Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 721

I was speaking to some friends in New York City over the weekend and they said to me, "you know what Brandon, we don't really go out at night anymore. It doesn't feel safe. There are homeless people everywhere and they've started to get very aggressive, particularly against Asians."

They live in a good neighborhood in Manhattan.

I was somewhat surprised to hear this, but at the same time, I don't think for one minute think that New York City is dead. But some do, including James Altucher. James moved to Florida because of the pandemic and recently penned an article in the NY Post called, " New York City is dead forever ."

That didn't sit well with Jerry Seinfeld and so this morning he published a rebuttal op-ed piece in the New York Times . It has been making the rounds online today with people responding from both sides of the fence. Richard Florida responded with this tweet thread .

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know where I sit on this topic. I love technology, but sitting at home all day going from Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting is not the kind of life I aspire to live. I agree with Jerry. There's no energy. In fact, it sucks the energy right out of me.

With that, I'll leave you with some more words from Jerry Seinfeld:

There’s some other stupid thing in the article about “bandwidth” and how New York is over because everybody will “remote everything.” Guess what: Everyone hates to do this. Everyone. Hates.

You know why? There’s no energy.

Energy, attitude and personality cannot be “remoted” through even the best fiber optic lines. That’s the whole reason many of us moved to New York in the first place.

You ever wonder why Silicon Valley even exists? I have always wondered, why do these people all live and work in that location? They have all this insane technology; why don’t they all just spread out wherever they want to be and connect with their devices? Because it doesn’t work, that’s why.

Real, live, inspiring human energy exists when we coagulate together in crazy places like New York City. Feeling sorry for yourself because you can’t go to the theater for a while is not the essential element of character that made New York the brilliant diamond of activity it will one day be again.

Photo by Florian Wehde on Unsplash

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEPFyjKAGJs/

The above photo was taken on Lake Couchiching (off Lake Simcoe) with a DJI Mavic Mini.

Here is the before straight from the drone.

And here is the after with my Lightroom edits. I then cropped it to a 4x5 aspect ratio because wide landscape photos don't show well on Instagram.

For me, this scene is a reminder to remain bullish on cities. Take people out of the city. Put them on boats in the middle of a large lake. And they'll still find a way to cluster together.

Why? Because humans are social creatures.

Real estate, as they say, is a local business. Every market has its local nuances. For example, once of the first things that Studio Gang asked us when we started working together was, "does Toronto do PT?" What they were referring to was post-tensioned concrete and our answer was, "not really." There are certainly examples of localized applications within buildings (such as for a specific transfer slab) and there are examples of buildings that have used it throughout (see Pier 27 Tower below -- it's how they managed to get such deep balconies). But for the most part, it's not widely used and it's certainly not as common as it is in markets such as New York. This subtle difference has an impact on how you design, which is why Studio Gang asked it from the outset.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBHXTd4AQeJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Despite some of these local differences, there is a criticism out there that we have descended upon a kind of bland global design sensibility. No matter where you're building, every building now looks the same, which, at the end of the day, was kind of the point of the International Style of architecture. One design approach applied universally. This recent article by Edwin Heathcote takes things even further by saying that our interiors have also been sterilized to look more or less the same as a result of "digital aesthetic seepage." The article is called, "The curse of the Airbnb aesthetic."

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEHmhKZgh3b/

One the one hand, there is something inevitable about this outcome. We -- including our supply chains -- have become more interconnected than ever. And because of the high cost of labor, the way we build today is centered around as much factory automation as possible. Minimize what needs to be done on site. And given that I would expect more, rather than less, automation going forward, one has to assume that this trend is destined to continue. At the same time, local places matter and one of the reasons why so many of us love to travel is that we want to see places that are different than our own. I for one don't want that to change.