Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 266

Since the 1940s, the US has been adding roughly 9 million new homeowning households about every 10 years. This, after all, is a fundamental component of the American Dream. But Aziz Sunderji -- who writes over at Home Economics -- has recently been arguing that this 80-year boom is now at an inflection point. And it is largely because the rate of population growth in the US is now declining. Here's his chart , which uses data from the US Census Bureau and the World Bank:

In fact, for the first time ever, the Census Bureau is now forecasting the US population to start declining . The current forecast has its population reaching a high of 370 million in 2080 and then declining to 366 million by 2100. But even before these far off dates, organic growth is expected to turn negative in less than 15 years (see above). So yeah, it makes sense that this would impact the real estate sector.

For more on the future of homeownership, check out Aziz's Home Economics .

Resonance Consultancy, which is a placemaking firm that we have spoken about before on the blog, is working on a new America's Best Cities report . And as part of this, they've been surveying Americans about which cities they would most like to live in and visit. The result is a list of the most "desirable" US cities that looks like this:

1. New York

2. Miami

3. Los Angeles

4. Las Vegas

5. San Diego

6. Chicago

7. Seattle

8. San Francisco

9. Houston

10. Denver

The long and the short of it seems to be that people generally want to live in the places where they like to travel. But what's interesting is that if you look at the US cities that have actually grown the most in absolute numbers over the last few years (specifically April 2020 to July 2023), the list transforms into this:

1. Dallas (+462,639)

2. Houston (+360,649)

3. Phoenix (+219,008)

4. Atlanta (+200,414)

5. Austin (+189,896)

6. Tampa (+167,672)

7. San Antonio (+145,884)

8. Charlotte (+144,767)

9. Orlando (+144,542)

10. Jacksonville (+107,396)

The only city that shows up on both is Houston.

What this suggests is that cities very much have brands. And when you ask people where they'd ideally like to live, they think of the sexiest ones. Places like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and so on. But it when it comes to actually moving somewhere and paying for a home, there are clearly other realities to consider -- the most important of which is probably affordability.

I just joined Warpcast . You can find my profile, here .

At first glance, Warpcast is going to look a lot like X. But instead of tweets, you cast. There are also various topic channels, similar to how Reddit works. But the most important difference is that Warpcast is a client for the Farcaster protocol, which is a social network built on Ethereum. This means that it is a decentralized social network.

You won't see of any this if you decide to sign up. All of the esoteric crypto things are hidden in the background. But it's there. And it ultimately means that, as a user, you get to own your online identity and whatever content and following you create. Meaning, you can take it with you if you decide you no longer want to use Warpcast and instead want to access the network through another client.

It also means that software developers now have a real incentive to build things on top of the protocol, because unlike with a centralized service like X, they can be confident that they won't get the rug pulled out from underneath them. And herein lies the feature that will ultimately lead to an enormous amount of new ideas and innovation.

In real estate terms, you can think of developing on top of a centralized service like building within a theme park owned by a single company. The theme park might want you to build on their land, right now, but if at some point it no longer suits their business needs, they can always change the game on you.

On the other hand, building in a city on land you own outright is a lot like developing on top of a decentralized service. Sure, you need roads and municipal infrastructure to service your land (think of these like the above protocol), but you generally don't need to worry that the city might wake up one day and remove all of this important infrastructure. It's a given. And that's a fundamental difference, even if the buildings might look the same in the end.

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson once explained it in this way , “don’t be a Google bitch, don’t be a Facebook bitch, and don’t be a Twitter bitch. Be your own bitch.” What he meant by this is that if you build on someone else's land, then you're opening yourself up to being their bitch. What you want to be is your own bitch. And similar to how our cities work, this is the potential of decentralized services.

As I write this post, I currently have 6 followers on Warpcast. If you'd like to be number 7, you can follow me here .