Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 955

This is an interesting working paper by a team of researchers at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. The paper examines the relationship between urban density and organized violence, first in Colombia and then within a sample of 200 global cities.

The finding is that organized violence actually increases the population density of the surrounding areas within a city because it creates a kind of “invisible wall” – effectively a no-go zone.

This makes perfect intuitive sense, but it’s not something I ever considered. Geography and other natural constraints typically drive density. Think about the island of Manhattan. But so too can invisible walls.

For the full working paper, click here .

Photo by Joel Duncan on Unsplash

Today, Microsoft announced that it will be moving its Canadian headquarters from Mississauga to the new CIBC Square development that is currently under construction in downtown Toronto (and rendered above). 

According to RENX , Microsoft will occupy 132,000 square feet across 4 floors in the first tower. Occupancy is scheduled for September 2020.

I love this project. The design architect is WilkinsonEyre . And there’s going to be an elevated one-acre park spanning the rail corridor between the project’s two towers.

But it’s also noteworthy because it is an example of a major suburban tenant deciding to relocate to a transit-oriented urban environment. (I have a post on this somewhere.) 

Image: WilkinsonEyre

I’m listening to the below podcast right now with Sonal Chokshi, Chris Dixon, and Steven Johnson. Steven recently published a new book called,  Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter Most . If you can’t see the embedded podcast below, click here .

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It is about the big and meaningful decisions that we make as individuals – such as where to live or who to marry – as well as the big and meaningful decisions that we make as a collective – such as how to plan a city or fight climate change. But most importantly, it is about how we can get better at them.

Supposedly, part of the science (and art) behind deliberative decision making is using tricks to get our minds to see problems and their complexities differently. That could involve scenario planning and even considering the weirdest possible outcomes. In fact, Steven finds a lot of value in fictional storytelling.

There could also be implications for city building. Tech is allowing us to collect a lot more data about the ways in which our cities operate today. But as we get better at running complex simulations, we should also get a lot better at understanding the long-term implications of our decisions.

I may just have to get Steven’s new book.