Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1403

Last week I wrote (yet another) post about Uber where I argued that leading cities will be the ones that engage with the sharing/rental economy (as opposed to try and outright ban it) and that Uber is going to continue to impact current beliefs around vehicle ownership.

As to be expected, some people agreed with me and some people didn’t:

@GladstoneHotel @RebuildHamilton with all due respect, I think @donnelly_b has @uber wrong. They’re not eliminating private car ownership…

— Martin Kuplens-Ewart (@mkuplens)

January 5, 2015

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But I also discovered following that post that there are groups, and hopefully cities, who are working to adapt to the changing realities brought about by disruptive innovation.

One of those groups is The National League of Cities – which I truthfully don’t know that much about. But they have created something called “ The Sharing Economy Advisory Network .”

“Cities across the country have been struggling to respond to the rapid emergence of the Sharing Economy,” said Clarence Anthony, National League of Cities executive director. He continued, “Cities are looking for ways to update and improve their current regulatory framework to ensure that regulations like safety and health protect residents, while at the same time supporting the growth of new businesses. It is imperative for cities to learn how this industry operates and discover ways to engage in order to support these new modes of doing business and to create jobs.”

It sounds like the right kind of initiative and I wish them lots of success. I hope it’s effective and I hope that Toronto will look at how it too can properly manage these economic changes. This is going to take both the private and public sectors working together.

Image: Sidecar

A lot of shopping malls are dying. You’ve probably heard this before. But how bad is it and what exactly is happening?

Well, a new report by CoStar  (heard through the New York Times ) found that nearly 20% of the 1,200 malls in the US are presently in trouble. “Trouble” is defined as a mall with a vacancy rate of 10% or more.

But what’s perhaps most disconcerting about this number is that, as recently as 2006, only about 5% of the malls in America would have been pegged as being “in trouble.” Here’s a chart from the New York Times  (I’d love to see this same graph with a longer time horizon):

But not all malls are dying. The general sentiment seems to be that the high-end A malls are and will continue to thrive, and that it’s only the B and C malls that are dying:

Tom Simmons, who oversees the mid-Atlantic shopping center division of Kimco, another real estate giant, is more blunt. “There are B and C malls in tertiary markets that are dinosaurs and will likely die,” he said, but “A malls are doing well.” (NY Times)

So why is this happening? Some think it’s because the US is over-retailed. And some think it’s because of rising income inequality – which would explain why the high-end malls continue to thrive. But the experts seem to agree that it’s not the result of more people shopping online:

One factor many shoppers blame for the decline of malls — online shopping — is having only a small effect, experts say. Less than 10 percent of retail sales take place online, and those sales tend to hit big-box stores harder, rather than the fashion chains and other specialty retailers in enclosed malls. (NY Times)

I wrote a post 2 months ago where where I argued that big box stores will be the most impacted by online shopping (which is why so many of them now sell groceries). But I don’t believe that they are the only retailers that will be affected. Quite the opposite: Every retailer is or eventually will be impacted by the internet.

This threat is real.

Millennials have no hesitations about buying things online and, in many cases, they would prefer to do so. It has already been well documented that we (I’m a Millennial) don’t like driving as much as previous generations. So what makes you think we’d enjoy the process of driving to a mall?

But the other factor at play, I think, is that malls are no longer the “public space” of young people. Their position as a kind of cultural institution is waning. At the same time, more and more people are craving uniqueness. They like independent shops, not malls that all look and feel the same. And as these young people become old people, we might find that even the A malls start becoming impacted.

I don’t believe, for a second, that retail nodes within cities will ever disappear. But I think our attention would be better spent figuring out what the mall of the 21st century will be, as opposed to hiring PR firms to try and spin doctor our way out of this dead mall phenomenon.

Image: Flickr

I went snowboarding today and so I’ve got it on the brain right now. It’s one of my passions. But besides the actual act of riding down the mountain on a flexible board, there’s something much more about the sport to me.

First, I love the small villages that develop – ideally organically – at the base of ski mountains. Here’s a neat video of Zermatt, Switzerland that makes it look like a “miniature" town. Click here if you can’t see it below.

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And second, I love the vistas that you get. I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but I find that they really pull you away from your everyday life. Here’s a stunning time-lapse video called the Mountains of Valais (Valais is the Swiss canton that Zermatt is located in). You need to watch it. Click here if you can’t see it below.

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The town of Zermatt is almost completely surrounded by high mountains and is home to Switzerland’s highest peak at 15,203 feet above sea level. I think it’s time I added it to my bucket list.