Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1270

Zillow.com recently published some research where they looked at U.S. home prices broken down according to location: urban, suburban, and rural.

Here’s what they found:

As you can see, urban homes across the U.S. largely trailed their suburban counterparts in terms of absolute value up until the end of 2014. At that point, urban homes then surpassed suburban homes for the first time in the last two decades. (I wonder if this is a first or there was another crossover point before the late 1990s.)

But if you dig a little deeper and look at both the rate of appreciation and prices per square foot (as opposed to just absolute value), urban home prices appear even stronger. 

Here’s a snippet from Zillow’s post :

“Over the past five years (2010-2015), average urban home values have grown 28.4 percent, compared to 21.1 percent for suburban home values. In the past year alone, U.S. urban home values grew 7.5 percent, compared to 5.9 percent for suburban homes.

On a per-square-foot-basis, homes in urban areas nationwide used to be worth roughly the same as suburban homes, before a gap started emerging in the late 1990s which has become progressively wider over the past roughly two decades. Currently the gap stands at 24.5 percent, with suburban homes valued at $156 per-square-foot and average U.S. urban homes worth $198 per-square-foot.”

And here is that same chart showing per square foot prices:

Everyone who reads this blog knows that there is a growing interest in urban centers. But if you look at the above charts for specific cities, there are still many cases where urban home prices are well below suburban ones. 

To me, that serves as a reminder of the spikiness of this urban transformation, but also that it is likely still in its infancy. As recent as 20 years ago, Toronto largely didn’t believe that people would want to live downtown in modern apartments. Today we take that for granted.

So even with all of the gushing about urban centers, I still think we are only just getting started when it comes to creating the great urban neighborhoods of the future.

It’s becoming harder and harder to think of tech as a distinct silo. Tech is embedding itself into so many traditional industries that, one day, every company will probably be a software/technology company in some regards. 

It’s for this reason that I often think and write about tech and its impacts on the built environment.

An interesting example of this phenomenon is a recent art installation by fuse* called AMYGDALA. What it does is translate collective social media sentiment (specifically from Twitter) into an audiovisual art installation housed within an urban space.

Here’s how they  describe the project:

“The news and thoughts of users spread across social networks in real time. And so an event with worldwide implications immediately involves millions of people sharing their own opinions and emotions: happiness, anger, sadness, disgust, amazement or fear. Thus, imagining Internet as a living organism, we might think that its emotional state may be given by the overall emotions shared by users at any given time. AMYGDALA listens to shared thoughts, interprets states of mind and translates the data gathered into an audiovisual installation capable of representing the collective emotional state of the net and its changes on the basis of events that take place around the world.”

And here’s a video of it in action ( click here if you can’t see it below):

[vimeo 154049756 w=500 h=281]

What I like about the project is how it takes something digital and ephemeral and then both aggregates and translates it into something physical within the urban environment. It’s a perfect visual representation of how technology and networks are – for better or for worse – seeping into our daily lives.

I recently started reading the blog of Michael Mortensen . Michael is a real estate developer and urban planner based in the UK. And if you like my blog, I think you’ll also like his.

Last week he published a post talking about a UK development company called Pocket and a recent design competition that they organized called “Pocket two bedroom.”

Historically the firm has been focused on well-designed and compact one bedroom apartments (38 square meters) that they deliver at a minimum 20% discount relative to typical market rate housing in London.

But over time, they found that they had to turn people away because they were looking for larger – yet still affordable – two bedroom apartments. So the firm decided to figure out how to scale their model to larger units.

To do this, they went out and asked 19 architects to come up with ideas for a two bedroom Pocket apartment. They then published all of the ideas online .

Firstly, I applaud them for making their competition results public. Most real estate companies wouldn’t do this.

Secondly, it’s interesting to take note of the recurring design themes, as they have on page 24-25 of their competition book. 

Some of the themes include “deep thresholds” that blur private and communal spaces; “thick walls” that allow for storage and servicing; flexible spaces and fewer dedicated spaces; and dual entry apartments.

This last item was particularly interesting to me. It’s a simple idea – two separate doors leading into one apartment – but it can allow for a number of flexible sharing scenarios. I am already imagining somebody creating an Airbnb rental out of their second bedroom.

Housing is certainly undergoing a transformation.