Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 355

IKEA opened its first permanent showroom in 1953. And by 1965, it had opened a 500,000 sf flagship store on the outskirts of Stockholm.

Supposedly , the inspiration for this new store was Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York. Inspired by its continuous looping design, IKEA wanted to create a real-life version of its well-known catalog. This led to the current maze-like design where you wander through staged living spaces and get excited to buy lots of things.

However, as IKEA began to open in more urban locations it actually started doing away with this prototypical design. The thinking, which seems perfectly reasonable, was that mazes weren't appropriate for smaller and more urban locations. These customers would want to pop in, quickly get what they need, and then leave.

But it turns out they were wrong. Their customers are telling them the opposite: they still want mazes . In other words, they want a curated experience that helps them figure out what to buy. According to IKEA: "People buy more when they are shown more." Sounds right. And so IKEA is now working to make its urban stores more, you know, maze-like.

The company has already done this in cities like Vienna and Paris, and apparently it consistently leads to higher sales. It's a good reminder that (1) humans are still humans regardless of where they live and (2) if you want people to visit and linger in your physical store, it's good practice to curate experiences.

P.S. I love IKEA.

The Tour Montparnasse in Paris recently turned 50. We spoke about that  over here . But having visited the tower last week, including its top observation deck, I can now confidently say that I understand why many/most Parisians dislike it so much.

It is a complex that could be in any city in the world and it is clear that it has been seeing disinvestment for quite some time (presumably due to its upcoming renovation). 

However, a lot of the discussion seems to be focused on how its built form is a towering contrast to the rest of Paris. This is, of course, correct. But the same is true of the Eiffel Tower. One big and important difference is how these two towers meet the ground.

La Tour Eiffel sits in a beautiful landscaped park where people sit and hang out (photo by me):

Whereas the Tour Montparnasse is disconnected from its surrounding context. It feels like that train station on the wrong side of town (photos from Google Streetview):

So it's no wonder that its height gets picked on. What is implicit in this treatment of the ground plane is a belief that this tower is not worthy of celebrating. It does not deserve a beautiful park. And it does not deserve to be a ceremonial view terminus like every other icon in Paris.

Thankfully, the current design for its renovation appears to address this (rendering via  Nouvelle AOM ):

And this is arguably the most important design move. Ironically, what happens at the ground level could be what makes people finally appreciate what happens up top.

Yesterday I watched this three-part series on the accents of English-speaking North America:

• Part 1

• Part 2

• Part 3 (includes Toronto, Vancouver, and Newfoundland)

The videos are by dialect coach Erik Singer and, I must say, his ability to fluidly move through all of North America's accents is incredibly impressive. As I was watching the videos, I kept thinking to myself, "I don't know what this guy actually sounds like when he's not putting on an accent."

The interesting thing about accents is that they really speak to settlement and migration patterns. In other words, who came in contact with who, and who didn't come in contact with others? Geographic isolation also leads to unique accents.

The other ingredient is time. The reason the UK, for example, has so any regional accents is that it had the time for them to develop. On the other hand, if you look to most of the southwestern United States, there is broadly a kind of generic American accent (with the exception of some California and Utah nuances according to Erik). This is because these settlements are relatively young compared to say the northeastern US.

For Canada, the defining feature is " Canadian raising ". It is what leads to the stereotype of us saying things like "aboot" and "hoose". It doesn't sound exactly like this, but there is a way in which we tend to pronounce diphthongs (two adjacent vowel sounds) with open-vowel starting points.

Open-vowels are sounds where our tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of our mouth. If you try saying "about" to yourself out loud right now you'll notice that this is what happens. Your tongue drops. And it is these instances that lead to "Canadian raising".

The other thing that I find fascinating is how quickly language convergence can happen. I lived in Philadelphia for 3 years (for grad school) and when I would come home my parents used to tell me that I sounded fully American. I guess subconsciously we feel a need to assimilate.

If you're also fascinated by accents, I highly recommend you check out Erik's videos.