Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1454

There’s a lot of buzz around the idea of a “smart city.” IBM is involved . Cisco is involved . And so are many others. But what exactly is a smart city? 

In the Electric City talk below, Adam Greenfield  provides his definition, while at the same time being critical of the ones we currently use today, such as this one: It’s the missing link – the connective tissue – between the real estate and technology sectors. (Personally, I find this definition really interesting.)

He also goes on to argue that the way we’re largely thinking about smart cities today is incorrect. We’re far too centralized and administrative in our thinking. Instead, we should be focused on leveraging the crowds of people in our cities that are now virtually all networked.

He then goes on to list 5 technological preconditions to any smart city:

1. Broadband connectivity

2. Low-cost smartphones or personal devices

3. Commitment to open municipal data

4. Cheap public interfaces

5. Cloud computing infrastructure

If you’re interested in this topic, I suggest you watch his talk. It’s only about 10 minutes long. Click here if you can’t see it below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9keDwTBmZ3o?rel=0]

Update: This post was revised to reflect the fact that Adam Greenfield is “sharply critical” of the real estate + technology definition of a smart city.

About a month ago, a reader of ATC and friend of mine suggested that I write a post on some of the common misconceptions that people hold about cities. I immediately thought it was a good idea and so I started a draft post with some of my initial thoughts.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been collecting fallacies as they came to me, waiting until I reached a nice round number like 5. Well today, I reached that number. So here are 5 misconceptions that I think people often hold about cities. If you have any others, or if you disagree, please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

1. Adding more lanes will solve traffic congestion

There’s a saying I read somewhere: Adding more lanes to solve traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to deal with obesity. I can’t remember where I read it, but I like it a lot because it gets at the heart of this fallacy: Trying to build our way out of traffic congestion has proven time and time again to be a losing battle. In fact, it has been shown to make traffic even worse as a result of “induced demand.” The more roads you build, the more people drive.

2. A suburban home is always cheaper

While it is true that the direct cost of a suburban home is usually less than one in the center of a city, many people often neglect to factor in the indirect costs of a home purchase – the biggest of which is usually transportation costs.

As you move out from the center of a city and home prices start to fall, I like to think of it as transfer from housing costs to transportation costs. In other words, what you save on the price of your home, simply gets used to pay for a car (or perhaps a second car), as well as the additional time you’re going to spend traveling.

So how much is an hour of your time worth? Have you ever attached a value to it and added it to the price of your home? Because if you factor in transportation costs and your time, you might find that your suburban home is actually more expensive .

3. Opposing new development and advocating for affordable housing is a responsible way to build cities

Community opposition is a big part of the development game. But what a lot of people don't think about is that when you oppose or stop new development (let’s say it’s residential), the demand for that housing doesn’t go away. 

In fact, all it does is create more pressure on the housing stock that does exist and foster an environment where the rich will starting outbidding the poor for housing. More simply, you end up creating a supply constrained market and that drives up home prices. Demand > supply. So in reality, opposing new development and, at the same time, advocating for more affordable housing is a contradiction.

As a comparative example, let’s think about another basic human need: water.

Imagine that you could only buy water from stores (it didn’t come out of taps). But that every time the delivery people were trying to bring more water to these stores, that there was a group of people who fought and opposed them. These opposers already had enough water for themselves and they didn’t want additional water being sold as it would bring new customers into their local grocery store and disrupt their way of life.

This, of course, caused the price of water to rise as the rich people started offering more for the water. This in turn made it difficult for the poorer folk to afford any water at all. But instead of allowing the delivery people to simply deliver more water, it was decided that out of the water that they have, that some of it should be earmarked as “affordable water” and priced accordingly. That would guarantee that the poorer folk could still have some.

Does that sound like a sensible solution to you?

4. Developers don’t want to build big apartments

Here in Toronto there’s a somewhat pervasive belief that developers don’t want to build big condo and apartment units. The thought is that small units are more profitable and so developers are doing everything they can to squeeze people into small units. But I’ve argued before that this isn’t the case . It’s far more nuanced than that.

To illustrate this point, imagine you’re a developer debating between building two 500 square foot condo units or one 1,000 square foot condo unit. If you build the two 500 square foot condo units you’ll need 2 x kitchens, 2 x entry doors, 2 x separate color selection appointments, 2 x separate PDI appointments , and you’ll have to pay development charges on two 1 bedroom units (to name only a few things).

On the other hand, if you build one 1,000 square foot condo unit you’re only going to need 1 of each of the items listed above and you’ll be paying development charges on only one 2 bedroom condo unit (which currently works out to be less than what you’d be paying for the two 1 bedroom units – it’s not quite double).

Which one do you think would be cheaper to build?

5. Technology is going to make cities irrelevant

Lastly, during the dot com era there was a growing belief that technology and the internet were going to make cities and real estate irrelevant. Capital was flowing out of real estate and into tech companies, because that was seen as the future. Bricks and mortar were passé.

But since then we’ve learned that it’s actually the opposite. Paradoxically, technology has made cities even more important . The returns to being smart and talented are huge in the right place. So much so that our biggest concern shouldn’t be whether cities are going to become irrelevant, but whether we’re concentrating too much wealth and talent in only a select few.

So there you have it, 5 misconceptions about cities. I’m sure there are many others, so I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.

The Old Urbanist has just published an informative post called “ Where Zoning Went Wrong .” In it, he talks about some of the defining characterstics of American city planning and suggests that the delegation of planning authority from states to local municipalities is what has caused many of the challenges that city builders now face.

But before we get into that discussion, let’s outline the characeristics. By way of Edward Bassett’s handbook on zoning (1922) , the Old Urbanist outlines 9 characeristics of American planning. They are :

1. Approval of the exclusion of commercial activity from residential zones

2. Failure to disapprove of the exclusion of multifamily from residential zones

3. Extreme deference to localities

4. Insistence on a “comprehensive” plan

5. Irreconcilable conflict between planning and zoning

6. Heavy reliance on legal process as a substitute for sound policymaking

7. Rejection of aesthetic concerns

8. Concern with protecting the wealth of well-to-do homeowners

9. Lack of comparative focus

If you’re a planner or city geek, some of these items will be familiar to you – particularly the first one. Single-use zoning (or Euclidean zoning)  is widely criticized as being hugely detrimental to cities, which is why mixed-use is so much in vogue right now. We’ve realized that there are tremendous benefits to creating neighborhoods and precincts where people can live, work, play, and learn. And not just do one of those things.

But one point that somewhat surprised me was number 3: the deference to localities. The Old Urbanist’s argument is that around the world – from Germany to Japan – state and federal governments play a much more active role in city planning as compared to the US. And that the result is a different kind of city. As one example, most other countries don’t have single-family detached-only residential zones. The US does.

Now, you could argue that it’s partially cultural. The US is all about individualism, whereas many other countries around the world have a greater sense of collectivism. But as the Old Urbanist suggests, it could also be because local municipalities are more prone to NIMBYism , which can ultimately lead to downzoning and more restrictive land use policies. Interesting.

It was surprising to me though because I’m a firm believer in strong cities. They drive the economy and I generally believe that they deserve to look after themselves. And so could it really be that they need higher levels of government to keep advocacy groups and community opposition in check?

Immediately I thought of the planning environment here in Toronto and Ontario. The Places to Grow Act , which is largely responsible for the intensification we’re seeing across the region, is provincial legislation. And “ the Board ” (OMB) that hears appeals arising from the municipal planning level is also provincial. So in other words, provincial decisions trump municipal ones.

Many people believe that the OMB should be abolished . But probably an equal number of people believe that it’s critical to keeping development moving in Ontario. And, given our discussion here, it could be keeping our land use policies in check.

But at the same time, I wonder if there isn’t a way to structure local planning such that it doesn’t succumb to individual interests and instead keeps the greater city building agenda at the forefront. If you have any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.

Image: Old Urbanist