is the master plan that just got approved. Valemount is once again on the right / east.

And here is why this is a big deal (at least in my world):

- Valemount has the potential to be “the third largest lift-serviced non-contiguous vertical” in the world at 2,260m (7,415 feet). Zermatt, Switzerland and Chamonix, France are number 1 and 2. Of course, it would still get the title of the largest vertical drop in North America.

- There are a number of glaciers that would allow for summer / year-long snowboarding.

- They want to create a multi-valley snowboarding experience, similar to the European Alps.

- The mountain range has one of the highest average snowfalls in Canada. Valemount gets 5.36m (211 inches) per year and at an elevation of 1,800m it’s 14m (551 inches) of snowfall per year. This is more than Whistler. Because of this, they are not planning any snowmaking.

- There’s an airport nearby.

- One of their guiding principles is to minimize the environmental impact.

Construction is expected to begin in the spring of 2017 and the plan is to open to the public by December 2017. The first phase will include Twilight Glacier at an elevation of 2,530m (8,301 feet). So right from the outset, there will be summer skiing.

If you’re curious what the master plan for a ski resort looks like, you can download the entire report here . It’s only 324 pages.

The following chart was created by Branko Milanovic (Visiting Presidential Professor, Graduate Center, City University of New York and Senior Scholar, Luxumberg Income Centre) and by Christoph Lakner (Economist in the Development Research Group at the World Bank.

It is known as the “elephant graph” because, well, it kind of looks like an elephant. The trunk is on the right.

What it shows is global cumulative real income growth from 1988 to 2008 for every percentile around the world.

The trunk on the right is the world’s 1%. Their income is up.

The 50-60th percentile range is also up. These are people in the developing world who started making a bit of money as a result of industrialization. In percentage terms things look good, but in absolute terms they’re not making a lot of money. Still, they are becoming better off.

Where things fall apart is in the 75-90th percentile range. These are essentially the lowest income folks in the developed world. Their incomes haven’t been growing at the same rate and, in some cases, their incomes decreased in real terms. They are falling behind.

Kaila Colbin wrote a Medium post about this graph and asks whether the exponential growth in technology that we are seeing today, will end up creating more jobs than it eliminates – as it did before in the past. 

She also wonders whether the dip we are seeing in the 75-90th percentile range could spread left as automation eliminates jobs for those folks in the developing world.

These are important questions.