Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1510

If you check out the “ What I read ” page that I recently added to Architect This City, you might notice a blog by Charlie Gardner called the Old Urbanist . I discovered it a few months ago (when he added ATC to his blog roll) and it’s good stuff.

Last week he posted this interesting piece comparing homeownership rates and house sizes in both Mexico and the US. His finding is that there’s a fundamental mismatch in America in terms of the size of housing and the size of households. One and two person households now represent more than half of the market, and are on the rise, and yet 40% of houses in the US have 3 bedrooms.

Because of this mismatch, he’s arguing that households are being poorly served by the US housing market and that it’s driving down homeownership levels. It currently sits around 65% , which is a drop from over 69% during the mid 2000s. Contrast this to Mexico, where there’s a greater number of one and two person households and the homeownership rate is 80%! Oh, and where only 6% of homes are financed using a mortgage .

So what the Old Urbanist is suggesting is that we need to embrace smaller homes. He doesn’t explicitly say it, but he mentions the opportunity to redevelop laneways and alleys, which many of you will know I fully agree with . It’s a great post and I suggest you have a read if this topic interests you.

Growing up, I had one of the best English teachers around. He was the kind of English teacher who would dim the lights, light incense and play Bob Marley in the midst of class. He had also previously taught in Jamaica, which might help to explain this behaviour.

I had him as a teacher in both elementary school and in high school. All in all, he probably taught me 3 or 4 years of English–excluding the fact that he was also the coach of my high school basketball team (which I was on).

But more than just being a cool guy, he drilled a number of important takeaways and life lessons into his students. Still to do this day I remember and try and follow them. And I know that many of my classmates do the same. So today, I’d like to share 3 of them with you.

1. Don’t say umm

We all say “umm” from time to time to fill in our sentences when we can’t think fast enough or we don’t know what to say, but it sounds awful. It also makes you sound indecisive and less clear about the message you’re trying to get across. 

If we ever said “umm” in class he would make us repeat our sentence again and again until we said it without saying “umm.” He would literally stand there saying: “Start again. Start again. Start again.”

Similarly, he wouldn’t allow us to say “like”, unless we were using it to truly express that something had the same qualities as something else. But if you just said like for no reason, he would say: “Is it like that or is it that?” Again, it’s about being clear and precise in your language.

2. Don’t use very

By using adverbs such as very and extremely, you’re taking the easy way out. There’s always a better word or way to convey your message. Don’t say you’re very tired; say you’ve reached a point of debilitating exhaustion. Better yet, make up your own word (he never said that). Very is boring, lazy and uninventive.

3. Just do it

When we used to ask him how long he wanted our essays to be, he would always reply with the same thing: “As long as a piece of string.” And when we initially asked him how long a piece of string was, he would then say: “Just do it.” That was his message over and over again to us: when in doubt, just do it. We eventually stopped asking.

At the time, I never really understood how profound this simple message was. Initially I thought he just wanted us to get on with things but, in fact, he was saying so much more. He was telling us to stop relying on others for direction. Stop following orders, and take initiative. Just do it. Poke the box, dammit .

I’ve had this post sitting in my draft folder for a few months now. I don’t often deviate from city related topics, but I wanted to put this one out there. So if you’re reading this Mr. Mott-Trille, umm, like, thanks so very much! :)

I’m in the midst of reading Ben Horowitz’s new book called “The Hard Thing About Hard Things.” You may have noticed all of the random quotes I’m posting over on my tumblog . It’s good stuff.

At one point, he talks about two types of metaphorical debt: technical debt and management debt. Technical debt is when you write shitty (computer) code that addresses the short-term, but eventually needs to be rewritten in the future. Similarly, management debt is when you make bad and short-term management decisions that don’t serve you well in the longer term. In both cases, the debt compounds and, when you eventually pay for it, it’s got a lot of interest on it.

This got me thinking: Is there an equivalent for cities? Is there such a thing as urban debt? I figured there must be since we’re an impatient society obsessed with instant gratification.

I then remembered a great quote that I saw either on Twitter or Tumblr that I think can be credited to Lewis Mumford :

Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity.

Neither solution is sustainable and eventually you’re going to have to pay the consequences. In the case of cities, I think the answer is transit.

And transit (disinvestment) is actually a really good example of what might be considered urban debt, because it requires long term planning—something that often conflicts with our political system. Politicians want quick wins.

But I think it’s important to keep in mind that when we fail to make the hard decisions today, they only become more costly to deal with tomorrow. Quick wins might make for good politics, but they often don’t make for great city building.