Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1459

“Toronto is a city that has long struggled to make any sort of impression on the imagination.”

That is how Monocle correspondent Christopher Frey started his recent architectural feature on Toronto’s iconic City Hall . To watch the video click here . It’s about 5 minutes long.

As a born and raised Torontonian who loves this city, I absolutely hate that sort of introduction. But at the same time, it doesn’t surprise me. Growing up in this city, there were always the haters. However, I think it’s important to keep 2 things in mind.

Firstly, Toronto has gone through a dramatic transformation over the last decade or so. In fact, I recently had a friend say to me: “Brandon, 10 years ago you told me that Toronto was going to be a super cool global city. I didn’t believe you then. But you were right.” This is what I was getting at in my Guardian Cities piece when I talked about how people are becoming noticeably more passionate about this city. (I actually wrote about what my friend said but they edited that part out.)

Secondly, if you’ve ever read Seth Godin’s book All Marketers Are Liars , you might remember this line:

“We believe what we want to believe, and once we believe something, it becomes a self-fulfilling truth.” -Seth Godin

— Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)

July 17, 2014

To illustrate what he means by this, Godin uses the example–among many others–of Riedel wine glasses . Riedel is a high end glassware company founded on the belief that every type of wine needs its own unique glass shape. And indeed, their customers believe that the right glass makes all the difference in terms of how their wine will taste. That’s why they buy them.

However, when you blindfold those same people, they are no longer able to tell the difference between a Riedel wine glass and some cheap alternative. The wine all of a sudden tastes the same. What that tells us is that when we believe something is supposed to be better, we actually experience it differently. You could say that we’re actually lying to ourself.

And I’ve thought about this same phenomenon when it comes to cities. When people visit a place like New York they’re supposed to like it. That’s what everybody tells them. New York is great. You’ll love it. But ultimately, that “supposed to” changes how people experience the city.

Which is why when Toronto gets introduced as being bland and banal I get upset. Not only because I disagree, but because I know it’s creating a “supposed to” in somebody’s mind. And that’s not the story we should be telling as a city.

Image: Wikipedia

I’ve been following Airbnb pretty much since the beginning. The company has always fascinated me because I saw it as being less about technology and more about travel, hospitality, community and, in my view, real estate.

An office building is just a set of spaces that get rented out on long term leases. A hotel building is just a set of spaces that get rented out on short term leases (one night at a time). And Airbnb spaces are simply extra or “found spaces” – such as an extra bedroom – that could never really be rented out at any sort of scale before. But then Airbnb came along, built a community around it, and empowered everybody to make money off that found, extra space. I think that’s pretty neat.

Well today, Airbnb unveiled an entirely new logo, brand, and expression . It’s all about belonging, and their new logo is called the Bélo. Here’s a quick video that they call “the story of the symbol of belonging”. If you can’t see it below, click here .

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hs0C2UvVBY?rel=0]

What’s interesting about this new expression is that it’s a perfect example of Simon Sinek’s belief that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And in this case, Airbnb’s why is community, trust, belonging, and a sense of place. Talk about emotive.

In both the above video and in CEO Brian Chesky’s blog post today , reference is made to our cities and towns, and the fact that as they continue to get larger, we’re also becoming increasingly more disconnected. Things have gotten impersonal. But Airbnb is bringing back that sense of belonging.

On a less emotive level, what it also does is set Airbnb up for expansion.

Chesky has said before that the company wants to own the entire travel experience – from the moment you leave your home to the moment you return. So presumably a big impetus behind the rebrand was to develop something that could become ubiquitous across a number of different products and services. Which is why it makes perfect sense that they would encourage people to design their own versions of the logo .

So while the rebrand has received a lot of criticism today – some people say it looks like a vagina – I wouldn’t discount it just yet. There are bigger plans in store.

One of the reasons I’m so fascinated by cities is that it’s becoming increasingly more important to get them right. From about 1831 to 1925, London was the largest city in the world . Its population went from somewhere around 1.5 to 2 million people to nearly 7.5 million. London surpassed Beijing as the largest city and was then surpassed by New York.

Today our largest cities are significantly bigger. Tokyo has almost 40 million people and London doesn’t even make the top 10. But there’s also a broader shift taking place. According to a new report by the United Nations , most of the world’s largest cities will be in Africa and Asia by 2030. Here’s a chart from Quartz:

And the reason for this shift is because Asia and Africa are newly urbanizing, whereas the rest of the world has already urbanized. In North America, over 80% of people already live in cities.

But even though Asia and Africa are following a trend that has already taken place in the rest of the world, it doesn’t mean we should assume we know what we’re doing. Having spent time in cities like Dhaka, I can attest to the many challenges that these mega-cities are facing and will continue to face as people flood in from the rural areas looking for economic opportunities.

So while it’s important that we talk about strategies for reviving cities like Detroit – which has a population somewhere around 700,000 - 800,000 people – we should also keep in mind that we have some significant challenges ahead of us in terms of creating a sustainable urban planning agenda for the world.