Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 218

Elevate Miami, which I wrote about last month , just announced a number of new speakers and, more specifically, a number of new high-rise development projects that will be discussed at the conference. They are (not an exhaustive list):

• Dolce & Gabbana Residences, Miami

• Mercedes-Benz Places, Miami

• Aman and One High Line Residences, New York

• Indian Creek Residences & Yacht Club, Miami Beach

• Edition Residences, Miami

• AGE360, Curitiba, Brazil

What should be clear from this list is that Miami is like a different planet. It is one of the places where the richest people in the world go to spend their money, much of it on real estate. Because of this, you can think of this real estate as a luxury good, which is why so many of them are now branded.

In economic terms, a luxury good is typically defined as a good where demand increases -- more than what is proportional -- as incomes rise. For example, if a person's income goes up by 1%, but their demand for a particular thing goes up by 5%, then this thing would be considered a "luxury good," as opposed to a "normal good."

The technical definition is an income elasticity of demand that is greater than 1. More simply, this just means that as someone starts making more money, they will start spending a greater percentage of their income on luxury goods. This is in contrast to "necessity goods," where it doesn't matter how much money you make, you only need so much toilet paper, for example.

What all of this suggests is that as people from all over the world get rich, they are likely to want more branded residences in a place like Miami. However, the flip side of this dynamic is that as incomes fall, the demand for luxury goods should, in theory, also fall more than what is proportional. It works both ways.

So I'll be curious to hear -- from the developers at Elevate -- how things are going right now. We're at a time in the real estate cycle where everyone is rethinking their strategies. Or maybe, Miami truly is a different planet.

I was at a dinner recently where the topic of crypto came up. Only two of us at the table were full-on believers, and the rest were generally sceptics. So naturally, the two of us started talking about why we think crypto is important. But in moments like this, it always becomes immediately clear that crypto is really hard to explain in a succinct and compelling way. Like, I don't know how to do it. Thankfully, venture firm a16z just released their latest State of Crypto report , and so here are a handful of interesting takeaways.

The number of crypto addresses continues to grow. Currently it's at an all-time high of approximately 220 million, which roughly mirrors the adoption curve of the internet back in the 90s (log scale). It is, however, important to note that one crypto address does not necessarily correspond to one human being. For example, I have many different crypto addresses. So if you dig a little deeper, you'll see that their net estimate is somewhere between 30-60 million real human beings transacting using crypto every month. This is the estimated active user base and it continues to grow.

The number of mobile crypto wallet users is also growing rapidly outside of the US, namely in countries like Nigeria, India, and Argentina. This is the result of a number of factors: population growth, mobile phone adoption, government support, inflation, and many others. I mean, since 2010, the Argentine Peso has lost basically 99% of its value against the USD. So of course you'd rather put your money somewhere else, such as in stablecoins.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that have their value pegged to something else, such as a fiat currency. Today, they are one of the most popular crypto products and virtually all of them (more than 99%) are pegged to the USD dollar. This is viewed by some as an opportunity to strengthen the dominance of the US dollar at a time when it's waning (see above). But more importantly, stablecoins already serve two important functions in the market: one, it's as stable as the US dollar; and two, the cost of sending a stablecoin anywhere in the world is now basically free. Say goodbye to bank wire transfers.

It's worth reiterating that a16z is a venture capital firm that is heavily invested in the crypto space. And so reports like this are naturally a form of marketing and a form of lobbying. Still, there's a lot of great information in here that you can use to form your own opinions about the sector. It may not be succinct, but if you take the time, I think you'll find it compelling.

https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1845875114396750004

Today, the government of Ontario announced legislation that, if passed, would require municipalities to receive approval from the province before installing any bike lane that would result in the removal of lanes for traffic . And in order to receive such an approval, municipalities would need to demonstrate that the proposed bike lane(s) won't have a negative impact on vehicle traffic. To be clear, municipalities should still be free to remove lanes for other purposes -- such as on-street parking -- but not for bike lanes.

There's a lot that can and will be said about this announcement. I'm also aware that I have my biases. I'm an urbanist. I live in a walkable neighborhood. And I enjoy biking, a lot -- both to get around and for fun. So I think it's clear that this announcement was designed to appeal to a specific audience: those that drive in from the suburbs and who are deeply frustrated. This is somebody doing something. Never mind that the new Eglinton LRT line isn't open yet and nobody knows when it will actually open, look over here at these annoying cyclists.

The problem with this line of thinking is that it's not going to fix our traffic . The way you make things better in a big global city with lots of demand for road space is to reduce car dependency. This is not a popular thing to say, but it's the reality. And broadly speaking, this is done in two ways. One, you provide great alternatives. And two, you price roads accordingly, through things like congestion charges. Incidentally, this also creates a virtuous cycle, because the latter raises money for the former.

In many ways, we've been getting better at number one. In 2015, Bike Share Toronto recorded 665,000 trips. Since then, ridership has increased every year. In 2023, the network recorded 5.7 million trips. And this year, the number is expected to exceed 6 million . This is not nothing. This is a lot of people riding around on bikes, some of whom may have instead opted to drive or take an Uber. And I think there's no question that this continual increase in ridership is at least partially supported by the fact that we've been creating more bike lanes.

That said, I think it's clear that to continue to move forward as a city we're going to need to start collecting far better urban data. We need to know things like how many cars and bikes are on every street and how fast they're moving. (AI can do this, right? ) This way we can continually optimize for moving the most number of people as efficiently possible. And if it turns out that I'm wrong, and clamping down on bike lanes and having more people drive is the most efficient, I'll of course accept that. Just show me the data.