Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1400

This morning Richard Florida published an interesting CityLab article that talks about how different personality types cluster within cities . The study he references was done by a team of psychologists that surveyed 56,000 people in the London metro area.

Here is a summary of what they found (darker red indicates higher concentration of each personality trait):

Probably the most interesting personality trait is the “openness to experience” one, as there appears to be a clear divide between people who live in the center of London and people who live in the suburbs.

Here’s how Florida describes it:

The most clustered personality trait the researchers found was “openness to experience” (bottom left map), which is concentrated in the center of London. Openness to experience, according to a wide body of psychological studies, is associated with creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. This type is concentrated in higher density neighborhoods, with higher housing prices, more ethnic and religious diversity and higher crime rates .  Meanwhile, the blue concentrations at the periphery indicate that there are fewer people open to experience in metro London’s suburbs.

It’s fascinating to think about the role of psychology in city building. It’s not something we often talk about, but it’s there.

I live downtown and I would definitely classify myself as extraverted and open to experiences. How would you classify yourself?

Maps via CityLab

This morning the Globe and Mail published an article by Toronto’s chief planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, called  Greenbelts make cities more livable, affordable and transit-friendly .

The headline immediately caught my attention because conventional economic wisdom would suggest that supply constraints – whether natural or artificially created – generally have a negative effect on housing affordability.

To be clear though, I support Ontario’s greenbelt. I think an urban growth boundary is the right thing to have if we want to build sustainable, walkable, and transit-oriented communities. But I’m also not blind to some of the potential (negative) externalities.

However, Keesmaat’s article got me wondering just how prevalent those externalities might be and to what extent our greenbelt is actually impacting housing affordability in Toronto. In her article she cites a recent report by the Pembina Institute that very clearly argues the following:

“There is no shortage of land throughout the GTA [Greater Toronto Area] to build single-family homes for decades to come, but this land is predominantly located far from the City of Toronto and other established centres of employment in the GTA.”

More specifically, the report found that of all the land available for development in the region (within our growth boundary), 81% of it is projected to still be unused by 2031. This got me thinking: it’s not that there isn’t land still available in the region; it’s that there isn’t land in the areas where demand is the greatest.

Put differently, young families aren’t clamoring for single family homes in High Park and Leslieville because the greenbelt has restricted their ability to find new housing. They’re doing so because they want to live in neighborhoods like High Park and Leslieville.

If you dive into the data, the report shows that in 2004 the average price of a detached home in Toronto was about $117,000 more than the rest of the Greater Toronto Area. As of 2013, that spread had grown to about $200,000. And indeed the data shows that it’s the core of the city where home prices seem to be appreciating the fastest.

So when it comes to housing affordability and supply, the greenbelt may actually be a red herring. Releasing it would not increase the supply of housing in areas where demand is already high, which is probably why this same report also found that – with or without an urban growth boundary – most Canadian cities are seeing similar increases in home prices.

So what should we be doing?

I think we should do two things: (1) focus on accommodating more growth in the areas that people already want to live in, and (2) figure out ways to transform the less desirable areas into more desirable ones. This second one will be the hardest, because it’s likely going to mean changing car dependent areas into transit-oriented ones, which is no easy task.

The good news though is that we are already doing these things. There’s more that I would like to see happen, but we’re headed in the right direction.

If your city has a greenbelt or you have experience with greenfield development in the Toronto region, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. This is an area of development that I’ve never really been involved with.

Image: Flickr

I’ve written about the Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco before. It’s an infamous neighborhood in the center of the city that has for decades resisted gentrification (which was the topic of my post ).

But as the technology sector continues to urbanize , many fear that it’s only a matter of time before it does eventually gentrify. A new nickname has even emerged for the neighborhood: the  Twitterloin .

However, a local nonprofit called the Wildflowers Institute is trying to ensure that gentrification doesn’t erase the cultural assets currently housed in the neighborhood. Through a project called “Hidden Gems”, the group is literally knocking on doors to find active artists within the community (many of whom live in single rooms) and then supporting them through fellowship programs and other investments.

What’s fascinating about their approach is that they are actively seeking out the informal activities taking place within the community – activities that would otherwise be hidden and then potentially lost. Once discovered, they then do a number of mapping exercises to keep track of this data.

As somebody who believes city building will become a lot more data driven in the future, I think this is a really interesting initiative. And as gentrification pressures continue to increase in San Francisco, I’m sure this information will help guide the discussions. You can’t account for something you don’t know exists.

If you’d like to learn more about this initiative, check out this short 4 minute video from the New York Times . I would then love to hear from you in the comment section below.