- Citylab (referencing this report by the National Association of Realtors) takes another look at foreign investors (specifically Chinese investors) in the US housing market. Key point: “As a group, [Chinese buyers] surpass top buyers from Canada, the U.K., Mexico, and India. Between April 2016 and March 2017, Chinese buyers purchased more than 40,500 housing units, worth a total of $31.7 billion. That’s up from of 29,000 units and $27.3 billion the year before. Sixty-seven percent of those units were single-family homes, and 61 percent of all sales were made in suburban areas.” What’s really interesting, however, is if you look at the data in the NAR report. After Chinese buyers, the biggest foreign buyers in the residential market in the US are Canadians. Makes me wonder, if Canadian investors are willing to spend this much money on real estate in the US with the exchange rate where it is, how much are they spending on investment properties in Canada? It’ll be interesting to see how this rolls out with the new measures as well as further measures coming up (Globe and Mail did a quick take).
- The bike-sharing evolution continues with more dockless bikeshares popping up. Dockless systems are really going to be the key to shifting more people to cycling. They just provide that ease and convenience; you can pick it up anywhere (provided there’s one nearby) and drop it off anywhere. I wonder how this affects the services operations when bikes need to be relocated to keep up with high-demand areas.
- Bisnow has a good discussion on the role that neuroscience is playing in the design of cities. The article is an overview of the relationship between urban design and behavioral psychology. It’s been fascinating to watch psychology take over the field of economics and slowly make it’s way to other disciplines (one of the pioneers in behavioral economics, BEWorks, is hosting a “nudgethon” for public transit in Toronto in September). While the recognition is new, the notion that urban design ought to follow user experience rather than imposed design goes as far back as Jane Jacobs, who promoted an observational and ethnographic approach to urban planning in The Death and Life of Greater American Cities. Since then, planners have called for a rejection of rigid land-use models (such as euclidean zoning) and promotion of flexible uses (such as mixed-use and form-based zoning). Architect David Galbraith takes it a step further and encourages designs that allow for organic development. As he states in the post: “Cities of the industrial age looked mechanical, cities of the information age can look like fractal networks — like nature.” His solutions seem to echo how Japan manages its zoning code (for reference, in a simple video).
- On the tech side, one of the really exciting things coming up mostly-behind-the-scenes is proptech (property+technology), or the intersection of real estate and technology. A classic case of this is how traditional realtors have been embracing tech, though it’s still focused on helping people find a house to purchase (I’m sure I can find more interesting examples if I actually search around). Here’s an interview from ZDnet with a data scientist from Zillow if you want a little case study. Now I’m not too familiar with Zestimate, but if anyone wants to get into the weeds, Kaggle has a competition on improving the error rate for the Zestimate.
- The Toronto Star reports on renting in Toronto, where rents for housing have reached highs comparable to London and Brooklyn. The article describes how people feel like apartment hunting has become similar to dating, where everyone must now create a profile to attract landlords and get them to “swipe right”.
Musings on Metropolises 