Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1312

I get a lot of emails from readers of this blog. I try my best to answer every single one of them, but sometimes I fall behind and fail spectacularly at that. (The snooze feature in Mailbox and Google Inbox is one of the best inventions ever.)

One of the most common emails I receive is about careers. Sometimes it’s someone looking for a new job or for advice on how to break into the industry (usually real estate development). And sometimes it’s an employer (or recruiter) with a role they need filled. 

It’s hard to match up supply and demand when they arrive in my inbox on an ad hoc basis like this, but I have been thinking about ways I might be able to help these people out.

So today I thought I would try something new. If you have a relevant job listing that you’d like me to distribute to the ATC community (something in architecture, planning, real estate, tech, and so on), email it to me at b@brandondonnelly. 

If I get enough high quality listings, I’ll send them out in my newsletter. And if everyone finds it valuable, I may make it a regular feature.

I am a fan and long time user of Foursquare – now known as both Foursquare and Swarm .

Foursquare has struggled against competitors such as Yelp.com when it comes to local business recommendations. And I have less than 100 friends on my Swarm. It doesn’t seem to be that popular here in Toronto.

But I’ve always loved the data collection aspect of Foursquare / Swarm. Even though most people don’t seem to care about that. When I check-in somewhere, such as the gym, it’ll tell me how many weeks in a row I’ve been there, whether it’s a new personal record, who else is nearby, and a host of other things.

I’ve always felt like there was so much potential in all of the data it was collecting.

Well the company is starting to make better use of that data. Recently they used their foot traffic data at Apple stores (I am assuming this goes beyond just check-in data) to predict the number of iPhones that Apple was going to sell globally following the launch of the 6s and 6s Plus.

They predicted between 13 to 15 million handsets and it turns out they were right :

This validates the accuracy of our prediction and while we’re proud of the result, we certainly aren’t surprised. Foursquare’s data is essentially the world’s biggest panel of foot traffic data — we have the best sense of the trends and patterns of the movement of people and their phones around the world.

This is powerful stuff. If there were a way for me to be bullish on Foursquare beyond just writing this post, I would be.

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

We are all selfish bastards when it comes to sharing road space and public space.

When we drive, we complain about pedestrians jumping out in front of us, crazy cyclists who get in our way, and under-utilized bike lanes that are taking away valuable driving space and creating traffic jams.

When we take surface transit (such as buses and streetcars), we want all the cars out of the way so that we can move more efficiently. And we complain about drivers who don’t stop to let us off and on when the streetcar doors open. (Toronto specific reference.)

When we cycle, we complain about cars parked in the bike lanes, people who don’t look before changing lanes or opening their car doors, and drivers who honk at you because they just want you off the road and onto the sidewalk.

And when we walk, we complain about cyclists who ride on the sidewalk (they should be on the road!), cars that don’t stop to let us go, and slow walking groups who linearly block the entire sidewalk so you can’t pass.

We are never happy. And we automatically assume that we could do it better. (I know I’m guilty of this.)

But here are a few things to consider the next time you’re flipping the bird to someone on the streets. Here are a few things that we do know about urban mobility.

There is an unprecedented number of condominiums in the development pipeline right now in Toronto. For argument’s sake, let’s assume 75,000 condominium suites – many of which will be built in central areas of the city.

At a parking ratio of 0.6 stalls per unit, which isn’t an unreasonable assumption today , that’s 45,000 new parking spots and potentially 45,000 new cars in the city. 

If you think that 45,000 new cars will be able to get fully absorbed into the core and somehow move around in an unfettered way, then I believe you are mistaken. 

If you think that there’s something that can be done to magically expand road capacity to handle all of these additional cars in the city, then I believe you are mistaken.

And if you think that adding a bike lane is the only reason you are currently stuck in traffic, then I believe you are missing the bigger picture.

Over a decade ago, we made a decision in this region to encourage building up, instead of building out. And along with that decision came a necessary rethink of how we get around. That transition is what we are living through right now.

The other thing we know is that the 4 modes of mobility that I started this post with are ordered from least sustainable to most sustainable. 

Electric self-driving vehicles will reduce the impacts of driving, but it will also transform it into something that feels more like transit and less like the driving we know today. That will be a very good thing.

But I’m not yet convinced that it will solve all of our problems. To do that I think we will need to adopt a much more balanced and unselfish view of what it takes to move around a city. That, of course, isn’t always easy.