Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1303

https://500px.com/embed.js

We all know that city building is a multi-disciplinary endeavour. That’s why I was incredibly interested to learn about a new “ Artist-in-Residence”  program that Los Angeles is launching:

The Honorable Mayor Eric Garcetti, is pleased to announce the first collaboration between two City of Los Angeles departments to place an artist in residence in a department to serve as a Creative Catalyst who will develop creative intervention strategies to achieve department specific goals. The Creative Catalyst Artist in Residence Program will serve as a model to stimulate creative thinking and innovative projects, while supporting Mayor Eric Garcetti’s Back to Basics priority outcomes: to make our city livable / sustainable, prosperous, safe, and well-run.

Cities are complex organisms. And some of you might be wondering how artists can help city build. But this is about bringing different minds together, thinking across disciplines and, hopefully, leveraging  design thinking  to solve urban problems. And LA is not the only city to try this approach.

In my view, it’s not that dissimilar from the trend around “Designer-in-Residence” programs at venture capital firms and startup incubators. Cities, businesses, and many other organizations are recognizing that the way artists and designers think can be of tremendous value.

So if you’re an artist who lives and/or works in LA,  this  might be something worth considering. You have until this Friday, November 6th, 2015 to apply.

“The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” – Lin Yutang

Yesterday I posted the above photo on social media with the caption: 

“This year I decided to go ALL OUT for Halloween.” 

A friend then responded and said: 

“A minimalist does Halloween. Love it.”

I’ve been called a minimalist many times before. And it is certainly something that I think about. Oftentimes I feel like life is a constant battle against physical and mental clutter. But that the more you can rid yourself of that clutter, the happier and freer you will feel.

It’s why I scan most of my paperwork into Evernote and then throw out the hard copies. It’s why I tend to wear a lot of white dress shirts and black t-shirts – it keeps life simple and reduces decision making. And it’s one of the reasons I’m so attracted to laneway houses  and small spaces . I don’t think most of us need as much home as we think we do.

If this is something that also interests you, I recommend checking out a blog called The Minimalists . I just recently subscribed to them.

https://500px.com/embed.js

Wharton real estate professor, Mariaflavia Harari , recently published a paper that looks at the relationship between urban geometry (specifically compactness) and inner city commuting efficiency across 450 cities in India.

Consistent with previous research done in this space, she finds that people generally prefer compact cities and that they are willing to pay a premium for it. It increases overall welfare. Here’s an excerpt from her paper :

“My findings are broadly consistent with compact city shape being a consumption amenity. All else being equal, more compact cities grow faster. There is also evidence that consumers are paying a premium for living in more compact cities, in terms of lower wages and, possibly, higher housing rents.”

So her recommendations for the Indian cities she analyzed was that they should relax land use restrictions to allow for more vertical / compact development and that they should focus on improving urban transport in order to offset some of the negatives externalities associated with sprawl. This is no different than the approach that many cities in the developing world are adopting or looking to adopt.

One of things that really stood out for me in her paper though is the way people perceive commuting:

“The loss associated with non-compact shape appears to be substantial: a one-standard deviation deterioration in city shape, corresponding to a 720 meter increase in the average within-city round-trip, entails a welfare loss equivalent to a 5% decrease in income. This is considerably larger than the direct monetary and opportunity cost associated to lengthier commutes. Less compact cities also appear to attract fewer low-income immigrants, as captured by the share of slum dwellers.”

What this is saying is that we tend to overvalue the negatives of commuting, beyond the direct costs of gas, insurance, car payments, our time, and so on. We hate it so much that we also want to be compensated for the mental anguish. Here is that same idea said differently :

The estimated welfare loss from longer commutes appears to be large, relative to the immediate time and monetary costs of commuting. This is consistent with the interpretation that commuting is perceived as a particularly burdensome activity. The behavioral literature has come to similar conclusions, albeit in the context of developed countries. Stutzer and Frey (2008) find a large and robust negative relation between commuting time and subjective wellbeing, using German data. They estimate that individuals commuting 23 minutes one way would have to earn 19 percent more per month, on average, in order to be fully compensated.

So I guess I’m not the only one who thinks commuting and driving sucks.