Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 811

Tesla's new Cybertruck was the talk of the town last week. Its design is polarizing and both windows broke during the unveiling (Elon's reaction was amazing). At first I couldn't tell if this wasn't some sort of spoof on Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator. Everything seemed to fit, including the design of the car, the chosen brand typography, and Elon's outfit.

But within the first 24 hours and with no paid advertising, Tesla received 146,000 pre-orders for the truck (though, all it takes is a USD 150 fully refundable deposit to secure a place in line). So while a lot of you may consider this to be one the ugliest vehicles around, there are others who think this entire move is genius.

The design was jarring when I first saw it. It looked like a comical representation of what we thought vehicles in the future were going to look like. But I have to admit that the design is growing on me. And I agree that for Tesla to win any sort of marketshare in the pick-up category, it needed to do something radical. Brand loyalty to Ford's F-Series pick up truck is simply too strong.

Marques Brownlee has a good video explaining this take (and why he ordered a Tesla Cybertruck):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX1xG0a4TVo

But if successful, I also wonder to what extent the Tesla Cybertruck will eat into the sales of existing pick-up truck models versus capture new buyers that historically wouldn't have bought this kind of vehicle. In other words, we are seeing tech people and successful YouTubers, like Marques, pre-order this truck. But I bet that very few of them currently drive an F-150.

Image: Tesla

The Wall Street Journal estimates that, from now until about 2037, roughly 21 million homes in the United States will be vacated by seniors. To put this number into perspective, it's about 25% of the US for-sale housing stock and more than double the amount of new homes that were sold during the 1998 to 2008 housing boom. That number was about 10 million (see below).

This is part of the normal cycle of housing, but in this particular instance, there's concern that the new generation won't be there to backfill these homes, or least not in the same way. For one, there are more boomers than there are Gen Xers. So right away there's a potential gap. But on top of this, the next in line don't appear to necessarily have the same preferences in housing type and location.

As someone who would fall into the 65.9 million birth bucket highlighted in deep mustard (had I been born in the US), I can tell you that I am far less interested in many of the housing products (real estate speak) / typologies (architect speak) popularized by the generation ahead of me. Whether my opinion is representative is, of course, debatable.

Anecdotally, I can also say that I know many boomers who have started making real estate decisions based on the assumption that demand for certain types of housing will be tepid going forward. This is not to say that some of these communities won't be able to reposition themselves if it comes to that. But there is uncertainty.

Images: WSJ

Here is an excerpt from a Guardian article that was published last year (by Tim Burrows) about Grimsby, England:

In Grimsby’s 1930s heyday, fishermen used to head to Freeman Street as soon as they were off the trawler, straight to the Lincoln or the Corporation Arms to spend their bountiful earnings. A century previously, Grimsby had been a fairly sleepy fishing village, but by the 1890s it was on the way to becoming the biggest fishing port in the world. In the mid 20th-century, trawlers were bringing in 500 tonnes of fish a day.

Today, Grimsby still has a thriving indoor market (paid for by the EU and the Enrolled Freemen of Grimsby, an organisation that dates back to the 13th century), but the further north towards the docks you walk, the emptier and more dilapidated things get. A local businessman says sex workers wait around at night for lorries to take them to the deserted docks. “It’s a legacy of the old fishing days.”

There is scant legacy to be found elsewhere. After a long decline, the fishing industry died in the mid 1980s, its owners selling their trawlers to companies in Aberdeen or Japan. Unlike Hull across the river, currently basking in its year as Capital of Culture, Grimsby is the Humber city that never was.

More than 70% of people in Grimsby , England voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 "Brexit" referendum. It was one of the highest shares in the country. But with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, that outcome is not all that surprising.

Supposedly, at its peak, there were eight onshore jobs for every one at sea in Grimsby. And like all thriving cities, there were economies of agglomeration, which resulted in things like the largest ice factory in the world. The fishing fleets needed crushed ice -- and lots of it.

The Grimsby story is, of course, not a unique one. You just have to replace fishing with some other industry. Many cities have managed to diversify their economies either out of necessity or because they saw the writing on the wall. But for others it has been a real struggle.

It's one of those things that is perhaps simple, but far from easy.