Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 787

Today's post is going to be a bit of a departure from our regularly scheduled programming. But it's so cool that I had to share it. It's a company called Vollebak , and they use science and technology to make highly technical clothing (or, as they call it, the future of clothing). It was founded by two brothers.

Every month they launch a new clothing concept. ( Sign up here if you want to get on their list.) But each new piece they develop could take anywhere from one to five years to actually produce. Usually we're talking about new production methods and materials that have never before been used for clothing.

Examples include an indestructible puffer jacket designed to help us withstand up to -40 degrees; a solar charged jacket ; a " black squid jacket " that reflects visible light to go from black to bionic; and a plant/algae t-shirt that is grown and can later be composted.

But the piece I'm really eyeing is this blue morpho ski/snowboard jacket . It uses two billion microscopic glass spheres to try and replicate the wings of a blue morpho butterfly. During the day the jacket is matt blue. But as soon as you shine light onto it, it looks like the above photo.

This would be useful if you were, say, caught in an avalanche and a helicopter searchlight was trying to find you. Hopefully that's a use case that none of us have to experience. But it could also be invaluable if you were out walking or cycling at night and you wanted to make sure that cars could see you.

(Please note how I somehow managed to make this post mildly relevant to cities.)

Image: Vollebak

This month’s issue of Monocle Magazine has a feature on a new masterplanned community to the north of Cartagena called Serena del Mar . Currently under construction, the entire 971 hectare community is slated to be finished by 2030. When complete the developers believe it will house upwards of 200,000 people — effectively an entirely new city.

It will also be entirely self-governing. There will be no mayor or city council. Revenue to operate the community will be collected through a mandatory monthly fee, though low-income residents will be exempt from paying it. As I understand it, large projects in Colombia have historically been mired in corruption issues, and so this is probably a response to that.

But the approach has naturally caused a bunch of skepticism. Does this bifurcate the city between public and private? Is this a vote of no confidence on Cartagena's current governance structures? Building a city from scratch is also exceptionally difficult (there's a quote in Monocle from Toronto's own Shawn Micallef on this). Cities usually take time to evolve and settle in.

I don't know enough (or anything, really) about Colombia, Cartagena, and this development project to comment specifically. And so I won't. But these are the questions that are being asked of contemporary masterplans. There's a reason most (or all) of the tech companies involved in large scale masterplans have banned the word "campus" from their lexicons .

“Every failed idea from the dotcom bubble would work now."

-- Marc Andreessen

Every year, Benedict Evans publishes a "big presentation" on the current trends in tech. They are always excellent and they help to put a lot of things into perspective. This year he covers everything from TV subscriptions to online mattress companies (there were 175 of them as of last year), and asks: What's next in tech?

New technologies have typically come in S-Curves (see above). They start out slow, see rapid growth, and then taper off. To use Benedict's wording, they go from stupid to exciting and then to boring. Smartphones are currently in the boring phase. Each new year sees only incremental change. So, what's next? That is still TBD.

To download a full copy of the presentation, click here .

Slide Image: Benedict Evans