Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 297

Many of you have probably heard of the concept of a "digital twin." Put simply, it is a digital representation of a physical thing. This could be a thing that already exists or, in the case of a new building, it could be a thing that you're about to make exist.

But there's no reason to stop at the scale of a building. Right now, there are groups working on modeling entire cities . Sadly, in Ukraine, it is being done to document important buildings that could get destroyed. But in other places, it is being done in order to create a new kind of urban testing environment ( via FT ):

“In the city, you don’t have a development environment; you only have one city. The laboratory is the place where the planners go to test. So test in a digital twin and then develop or implant in the city. That’s going to be the value.”

The thinking is that if you combine a digital twin with good real-time urban data and AI, then you might actually be able to start testing new city building initiatives. For instance, maybe you could ask it: What would happen if we added a traffic lane, here? Would it actually help congestion or would it induce new demand?

It's hard to model this kind of stuff today, which is one of the reasons why there's usually fierce debate about seemingly everything. But if we had accurate models that could tell us something close to reality, that feels like it would be a game changer for city builders.

If you're an architect, you're sort of expected to have a somewhat eccentric home (or at least a really cool home). And that was certainly the case for architect Paul Rudolph . Paul is perhaps best known -- at least in my mind -- for being the chair of Yale's architecture program and for designing its Brutalist building . But he also designed himself a pretty interesting apartment. In 1976, he bought the 19th-century townhouse at 23 Beekman Place in New York. He then constructed himself a now historically-landmarked penthouse on top of it. Now, technically, it is four levels. But spatially, it's more like a series of connected platforms -- 27 of them to be exact. So the penthouse is often described as being 27 levels, and as not having any doors and walls. Because those are totally overrated. I joke, but it's a beautiful and interesting space. And the two founders of New York's Gachot (and their two teenage boys) recently got a chance to live in it for three years. If you'd like to hear and see what that was like, click here .

Photo: Sight Unseen

These are the current (well, 2019) and targeted (2028) mode share splits for Dublin city centre (sourced from here) :

The biggest planned change is a ~41% reduction in cars, taxis & goods entering the city centre. More specifically though, the plan contemplates a reduction in the number of cars in the core. The number of taxis and goods being moved around are both expected to increase.

To achieve this, the city is targeting drivers that pass through rather than stop in the city centre. Supposedly, about two out of every three drivers are currently doing this, and so the goal will be to redirect them.

Though, to be clear, this is not a plan to stop people from driving into the city centre. It is rightly about reducing the amount of road space allocated to private vehicles, prioritizing other modes of transport, and creating more "traffic-free civic spaces" for Dubliners and visitors.

Of course, this is what many cities around the world are trying to do. So perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of this plan is that most Dubliners actually support it.

According to The Irish Times , the plan received more than 3,500 public submissions, and 81% supported "reducing road space for private vehicles to facilitate a more efficient public transport system." Further, 82% said they wanted more pedestrianized public spaces.

There were, however, some concerns expressed. The carpark operators in the city centre are naturally worried about the impact to their businesses. This is expected and self-serving.

Guinness (owned by Diageo) is also asking about how its delivery trucks will get to and from their brewery. This is obviously a crucial consideration. But I'm confident in saying that, whatever gets implemented, I'm sure that nobody is going to mess with the operations of St. James's Gate Brewery.

In fact, I'd be surprised if this weren't written into the Constitution of Ireland somewhere.