Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 258

Boy, congestion charges are a pain to implement. Back in 2018, I wrote that New York City was considering a congestion charge for drivers entering Manhattan below 60th Street. Then in 2019, about a year later, I followed up with this post saying that the plan could be adopted as early as April of that year!

That didn't exactly happen. But I followed up again with a post in 2022 saying that New York City was still considering a congestion charge. And ultimately, it did finally get approved, even if it did take much longer than expected. It was rebranded a congestion relief zone ("relief" sounds a lot less offensive than "pricing"), and it was set to come into effect on June 30, 2024 .

This remained the situation until the first week of this month, which is when NY Governor Kathy Hochul held a surprise press conference and announced that the congestion relief zone would be placed on "indefinite pause." I think that means cancelled. And it happened less than a month before the state was finally set to start collecting money.

There is a legal question around whether she actually had the authority to intervene in this way, but let's put that aside for now. Irrespective of that, this is a disappointing outcome precisely because we know that road pricing works. If you have a traffic congestion problem, price it, and then you will have less of it.

What's even more disappointing about this particular instance, though, is that many of us were looking to New York City to show us the way. We were looking for the most walkable and transit-rich city in the US to show people that, hey, road pricing works, and it won't decimate your CBD.

It is shocking to me that traffic congestion is allowed persist in the way that it does in our cities, and that there remains zero political will to actually address it. Instead of action, we like to preoccupy ourselves with red herrings. If only we didn't have streetcars, Ubers, and so many bike lanes, then there wouldn't be congestion.

So what hope do we have now that even New York won't do what is bold and right? Lots, as always. Cities, now is your chance to do what New York was too scared to do. Who will lead?

If you happen to be in the market for an Art Nouveau building near the center of Brussels, then you may want to check out this listing from Architecture de Collection. Built in 1897 and designed by architect Victor Horta -- one of the founders of the Art Nouveau movement -- the property consists of three distinct units, including multiple office spaces and a large art gallery.

It's listed for €3,900,000 and has a total of 930 m2. That works out to about €4,194 per square meter or about €390 per square foot (inclusive of 6 parking spaces located in a neighboring building). I've never been to Brussels, nor do I need an office and art gallery there, but this is a beautiful building. If you'd like to learn more, click here .

Photos: Jeroen Verrecht

Apple had plans to make an electric car. Then, earlier this year, it cancelled that project. Now, the plan seems to be to just get Apple CarPlay into everyone else's cars.

This is obviously smart, because it expands the Apple ecosystem, but it also means that they have to make it so that automakers want them in their cars.

And since car companies have their own brands to manage, you end up with a somewhat unique scenario where Apple doesn't own and control both the hardware and software, and it needs to be flexible in order to scale.

This is if they want to control all of this:

The solution: A special co-branded experience that is going to allow car makers to heavily customize the appearance of CarPlay such that it reads as their own brand. This is how the next generation of the software will work and I think it's a fascinating balancing act.

Here's another screenshot:

If you're also interested in this sort of thing, here's a video explaining the new CarPlay's design system. It's primarily aimed at automakers and system developers, but you'll also like it if you're a designer.