Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 473

I'm not all that familiar with Stockholm's housing market, but according to this recent article , it would appear that, like most big cities, there isn't enough affordable housing to go around. This is despite the fact that everyone in Sweden is technically entitled to it.

As of December 2021, there were 736,560 people (in Sweden) in the queue for a rent-controlled apartment, resulting in an average wait time of about 9.2 years. So basically what you want to do is put yourself on the list as soon as you turn 18. And then hope that at some point in the future you'll be granted an affordable apartment.

Given this dynamic, it makes sense there would be a long waitlist. If everyone is entitled to a rent-controlled apartment, you are effectively giving people two options: pay the market price or put yourself on this list, wait for a decade, and then pay less than the market price.

Why wouldn't you at least try to pay less?

The problem with this approach is that supply will almost certainly never keep pace with demand. It also appears to be fuelling a robust (and I guess illegal) secondary sublet market. Because if you have a below-market contract that is yours to keep forever and that lots of other people want, you have a valuable asset.

Getting housing right certainly isn't easy.

One way to shop for things is to make a list of all the things you want and/or need, and then go to a location that sells as many of those things as possible. As I understand, this is more or less what people do when they go to a place like Costco.

Another way to shop is to just order things piecemeal, and have them delivered to you when you want them and in the least amount of time possible. And it turns out that this latter option is pretty popular.

It is popular because it involves (1) not going anywhere and (2) not having to make a list and think proactively about the things you may want and/or need in the future. But it does mean that we need specific infrastructure to support this method of consumption. Generally speaking you need urban spaces close to where people live and work, and you need people to transport the goods.

I mention all of this because it has translated into two areas of concern within our cities: (1) we now have "dark spaces" that are embedded into urban areas but don't have any public-facing components and (2) we now have throngs of delivery vehicles starting to annoy local communities.

In fact, France has already responded with a new federal policy that is expected to reclassify "dark stores and "ghost kitchens" as warehouses. This is intended to give local municipalities the power to shutter these sorts of spaces. Part of the thinking is that we all did just fine before delivery apps, so why not just go back to doing what we were doing?

My own view is that this shift in consumption is here to stay. And so we would be better served by figuring out how to respond in a way that is both sensitive to communities and that maintains the vibrancy of our urban environments. We also managed without things like refrigerated food and mobile phones, but I'm pretty happy to have these tools available to me.

Okay, so this is creepy , but perhaps not all that shocking:

https://twitter.com/driesdepoorter/status/1569285878089908231?s=20&t=oF9GL9lTNJ8TMFY10T9zhw

What artist Dries Depoorter has done is the following:

• He recorded videos from open cameras located in cities around the world (the one in the embedded tweet above is from Temple Bar in Dublin)

• He scraped all Instagram photos tagged with the same general location

• And then he used AI software to help compare the Instagram photos against behind-the-scenes footage of the photos actually being taken

I don't have a problem with people posing and making numerous attempts to capture the right photo. You should see me before every meal and when I go to the gym. I think the creepy part is that many, or perhaps most, probably don't realize just how ubiquitous video surveillance is within our cities. But the reality is that there are cameras everywhere.

I guess I'll never be able to run for Prime Minister.