Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1519

If you had to pick one, which city would you consider to be the “capital of the world?” There are no other instructions. Just select whatever first comes to mind. If for whatever reason you can’t see the poll below, click here .

If you’re curious about where the above list of cities came from, they’re simply all of the Alpha++, Alpha+ and Alpha cities according to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network ( GaWC ). The list may be a few years old though.

I woke up this morning in the City of London, Ontario, to a parking ticket. Apparently, I had committed an infraction by parking between the hours of 3:00 am - 5:00 am.

Here’s what the sign looked like, directly in front of my car. There were no other signs nearby other than one at the end of the street telling me where the parking area stopped.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but based on the signage provided, there’s absolutely no way for me to know that parking is not permitted between the precise hours of 3:00 am and 5:00 am. And truthfully, this seems like an odd set of hours to want to enforce. 

If there were some feasible way for me to fight this ticket, I would. But since cities make this purposely difficult, I’m just going to pay it. Even though I feel like fighting it out of principle.

But this post isn’t for me to complain about a parking ticket.

When I got the ticket this morning, it reminded me of a “theory” that someone once told me at an  Urban Land Institute conference a few years back in Washington D.C. I actually can’t remember who it was, but the idea was that you can tell how global a city is by the quality of its signage and wayfinding signage .

I’m intrigued by this proposition because, if you think about it, a city unaccustomed to receiving outsiders has less of a need for quality signage. As a local, you begin to create your own mental map of the city and you intuitively start to understand what’s allowed, such as where you can park. The importance of good signage somewhat diminishes.

But outsiders are coming with no understanding. They’re looking for directions and instructions. So you should make sure that your city is giving it to them. However, at the same time, there are lots of big global cities, such as New York, which are or were notorious for bad signage . So signage quality is probably not perfectly correlated with globalization.

Regardless, signage matters. It’s one of the ways in which a city talks at you and others. How clearly does your city communicate?

A few years ago during a class at the Rotman School when we were all introducing ourselves, I had a professor ask why all architects seem to want to become developers. He asked it because there were 3 architects (or at least architect-trained) in the class who were either currently working in development or planning to move into development following their MBA.

Indeed, it is pretty common for architects to make this jump. So much so that I’m often asked (as recently as last night) about how I made the transition from architecture to development. Given the frequency of this question, I figured it would be worthwhile to turn my response into a blog post—particularly since I did make the decision to write more about what it means to be a developer .

The first thing I should say is that I’ve never really worked as an architect. I interned at an architecture firm one summer, but that’s about it. I’m not licensed as an architect and I have no plans of ever becoming licensed. Therefore, I’m technically not allowed to call myself one, which is why I often say “architect-trained.”

However, this doesn’t mean that I didn’t face a certain degree of stigmatization while I was completing my Master of Architecture and looking for my first real estate job. The real estate community often perceives architects as being impractical, fanciful and generally poor with money and business.

Part of this, I think, has to the with the fact that design schools often don’t like to talk about making money. It’s taboo. Design is supposed to be something purer and grander than money. Maybe that’s why it’s not uncommon for even the most famous of architects—such as Louis Kahn— to die deeply in debt .

But I think this perspective is bullshit. Which is why I spent every single one of my electives during my Master of Architecture over at the business school taking finance, economics and real estate classes. I was determined to be just as good as the MBAs at “the numbers.” And even became a teaching assistant for a real estate economics class.

So my first piece of advice to architects looking to make the transition to development is that you need to overcome the perception that you don’t understand money and business. You need to demonstrate that you can crunch numbers and that you know how to make money for investors.

This could mean getting an MBA or Master of Real Estate Development, taking extracurricular classes, starting a blog, or just convincing somebody in real estate to give you a chance so that you have it on your resume. Whatever it is, you need to reposition your personal brand so that it no longer says architect.

This is important because, from my experience, if a real estate company is used to hiring people with business degrees, then it’s going to be tough to get them to pay attention to you and your architecture degree. They just don’t understand the value that you might be able to bring to the organization (and you do bring value).

My second piece of advice is to find developers who have an architecture background and specifically reach out to them. There are lots of us. They’ll be sympathetic to your background and will probably give you more time of day. But you’ll need to come prepared with the right tool chest. Demonstrate to them that you have the skills necessary to be a developer (see above).

As I’ve said before , developers are, in many ways, a jack of all trades. So the more you can master all of those trades, the more likely you’ll get some hiring manager to take a risk on you. But when you do finally make that transition, I believe that you’ll be better for it.

Not only because architects understand the building process, but because architects are trained to have an inherent sense of responsibility for the built environment. We get upset when building are ugly and public spaces suck. But we also know what will make them better.

The way I see it, by becoming a developer you’re really just learning how to execute on your ideas. It’s one thing to know what makes a building beautiful, but it’s another thing to go out and raise the capital and build the damn thing.

So I don’t regret any of my architecture degrees. I got so much out of them. And I firmly believe that design is only going to become more important. Designers, after all, are the new rock stars . We just need a few more business and entrepreneurship classes in architecture schools.