Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1276

Here on ATC, we’ve talked a lot about the changing nature of work and what that could mean for cities. 

We talk (and debate) about the value of density and of being in close proximity to others so that ideas can percolate – whether that means open office floor plans or community coffee shops.

But alongside all of this, there are some fascinating structural changes taking place within organizations. Below is an excerpt from a recent New York Times article called,  How Larry Page’s Obsessions Became Google’s Business . 

But corporate success means corporate sprawl, and recently Google has seen a number of engineers and others leave for younger rivals like Facebook and start-ups like Uber. Mr. Page has made personal appeals to some of them, and, at least in a few recent cases, has said he is worried that the company has become a difficult place for entrepreneurs , according to people who have met with him.

Part of Mr. Page’s pitch included emphasizing how dedicated he was to “moonshots” like interplanetary travel, or offering employees time and money to pursue new projects of their own . By breaking Google into Alphabet, Mr. Page is hoping to make it a more welcoming home for employees to build new businesses, as well as for potential acquisition targets.

What I find interesting about the statements I’ve bolded is that they represent a radically different approach to business and employment. Of course, it’s not really a new thing. Google has been encouraging its employees to work on personal projects since, I think, the very beginning. 

But as you read the above article, you really get the sense that Page believes that this kind of organizational culture is fundamental to the long term competitiveness of the company. It’s something he is genuinely worried about.

As counter intuitive as it might seem to encourage employees to work on other things besides the core business, one could argue that it’s almost essential in a world of rapid and constant innovation. Would you rather an employee or a competitor discover what’s next in your industry? If it’s the former, you have a chance of absorbing it into your current business. If it’s the latter, you’re already too late.

If you go back to the article I posted earlier this week , you’ll see that creative destruction is happening a lot faster than it did in the past. The average life span of many, or most, companies seems to be decreasing.

The tech sector seems to be ahead of most other industries with respect to this kind of thinking. But I believe that it will continue to percolate through the economy. And when it does, it will probably have many impacts on the kinds of spaces we design and build in our cities.

When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Toronto, I never played in the backyard. I played in the streets. That’s where all the kids came together.

We would play baseball in somebody’s driveway, using one of the garage door “squares” as the strike zone. We would play football on corner lots, where it was tackle on the grass and “two-hand touch” on the street. And we would wax our curbs so that we could skateboard them.

None of these spaces were ever really intended for baseball, football, or skateboarding, but we kids repurposed them.

As people, including families, continue to move into urban centers around the world, I have no doubt that the next generation of children will once again repurpose spaces for play. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do when it comes to properly preparing our communities for people of all shapes and sizes.

One of the most interesting design challenges facing us today has to do with our towers.

Architects have long been obsessed with the idea of vertical villages. Le Corbusier’s Unité d'habitation in Marseille had two shopping streets embedded within the tower that were intended to act as public spines. I don’t know how well they did, but it was a highly progressive idea for the time.

Following on this idea, I was recently watching a TED talk with architect Ole Scheeren (thanks Mariane) and I was fascinated by his obsession with breaking down the raw verticality of towers.

His belief was that, yes, cities are and will continue to become more dense through tall buildings, but that most towers isolate rather than connect people. His work strives to do the opposite.

And this one of the big trends that I think we will see more of in our cites. We will see new forms of urban connectedness and a blurring of private, public, and semi-public spaces. Screw Euclidean zoning .

On that note, I am reminded that I owe the ATC community a post on my predictions for 2016. I hope to get that out shortly.

Diagram via Büro Ole Scheeren

Earlier in the week, I came across this post  (via Fred Wilson ), arguing that rapid technological progress is causing systemic deflation in the broader economy.

Here’s a chart that illustrates the author’s point:

What is happening here is that despite advances in technology and increases in productivity, real wages have been stagnant for decades. (This chart is for the US, but it likely applies to many other countries.)

This is an interesting paradox. For a long time, increases in productivity were met with corresponding increases in income. So why the divergence?

The author believes that it’s because the gains brought about by “extreme technological progress” are being unequally applied to the economy. In other words, they do not benefit the majority of people. He then goes on to argue that we could be entering an entirely new macroeconomic era: 

“Economic growth may be over soon, at least in absolute terms. On the other hand that will be at least partially offset by the technological deflation. So instead of the decline of the innovation it will be just the opposite, the explosion of the innovation that will turn the economy to the decline. And moreover, it will not be a tragedy since we will be able to produce higher standard of living with fraction of the GDP today. Few adjustments needs to be done into our economic system to cope with the change for sure.”

When you read things like this it makes the idea of a “ basic income guarantee ” seem far more palatable.

The other chart that stood out to me was this one below, which shows the declining cost of solar panels and the rise of global solar panel installations. 

It’s a great reminder that it’s only a matter of time before we wean ourselves off of oil. And, that we could be headed towards some sort of third industrial revolution where the marginal cost of energy is almost zero. Already about 25% of Germany’s electricity comes from renewables.

On that note, I am going to end with a fantastic interactive chart from The Economist (screenshot below) that outlines oil reserves around the world by country. If you click through to their website , you can then toggle the price of oil (per barrel) to see how much of those reserves are actually viable.

With the price of oil where it is today ($27.88 per barrel as of January 20, 2016), there are only a handful of countries with profitable oil. I am sure you could have guessed which ones.

What will happen if, or should I say when, that oil is no longer needed?