Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 640

Adam Grant's recent NY Times article about languishing -- the psychological middle state that exists somewhere in between depressed and flourishing -- has been making the rounds online. Perhaps it is because COVID sucks and many of us can relate.

Either way, three points in the article really stood out to me (at least one of which, in my mind, directly ties back to real estate).

Firstly, I found it helpful to hear him describe what flourishing is. In his words, "flourishing is the peak of well-being: You have a strong sense of meaning, mastery and mattering to others." This resonates with me. I know that I am at my best when I'm accomplishing things and making progress.

Secondly, he puts forward a possible solution to languishing -- it's the concept of "flow." Flow is when we are absorbed in meaningful and challenging work and where, again in his words, "your sense of time, place and self melts away." This also resonates with me. I am a big fan of a flow (even if I didn't know what it was called).

Thirdly -- and this one is important as we all think about the future of work/office space -- focus is paramount to doing exceptional things! Here's an excerpt that I immediately paused on as I was reading the article:

Fragmented attention is an enemy of engagement and excellence. In a group of 100 people, only two or three will even be  capable  of driving and memorizing information at the same time without their performance suffering on one or both tasks. Computers may be made for parallel processing, but humans are better off serial processing.

For the rest of Grant's article, click here .

Earlier this year, the first phase of The Underline opened up in Miami's Brickell neighborhood. Designed by James Corner Field Operations , The Underline is an eventual 10-mile linear park that will live underneath the city's elevated Metrorail and run from the Miami River all the way south to Dadeland South Station.

The first phase -- called Brickell Backyard -- is the shortest phase at only 0.5 miles. But it cuts through one of the densest parts of the city, if not the densest. Total construction costs for this phase came in at $16.524 million and here's where that funding came from (source is The Underline ):

$7,688,760 Miami-Dade County
$1,944,000 FDOT TAP Grant
$2,000,000 State of Florida
$4,871,690 City of Miami
$19,808 FDOT

The Underline is clearly looking to the example of New York's High Line , which was also designed by Field Operations. And for good reason: The High Line is a shining example of placemaking as economic development engine.

The first two phases of The High Line cost around $153 million to construct. But as of 2014 (when I wrote about it here ) it was already attracting some 5 million visitors a year and was believed to be responsible for about $2.2 billion in new economic activity. I'm sure the numbers are much higher today.

As city builders, we are always looking for ways to create value and spur economic development. But it's perhaps important to keep in mind that the underlying goal isn't all that complicated: Create cool places where people want to be.

Images: The Underline

Here is an interesting interview discussion about NFTs ( non-fungible tokens ) and the world of luxury brands. It's a conversation between Benoit Pagotto, cofounder of the NFT brand RTFKT Studios , and Ian Rogers, who is Chief Experience Officer at the blockchain startup Ledger (he was previously the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH). Below is an excerpt that stood out to me. It starts to speak to the potential of NFTs for fashion/luxury brands. Rogers also makes an interesting comparison to the music industry in that things are playing out very differently today compared to what happened back in the late 90s.

Benoit is proving that he can basically sell a $4,900 digital good alongside a $100 physical good. Now imagine when the lightbulb goes off in Adidas’s head, that the item on adidas.com comes with a digital collectible and the item at “retailer dot com” does not. It fits with their focus way more than the internet did. The internet didn’t fit in any incumbent’s focus. It was the opposite. It was like, “Oh my God, this threatens our monopoly in some way,” right? For the music business, it was, “Wait a minute, we want to sell a $17 compact disc, not a $1 digital file.” They got dragged into that world. 

On a related note, it was recently announced that model Emily Ratajkowski has made an NFT containing a photograph of herself standing in front of a Richard Prince print that had previously appropriated one of her photos. (Richard Prince's artwork is known for appropriation .) So this is an exceptionally neat idea. Here she is using an NFT to try and take back some control. Basically: You took my photo and then profited from it. So now I'm going to stand in front of that image, take a new photo, and then reclaim some ownership using the blockchain. Is this the future?