Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1224

Earlier today my friend Saadat sent me the following tweet:

@donnelly_b you need to apply to this: https://t.co/NrYmO1D1ge

— Saadat Qadri (@saadatqadri)

June 27, 2016

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

It’s a link to a new research project by Y Combinator – the famed Silicon Valley seed accelerator. They want to explore the possibility of building new and better cities.

I don’t have the time for something like this, but if any of you are city experts (I know a lot of you are) and you’re based in or willing to be based in San Francisco (I think they are flexible on this), you should absolutely consider applying to be their full time “Cities Researcher.” The deadline is July 30, 2016.

Here’s a taste of what they are thinking about…

There are many high-level questions we want to think through, for example:

- What should a city optimize for?

- How should we measure the effectiveness of a city (what are its KPIs)?

- What values should (or should not) be embedded in a city’s culture?

- How can cities help more of their residents be happy and reach their potential?

- How can we encourage a diverse range of people to live and work in the city?

- How should citizens guide and participate in government?

- How can we make sure a city is constantly evolving and always open to change?

And there are tactical questions we want to dig into, for example:

- How can we make and keep housing affordable? This is critical to us; the cost of housing affects everything else in a city.

- How can we lay out the public and private spaces (and roads) to make a great place to live?

- Can we figure out better zoning laws?

- What is the right role for vehicles in a city?

- Should we have human-driven cars at all?

- How can we have affordable high-speed transit to and from other cities?

- How can we make rules and regulations that are comprehensive while also being easily understandable?

- Can we fit all rules for the city in 100 pages of text?

- What effects will the new city have on the surrounding community?

The convergence of city building and tech is something that I’m deeply interested in. I also think it’s inevitable. And I think that Toronto – thanks to our robust real estate industry – is in an ideal position to be a leader in this space. So I would love to see someone from here take on this job.

But even if you’re not from Toronto, you should still apply because it’s an exciting initiative :)

I’ve been reading the blog 5 Kids 1 Condo for, I think, about a year now. It’s written by Adrian Crook who is a single dad of 5 kids, living in a 2 bedroom condo in downtown Vancouver. And his blog is about just that.

A few days ago he posted a video of himself speaking at a public meeting in support of a new purpose-built rental building at 18th and Commercial Drive in Vancouver. The proposal includes 110 secured market rental units; 37% of which will be 2 or 3 bedroom apartments. (More information on the project, here .)

It’s rare to see people come out in support of a project at a public meeting. Usually people only show up when they’re grouchy and upset. So today I’d like to share his speech ( click here if you can’t see the video below).

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

I’m curious to know what was shouted right at the beginning after he said that he was in favor of the proposal. I listened a few times but couldn’t figure it out. 

In any event, Adrian’s speech touches on a number of important points that transcend this specific development proposal and that are relevant to many of the topics that we discuss here on this blog.

I was looking through my photo archive this past week (which is all on an Apple Time Capsule) and I came across this photo:

I took this photo in the winter of 2011 on a snowboarding trip to Lake Tahoe. It’s of the San Francisco Federal Building , which was designed by Morphosis and completed in 2007.

The reason this photo stands out for me is because as my friends and I were taking photos of this building a man walked by us and said:

“Why are you taking photos of this shit?

…you guys must be architects.”

To me this was a frank reminder that the designs that my architecture friends and I obsess over (at least the contemporary stuff) often go completely unappreciated by a lot of other people – perhaps the majority of people.

This, of course, raises an interesting debate. 

If the majority of the public think a building is shit, is it a failure? Should a building’s success be judged more by how its occupants feel about it? Or is it the “expert” opinion that really matters? (Expert is in quotations because I don’t like this term.)

While important, I don’t think it’s as simple as these questions. Architecture can take years, decades, or even longer to settle in and become fully appreciated. Think about the buildings that your city may have demolished in the past but now regrets. Tastes change.

With that, below is an excerpt from the architect’s own description of the Federal Building. Keep in mind that this project started construction in 2003 and so design would have started years before that. Hopefully it’s clear just how relevant the ambitions of this project remain some 15 or so years later.

The re–definition of circulation and vertical movement paths provides opportunities for chance encounters, a critical mass in circulation, and places for employees to gather across the typical confines of cubicles, departments, or floor plates. The democratic layout locates open work areas at the building perimeter and private offices and conference spaces at the central cores. As Gladwell’s article points out, “…one study after another has demonstrated [that] the best ideas in any workplace arise out of casual contact among different groups within the same company.” Skip stop elevators, sky gardens, tea salons, large open stairs, flexible floor plans, and the elimination of corner offices endow the tower with a Jacobsian “sidewalk life” of cross-sectional interactions.

Many of the same design decisions that create high quality workspace also maximize energy efficiency. The Federal Building is the first office tower in the U.S. to forgo air-conditioning in favor of natural ventilation. As a result of the tower’s narrow profile and strategic integration of structural, mechanical and electrical systems, the building provides natural ventilation to 70% of the work area in lieu of air conditioning, and affords natural light and operable windows to 90% of the workstations. A folded, perforated metal sunscreen shades the full-height glass window wall system and a mutable skin of computer–controlled panels adjusts to daily and seasonal climate fluctuations. With an energy performance that surpasses the GSA’s criteria by more than 50%, the project sets new standards for applications of passive climate control, while physically democratizing the workplace and enhancing employees’ health, comfort, and sense of control over their environment.