Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1249

I have decided to spin-off the Architect This City identity into a weekly newsletter that I’m referring to as a “curated city building bulletin.” (This is as a result of the unbranding of this blog last week.)

The inaugural issue went out this past Monday at 9am eastern with a collection of city building-related links. And that was it. This is not another blog. I’m not writing any new content for it. It’s simply going to be a collection of links to things that I think city builders would find interesting and/or valuable.

Here’s why I decided to do this:

It allows me to keep this new bulletin entirely focused on one thing. You’re not going to find me sneaking in a link about snowboarding, wine or something else that I’m interested in. It’s strictly about targeting city builders. (Of course, city building can be a pretty broad topic.)

Keeping in mind what I wrote yesterday about saying no , I also chose this format because the additional workload for me will be minimal. In order for me to write a daily blog like this one, I have found that I need to keep a running list of reading material. But a lot of what’s on this list (stored in Pocket ) never sees the light of day – there’s only so much I can write about. This new bulletin will be a quick way for me to share the rest of it.

Finally, I’m also hoping it’ll be an efficient way for me to share the links, events, projects, and other things I receive from readers. In an ideal world, the bulletin will evolve into having a “links” section and a “from the community” section – which will be things that subscribers send me but today don’t get shared.

So that’s the plan. If that sounds good to you, please subscribe at architectthiscity.com . 

To kick things off, I’m going to be giving away 5 x free ATC t-shirts. (See photo at the top of this post.) To win one, just (1) subscribe and tweet out a link to this new city building bulletin , (2) tag @athiscity , and (3) tell everyone which city/town you live in.

Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

If you’re somebody who has a lot of ideas, it can be pretty easy to get overwhelmed and/or distracted by all of the possibilities. It’s also worse when you’re an optimist and you believe it can all be done. I am definitely guilty of this. It is one of my weaknesses.

We all have a finite amount of time to work with and so saying no to the stuff that isn’t core is critical. I believe I am getting better at this, but every now and then I find myself having to do some pruning. And once I do that, boy does it feel great.

Seth Godin has a fantastic blog post on this topic that I love called, No is essential . Here it is in its entirety (it’s a short post):

“If you believe that you must keep your promises, overdeliver and treat every commitment as though it’s an opportunity for a transformation, the only way you can do this is to turn down most opportunities.

No I can’t meet with you, no I can’t sell it to you at this price, no I can’t do this job justice, no I can’t come to your party, no I can’t help you. I’m sorry, but no, I can’t. Not if I want to do the very things that people value my work for.

No is the foundation that we can build our yes on.”

To drive the point home even further, let’s shift gears and talk about wine. (For all of you fellow wine drinkers.)

In viticulture, overall yield – usually measured in hectoliters per hectare of vineyard – is often seen as an important indicator of quality. The idea being that low yields produce better wines because the flavors get concentrated over fewer grapes. 

Part of what drives this is the leaf to fruit ratio . Too much fruit and not enough leaves, means the grapes won’t ripen properly.

The parallel to this conversation is that leaves are much like time. There’s only so much of it. And while many of us are constantly trying to maximum yield – I know I am – there are limits to the kind and quality of grapes we can produce when we do that. 

I know this in principle. And more and more, I know this in practice. I am learning to say no.

Image from Flickr

We talk a lot about economic inequality these days. We worry, among other things, that our successful cities are becoming playgrounds for the rich and that housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.

Without negating the importance of things such as attainable housing, I’d like to offer up two, potentially new, perspectives on economic inequality.

The first is an essay by venture capitalist Paul Graham . In it, he rationally unpacks, as he always does, the phenomenon of economic inequality. One of his key points is the distinction between rent seeking degenerate economic inequality and the economic inequality caused by rapid value creation (i.e. Two Stanford students decide to create a new search engine called Google).

“If the rich people in a society got that way by taking wealth from the poor, then you have the degenerate case of economic inequality where the cause of poverty is the same as the cause of wealth. But instances of inequality don’t have to be instances of the degenerate case. If one woodworker makes 5 chairs and another makes none, the second woodworker will have less money, but not because anyone took anything from him.”

Of course, Paul Graham is thinking about this from the perspective of a venture capitalist that funds startups and helps entrepreneurs get rich. But what about the impacts to people who live in a city where the rich are far richer than the poor?

That brings me to the second perspective.

A recent study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association and written about in the New York Times , has discovered a surprising relationship between income and life expectancy across the United States from 2001 to 2014.

What they found was that cities with high economic inequality – such as New York and San Francisco – actually have lower inequality when it comes to life expectancy. 

Here is a chart from the New York Times :

And here is a chart from healthinequality.org :

If you’re rich, it doesn’t matter where you live. The life expectancy of a rich person in New York is roughly the same as a rich person in Detroit. (Though, as to be expected, women generally live longer than men.)

However, as income levels fall, so does life expectancy. But it falls more in a city like Detroit than it does in New York. In fact, rich cities such as New York and San Francisco are almost model cities in this regard. Why is that?

The biggest predictor appears to be health behaviors , such as smoking and obesity:

“The research seems to suggest that living in proximity to the preferences — and tax base — of wealthy neighbors may help improve well-being. New York is not just a city of rich and poor, but also one of walkable sidewalks, a trans-fat ban and one of the most aggressive anti-tobacco agendas of any place in the United States.”

So there you have it. Two, potentially new, ways to think about economic inequality.