Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 510

Toronto's Bata Shoe Museum has an exhibition on right now that is all about sneakers . It's called Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks . I haven't been to it yet, but it's on the list. Because this is interesting to me for a few reasons.

One, shoes are important and, as a general rule, I always wear them when I leave the house. Though there may have been some exceptions to this general rule.

Two, sneakers are high fashion. Just look at everyone walking around Paris .

And three, sneakers are such a great example of a clothing device that went from utility (we need to protect our feet) to fashion (we all have a desire to express our unique identities) to art collectible (yes, lots of people buy shoes that they never actually wear).

So if you're looking at stuff like NFTs and digital fashion and scratching your head as to why they have any value, sneakers are probably a good place to look to help you understand why many of us seem to have a need to collect things that help us define our sense of self.

This is, of course, one of the reasons why Nike bought a digital shoe company .

I suspect that the exhibition will be at least partially about this and at least partially about really cool 3D-printed shoes.

https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1528824226714615809?s=20&t=6q0vQtEWOLPU3hRHW1sIgw

What I was getting at with the above tweet is that I think there's way more demand, for places like this and this , than there is supply. Click on the first link and you'll see that it's booked up all summer long. And as for the second link, I just booked one of their rentals for this summer, but I have been trying -- for years -- to book it in the winter.

I think the unmet use case is as simple as this: I live in a big city, and I want to get out of the city and go somewhere cool and design-forward. There are, of course, some options. But there's a need for a lot more. Generally speaking, it feels to me like the majority of the supply is either (1) an expensive/large cottage or (2) an old "classic luxury" kind of hotel.

I'm specifically referring to Toronto and southern Ontario with these options, but judging by some of the responses I got to my tweet, this appears to be an opportunity in many other markets as well. But I would be curious to hear from all you in comments or on Twitter . What "local" hospitality offerings are missing in your market? Where would you like to travel to and stay, but can't?

One of the most common objections to new housing is that the place is already too crowded and potentially even full. But Jerusalem Demsas' recently article in The Atlantic about how much people seem to hate other people is a good reminder that the topic of overpopulation can be a complicated one.

Because what are we really saying when we say a place is too crowded or full? Is it just that this particular neighborhood is full, or are we talking about entire cities being full?

Moreover, who determines when a place is full? Berkeley, California is, for example, a hell of a lot less dense than a city like Paris. So if a place like Berkeley can be considered full by some people, what does that mean for Paris? Presumably it's entirely unliveable.

Or could it be that the entire world is simply full and we should be looking at more drastic measures to curb population growth (in the places that are actually reaching replacement-level fertility rates)?

It's all very complicated. Thankfully Demsas offers up some possible solutions in her article:

We have, of course, discovered an elusive technology to allow more people to live on less land: It’s called an apartment building. And if people would like fewer neighbors competing for parking spaces, then they should rest assured that buses, trains, protected bike lanes, and maintained sidewalks are effective, cutting-edge inventions available to all.

The rest of the article is just as good .