Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1321

Fogo Island is a small remote island off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. As of 2011, the population was roughly 2,400 people.

For centuries the island was a thriving fishing community, particularly for cod. At its peak, Canadian fisherman alone were bringing in 266,000 tons of cod every year .

But in 1992 the Canadian government put in place a moratorium on fishing North Atlantic cod. And it decimated the local economy. (Should we still be calling it a moratorium after all this time?)

However, thanks to people like Zita Cobb and her Shorefast Foundation , Fogo Island is in the midst of an entrepreneurial and cultural renaissance. Take a look at the Fogo Island Inn . It’s on my list of places to visit.

Back in 2013, Monocle Magazine published a two-part video series outlining what is happening on the island. You can watch part 1 of that series by clicking here  and part 2 by clicking here . Each video is under 10 minutes long.

Today is Labo(u)r Day in Canada and the United States.

It is the official end of summer for a lot of people, which is always a bit sad. (Unlike a lot of people I know, I’m not a huge fan of fall.) But primarily, today is a day to celebrate the labor union movement.

Fred Wilson wrote an excellent post on his blog this morning about this topic. I agree with him and he put it far better than I could this morning. So here are a few snippets:

When one looks back over the history of the development of the modern economy from the agricultural age, to the industrial age, to the information age, the development of a strong labor movement has to be one of the signature events. Capitalism, taken to its excesses, does not allocate economic value fairly to all participants in the economic system.

I am a fan of the idea that labor needs a mechanism to obtain market power as a counterbalance to the excesses of markets and capitalism. I think we can look back and see all the good that has come from a strong labor movement in the US over the past 150 years.

However, like all bureaucratic institutions, the “Union” mechanism appears anachronistic sitting here in the second decade of the 21st century. We are witnessing the sustained unwinding of 19th and 20th century institutions that were built at a time when transaction and communications costs were high and the overhead of bureaucracy and institutional inertia were costs that were unavoidable.

Click here for the full post.

On that note, I am in the market for new – ideally daily – blogs to read. Blogs such as this one, which generally focus on a particular topic but are written by one person and are a bit personal in nature. I find those are where the best online communities develop.

If you know of any, please leave the link in the comment section below. A lot of readers have also asked me for similar recommendations, so I am sure they would appreciate the suggestions.

Happy long weekend :)

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

We tend to think of buildings as being very permanent structures. After all, our cities are filled with buildings that are hundreds of years old. And in some cases, much older.

But the reality is that buildings, just like everything else, depreciate over time. They have life cycles and they need to be regularly maintained and periodically renovated in order for them to survive.

This morning I was reading the blog of Witold Rybczynski, who is an author and architecture professor at the University of Pennsylvania. A few months ago he wrote a post talking about the short life cycle of modernist buildings .

According to a recent colloquium at the Getty Center, the average life span of a conventionally built building (masonry and wood) is about 120 years. But for modernist buildings (reinforced concrete and glass curtain wall) it’s half that: 60 years.

And if you are to consider the typical big box retail store, the life expectancy is probably a third of that – if even that. Usually it is cheaper to just tear down the old box and build a new one when needs change. That’s part of the reason why the leases usually have clauses that try and prevent the retailer from just “going dark” and stopping operation.

So we are literally not building them like we used to. And there’s a lot of debate in architecture and building circles about whether or not this poses a serious problem for cities. It is clear that Witold is unhappy about this shift.

I am a strong believer in heritage preservation. I believe wholeheartedly that cities are far richer with layers upon layers of history. But I also acknowledge that in our world of 6 second Vine videos , we seem to be less worried about whether something will last 60 or 120 years.

Perhaps that’s a problem. Or perhaps the times are just changing.