Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 604

Back in 2017, the City of Buffalo introduced something known as the "Green Code." It was the first overhaul of its zoning code in over 60 years. I wrote about it here . One of most notable changes as part of the Green Code was the complete elimination of parking minimums. Which is another topic that has gotten a lot of air time on this blog.

Now that it has been a few years, Buffalo provides an interesting case study: What do developers do once you eliminate parking minimums in a mid-sized city? I mention mid-sized because I think the size of the city is relevant here. There is a common argument that you can't eliminate parking minimums unless you're in a big and transit-rich city. "This isn't [insert big city]. People drive here." I am sure that many of you have heard this before.

But is that really the case? Here is what Daniel Baldwin Hess & Jeffrey Rehler found when they studied the development response to removing parking minimums in Buffalo :

• The study looked at 36 major developments in the first two years after parking minimums were eliminated

• In aggregate, the 36 developments built 21% less parking spaces than what was previously mandated, likely demonstrating that the old zoning code was resulting in an excess supply of new parking

• Mixed-used developments (of which there were 14, generally consisting of residential + retail) built 53% less parking than what was previously required

• One exception to this trend is that single-use projects (both residential and commercial) built either the same or more parking (most of these projects were in the suburbs outside of the downtown core)

What this suggests to me is that the previous zoning code was maybe appropriate for what the market was demanding (for parking) in suburban locations. Maybe. But it was certainly overshooting what the market was and is willing to accept in more urban locations in Buffalo. Mixed-used (i.e. being able to support retail at grade) is likely a good measure of the project's urbanity.

Perhaps more importantly, I think this study shows that developers are incentivized to build what the market wants -- no more and no less. Building parking that nobody wants is bad business. As is building too little parking such that you can't rent or sell your space(s). A Goldilocks parking ratio is what you're after, but it is constantly changing and finding it can be a bit of an art. Eliminating parking minimums is a good way to let the market try and figure it out.

Photo by  Seth Yeanoplos  on  Unsplash

The Washington Post just published this interactive feature showing new developed land (i.e. urban sprawl) across the US between 2001 and 2019.

It is based on these land cover maps which were published by the US Geological Survey earlier in the summer. Their findings show that between 2001 and 2019, more than 10% of the land cover in the lower 48 states changed during this time period. Mostly in forested areas.

The WP feature allows you to search by city/address and I would encourage all of you to try it out. As an example, here is Salt Lake City. The gray areas represent land that was already developed in 2001. The purple areas represent land that was developed sometime between 2001 and 2019.

Images: Washington Post

One of the things about crypto and blockchains is that they are mostly public. Every transaction gets logged in a public ledger, which means that if you know the address of a particular wallet, you can see its balance, all the in and out $/crypto flows, any NFTs that it may own, as well as probably many other things that I am still working to get my head around. In all likelihood you won't know who the wallet belongs to, but you'll be able see what's going on at that particular address.

This is a pretty radical feature if you compare it to the way things generally work today. And what it signals to me is that we are headed towards a world with a lot more transparency and real-time data. Today I learned of a company called Dune Analytics . It is an analytics company built around open blockchain data (there's no proprietary data). At the same time, it's also a community. And it is this community (think of them almost as analysts) that helps to make sense of the open data.

To give you an example, here is a chart from Dune showing monthly volume by NFT marketplace. OpenSea looks to be running away with things right now. And there's no guessing. Here is all of the data.

But, of course, this is just one example. Blockchain data could also be used to generate something like a real-time profit and loss statement for a company, which again, is pretty radical when you compare it to the way (and how slowly) that things are done today. It's hard to not to see all of this and think about the far reaching implications of what's unfolding right now. Everything from healthcare to real estate will almost certainly be transformed by this next iteration of the internet.