Archive for October 24, 2009

Amenities or work proximity?

October 24, 2009 / Wendy Waters / 4 comments

What’s more important when selecting the location of your home, nearby amenities or proximity to work?

As more people are chosing to live in denser, urban areas (whether downtown or another high density part of a metro region), different location choices and dilemmas emerge.

What struck me in a recent (outsourced, scientific) poll I ran through work of Canadian apartment renters was that more people selected nearby amenities as a key criteria in selecting their building than mentioned commute distance (approximately 67% vs 47%).

That said, the Canadian census shows that most apartment dwellers live closer to work than single-family-house occupants.  So, it may be simply through the act of choosing apartment living, near great amenities, many people automatically end up with a shorter commute time to where the jobs typically are.  Therefore, they don’t really need to think about it when choosing one building over another.

Thinking about how cities are likely to evolve over the next 10 to 20 years, I’m wondering if *the* places to live will be near to where the jobs are, but not too near.  A 15-20 minute walk, for example, or 5-10 minutes on a metro, might be the perfect commute.  If you can live in an interesting neighbourhood full of shops, restaurants, cafes, etc. and still be at work in 20 minutes — would that be the best possible world?  What if it meant apartment or townhouse living rather than owning your own single family house?

What motivates your housing choices?

Category: demographic stats, urban history /

Urban scenarios under high oil prices

October 20, 2009 / Wendy Waters / 7 comments

How much will life in the cities change if gasoline costs significantly more than it does today?

Will the city be able to offer the housing, transportation options or amenities that its residents may prefer if fuel becomes a more expensive item relative to the family budget?

These are some questions I’ve been pondering lately and would welcome your input.

Assuming that oil prices over the next 10-20 years reach and surpass the previous high of $147 per barrel, and gasoline prices reach $2 or even $4 per litre, or $5 to $8 per gallon, how will life in cities really change?

Will it make a difference if the price escalation happens quickly or gradually?

Scenario one: new technologies emerge to allow for existing infrastructure to continue working.  One significant obstacle to any change is the existing built infrastructure.  The roads, bridges, freeways, housing stock, schools, office buildings, industrial and retail parks that we will be using for the next 50 years, and beyond, are largely already built.  Retro-fitting rapid transit into this framework tends to be costly and highly disruptive to people’s daily lives. Plus, many people like their suburban lifestyle (even if there is a growing trend toward higher density, inner-urban area living it won’t appeal to everyone).

Therefore, it’s highly possible that in most North American cities, the private automobile will still be dominant 30 years from now.  It may be smaller than the SUVs of today; it may run on electricity, fuel cells, a hybrid of sources, or simply have a much more fuel efficient gasoline engine and/or be less powerful.

Under this scenario, walking, cycling, densification, and transit use may still be gradually increasing in the cities as there are a variety of compelling reasons for people to change their lifestyles, but I’m suggesting that the private automobile and the infrastructure and built environment that supports it will remain a dominant force in urban life.

Scenario two: Strong shift to higher density living, and living close to work

Suppose gasoline costs rise relatively rapidly, and quickly become a significant drag on the living standard and lifestyle of the majority of individuals and families.  Waiting for new automotive technology may not be an option.  Families living in distant suburbs will need to reign in expenses and the fastest way to do it may be to move to a smaller home in a transit oriented neighbourhood closer to the income earner(s) place(s) of work.   This will be a boom to real estate developers — but also a challenge to them, city planners, and an entire construction industry to keep up with demand in order for such housing to remain somewhat affordable to these suburban refugee families.

Will there be a sudden demand for additional schools?  Can public school boards and private education providers manage this?  Will the local transit authority be able to manage a rapid increase in demand for transit from these new hub communities?

This scenario would also likely see a rapid decline in suburban residential real estate prices, trapping some families out there with “under water” mortgages (and in Canada you can’t walk away from these as easily as in the US).   On the plus side, such “stuck families” may see their commutes become less time consuming if fewer people are clogging the roads.

Other Scenarios, briefly:

Is there a larger scale migration from low density metro areas to higher density places?

Does working from home (or satellite offices) become much more viable with the rapid expansion of affordable, high-end video conferencing technology?

Will there be different “winner” and “loser” cities?  Ones that cannot keep talented people because driving is expensive and the built environment isn’t adapting fast enough, or can’t adapt?

None of these are necessarily mutually exclusive.  Thoughts and ideas welcome.

Category: economic development, planning policy, urban history, urban technologies /

Intriguing idea: Charter Cities

October 10, 2009 / Wendy Waters / One comment

Why is it that in hundreds of cities around the world, average citizens can own and use cel phones every day, but don’t have electricity or running water in their homes? They have a new, 21st century technology, but not a late-19th century one.

From this premise, Stanford University Economist Paul Romer develops an explanation, and then a solution in one of the most intriguing lectures I’ve watched in a long time.  See it here: or here.

Romer’s explanation for this dichotomy is poor rules.  Poor rules that create an unstable foundation for any kind of personal economic security.  For example, in some countries governments insist that utility companies offer electricity (or land-line phone, or water) at a particular, subsidized rate that doesn’t begin to cover their costs.  Therefore, these providers have no incentive to sign more people up, or even ensure the service doesn’t go out.  Changing the poor rules is tough, since thousands or millions of citizens as well as corporations rely on the cheap power, even if it is unreliable.  There is no easy path out for a country under this system.  (Cel phone operations, by contrast, tend to be market-based in much of the world.)

Starting up a new city, with new rules, in Romer’s argument, offers a way out.  He uses the example of Hong Kong.  For much of the 20th century, under British administration, the territory experimented with “good rules” adapted from successful economies around the world.  These rules encouraged innovation, investment, and overall economic growth.  Chinese premier Deng Xaopeng recognized how successful Hong Kong had been as a laboratory and market economy based alternative system to what existed in China in the late 1990s.   Special economic zones were then established in many Chinese cities, with more market-economy based rules (such as private property, market prices for services, etc.) offering citizens the choice of whether to live their and participate, or not.   Millions of Chinese have been flocking to these cities, that offer a different future for them or their children.  We’d have to consider them a success.

Based on the Chinese success, Romer suggests other countries from Cuba to Kenya consider creating charter cities and giving their citizens and people from around the world the option to move in.  He believes that more successful states, such as Canada, would be asked to administer the zones (instead of the failed state, who would be more of a silent partner).  As part of administering the zones, these more successful countries’ (or some team of people from them) would establish the new rules.   Likely these would involve laws about the security of private property, the enforecability of contracts, etc.

Contracts to provide services — everything from infrastructure, to schools, to commercial buildings — would be offered to national or global companies.

Charter cities would offer citizens in these struggling places another option.  They could switch to living by a different set of rules, and have an opportunity to build a better life for themselves or their children.

While I see some flaws in the plan (why would Canada’s government want to take on the challenge of setting up a special administrative zone, or charter city, in Guantanamo Bay, or anywhere else, for example), the idea is quite intriguing.  The planet needs to find a way out of failed states.

The video is worth watching if you have 20 minutes.

Category: economic development, poverty, urban technologies /

Rio 2016

October 7, 2009 / Wendy Waters / No comments

Being chosen to host the Olympic Games is a complicated process.  Without delving into that issue too much, here’s a take on what becoming an Olympic City typically signifies — that a city somewhere in the world has passed a threshold and become a “world city”  at least in the eyes of the voting delegates.  With so many Olympic delegate votes coming from outside North America and Europe, cities that win tend to have connections to these other (non-western if you like) places and people.

  • London (like Vancouver for the winter games) played the multi-cultural, city-of-immigrants-from-everywhere card in it’s successful bid.
  • Beijing is the capital city of one of the most influential and powerful countries on earth.
  • Sydney’s chance to host concluded a multi-decade process in Australia of placing the country within the Asia-Pacific region, as part of Asia, moving away from the isolationist “White Australia” policy of the mid 20th century.

Rio de Janeiro’s opportunity — somewhat like that of Beijing — recognizes how far Brazil has come politically and economically since the end of military dictatorship in the mid 1980s.  The faces of Rio are also the faces of the world.  Anyone and everyone can blend in (and with the skimpy bikini culture offering somewhat of a leveling mechanism).

To be sure, Rio has poverty and crime problems — but its hard to find a big world city with the resources to host the Summer Olympics that doesn’t have some detracting issue.  Such is the nature of dynamic cities – growth brings tension; tension breeds creative solutions as well as strife.  Hosting the Games in a Ghost Town isn’t an option.

Plus, the Games tend to bring investment, jobs, and opportunities — a chance for individuals, businesses and a city to move forward.  Although economic activity is never equally distributed in a city, everyone benefits from there being more economic activity and more jobs rather than fewer.

So congratulations (bom trabalho) to everyone in Brazil who worked hard on the bid books.

Should be a great world party.

Category: diversity, economic development, urban families /