Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 339

My construction partner sent me an email last week that said: "Check out Kongo Gumi. Search them. Pretty cool history." So I flagged the email and made a mental note to come back to it over the weekend when I had more time. I finally looked them up this morning and, he was right, it is a pretty cool history.

It turns out that they are/were the oldest continuously operated company in the world. Founded in 578 to build Japan's first Buddhist temple, the construction company was active for over 1,400 years. They eventually became insolvent in the mid-2000s and the company was then purchased by Takamatsu Construction Group; but before that they had successfully operated across 40 generations.

That is something that doesn't happen very often.

Supposedly, there were two important ingredients contributing to this long run: (1) They forced sons-in-law to take the family name. This ensured that the line continued even when there were generations of only daughters. And (2), they were in the business of building Buddhist temples. So as long as there were millions of Buddhist followers in the world, they were ensured work.

I'm not sure what happened to make the company insolvent in 2005-2006, but imagine the pressure facing each subsequent generation. I know I wouldn't want to be the generation that ultimately took down the 1,400+ year old family business.

For more on the history of the company, click here .

Photo by  Ken S  on  Unsplash

Earlier this month, Resonance Consultancy published its 2024 World's Best Cities ranking. Or, in their words: its definitive power ranking of the 100 global cities that it believes are shaping tomorrow.

These are always fun to flip through, which is I guess why people do them and why people look at them; but I do think it's important to look at the underlying methodologies. Otherwise, what does "world's best" even really mean?

In this case, they're looking at global cities through the lens of three key categories: livability, lovability, and prosperity. More specifically though, the report looks at factors that are demonstrated to have moderate to strong correlations with attracting talent, visitors, and/or businesses.

This makes it distinct from rankings that are more focused on things like livability. Because according to Resonance, factors such as commute times, crime, and housing affordability don't tend to correlate strongly (at least in the short-term) with a city's ability to attract talent, tourism, and investment.

While this may seem a bit counterintuitive, it does also make sense. People don't move to London because they're looking for affordable housing and a reasonable commute. They move to London because they want to be in the center of the world.

And yes, London tops their power ranking:

The top of this ranking isn't all that surprising. It's the usual suspects. But I continue to be impressed by how quickly Dubai has transformed itself into a top global city. Also impressive is how Dublin punches above its weight of just over 500,000 people.

I am medium surprised to see Hong Kong nowhere on this first page (there are another 65 cities not shown here). It usually features as a top global city. But presumably this is the result of Beijing meddling. People are looking elsewhere -- like Singapore.

For the full list of cities and to download a copy of the report, click here .

There are about 2.1 million people who live in Paris ( 2023 figure ).

The metro area is, of course, much larger with over 13 million people. But if you look at Paris proper -- that being the 20 arrondissements within the Boulevard Périphérique -- it's the 2.1 million number.

The footprint of this area is 105 km2, and so that means that Paris has an average population density within its administrative boundaries of just over 20,000 people per km2.

This is about 4.5x more dense than the City of Toronto as a whole. Which is why if you overlay the outline of Paris on top of Toronto, as Gil Meslin has done over here , you get this:

https://twitter.com/g_meslin/status/1715479207315198004?s=20

To be fair, there are pockets of Toronto that are very dense, even by Paris standards. North St. James Town, for example, was estimated at over 44,000 people per km2 back in 2016. But generally speaking, Toronto is not that.

And Gil's maps do an excellent job of demonstrating it.