Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1222

The Center City District and Central Philadelphia Development Corporation recently published a report called: State of Center City 2016 . The objective was to measure the progress being made in Philadelphia’s downtown. 

I moved out of Center City (Rittenhouse Square) in 2009, but I still like to follow what’s happening. I really enjoyed my time in Philly. In fact, I remember missing its immensely walkable downtown after I returned to Toronto and touched down in the suburbs briefly before moving back downtown.

If you take a look at the report, one of the first things you’ll probably notice is the concentration of jobs and the concentration of knowledge works (with advanced degrees) in the Center City area. We are seeing  this shift in so many cities around the world.

Here are a few graphics (all of which are from the report):

Part of the reason for this is that Center City is anchored by a number of fantastic Universities. This is critical for cities, today.

To end this post, I thought I would post the below comparison of average office rents in major CBDs across the US. I always find these charts interesting, even though the usual suspects are up at the top.

I hope you’re all having a great holiday weekend.

Air Canada bumped me from my flight this morning and so I am spending the day hanging out at Toronto Pearson Airport. I can think of more enjoyable ways to spend Canada Day, but at least there’s a nice seating area in Terminal 1 with free wifi and lots of plugs.

I just finished watching the below talk by Harvard economist Ed Glaeser at the Manhattan Institute. His overall thesis is that unemployment is a far worse problem than income stagnation and that the US needs to stop creating incentives for people not to work. He refers to it as a war on work.

He addresses a few topics that we’ve talked about here on this blog, such as guaranteed basic incomes , as well as others that we haven’t talked about, such as raising the minimum wage. To give you one spoiler: He argues that a higher minimum wage has been shown to cause an overall drop in employment, which he, again, believes is a deeper problem.

Glaeser delivers a passionate performance. So if you have 30 minutes to spare – perhaps you’re stuck in an airport somewhere – I recommend you give it a watch. If you can’t see the video below,  click here .

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xaNV_6wgak?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

I’m packing and getting ready to leave for New York right now. I’ll be there for both Canada Day and Independence Day. My out of office message has been activated.

I have a lot going on at the moment (which I’ll soon be able to share on this blog) and so I’m looking forward to getting out of the city and disconnecting a little. (I’ll, of course, still be blogging.) I’m generally not very good at down time. I like to keep busy and I like to work a lot. 

But every now and then my body tells me that I should do otherwise. I also notice that I start getting decision fatigue. I am sure many of you probably feel this way as well. So I said no to a lot of things this week and I have very few things planned for New York. I’m content with that.

A big city is probably not what comes to mind when many of you think of down time. But one of my favorite things to do is just wander around a city, look at buildings, and absorb it all. In some ways that feels like a luxury because most of the time I’m too busy rushing around. 

But who knows, maybe I’ll end up on a beach somewhere. That’s the sort of thing that can happen when you don’t have much in the calendar. Either way, I’m off to New York for some rest and relaxation. Talk tomorrow.