I write this letter to share some of the things that I’m working on and thinking about. A little about me:
I own and manage an agency in Toronto called August. We design and build digital products. We spend about 80% of our time on client work and the balance on internal projects. I also invest in real estate with my two brothers.
some thoughts
I have some thoughts on cities, why they exist, and what we should be optimizing for as we design and build ours out.
Cities are primarily labour markets. This is from the great Alain Bertaud. People mostly move to cities for access to more and better job options. And these jobs in turn are mostly located in cities for access to more and better candidates.
The larger the market, the greater the opportunity to specialize and trade. That means higher productivity and wages, more innovation, and ultimately, increased economic growth. All very good things.
The relevant constraint on labour market size is commute times. Past a certain point, which is probably in the 30-60 minute commute range, the market starts to fragment.
We should therefore be optimizing for maximum jobs and people within quick and easy commutes of each other. This is a function of both proximity and mobility.
The proximity piece is relatively easy to solve for: just allow for more density—more people living close to each other and, critically, to their jobs. In Toronto, for example, we could easily fit another million+ people within a 30-min walk of the financial district—nevermind a 30-min bike ride, transit ride, or drive. Just upzone and let the developers do what they do.
The mobility piece is a little trickier. Let’s break the obvious options down with four key criteria in mind: speed, flexibility, comfort, and scalability.
First, cars. Cars are generally pretty fast, get you door to door, and are comfortable—you get your climate-controlled space to yourself. But they’re not always fast. They’re only fast when the roads aren’t packed. And of course, the more people in a city, the more congested the roads. Scaling a mobility network with cars at its core runs into some pretty obvious limits pretty quickly.
Second, transit. Transit is only fast and only gets you door to door if you live and work in the right well-serviced areas. Otherwise, it’s not and it doesn’t. It’s also generally not very comfortable when crowded—that is, when you’re most likely to be getting to and from work. It is however very scalable.
Third, cycling. This is my favourite mode of transportation. It’s pretty fast, gets you door to door, but is only really comfortable for half to two-thirds of the year (in Toronto), when it’s not snowing, raining, or way too hot. It’s also scalable—bikes don’t take up much space.
Finally, walking. Walking gets you door to door without too much discomfort, but is slow. You can cover more ground in 30-mins with any of the other modes of transportation listed above. As J. Storrs Hall puts it in Where Is My Flying Car?, walking limits you to a medieval radius of access. No real scalability concerns though.
So what’s the solution? It’s not as obvious as “get government out of the way”, as it is with housing in the question of density or proximity. There are natural monopolies at play here. Government probably needs to lead the charge.
I’d start with some combination of building much more transit and even car lanes below grade, pricing it all dynamically, whether through fares or congestion pricing, and setting more surface level space aside for cyclists and pedestrians.
I think that that is all pretty reasonable and maybe even obvious. But it’s worth laying out clearly as, too often, transportation planners forget or ignore that key question of what it is we should be optimizing for.
Take the debate over whether or not we should build new highways to serve under-serviced suburbs. In the case of the Greater Toronto Area’s Highway 413, transportation planners (at least those who make it to news stories) appear to be unanimously opposed. They also appear to base their opposition exclusively on externalities like congestion and pollution with no consideration of throughput and mobility more broadly.
Urbanists have made a lot of progress on getting urban planners to get smarter about housing density and proximity. I think it’s time to do the same for transportation planners and mobility.
business stuff
I haven’t talked much about any of the cool projects we’ve been working on at August in this letter. A couple of my favourites—Stoner Cats and Gimmicks—come by way of Mila Kunis’ recent foray into the intersection of entertainment and web3.
These projects have been especially interesting as they marry Hollywood-level creativity with a healthy dose of technical complexity and innovation. We also just really like the client team.
We’re working on a third project with them, which might be the most interesting one yet, and which I’ll dive into in more depth post-launch.Buildstack. We’ve built out our new backend, wrapped up design, and are now coding the frontend. Mark your calendars: we’re launching this month.
Here’s a sneak peak of what’s to come:
investment stuff
FH1*: good news and bad news. The good news is that we sailed through our Committee of Adjustments (COA) hearing, with a 4-1 vote in favour of approving our minor variances. The bad news is that a neighbour has appealed that decision to the Toronto Local Appeal Body (TLAB), which can mean the start of a new lengthy process—one which we will no doubt win, but which will nevertheless be expensive and time-wasting.
It is absolutely crazy that we’ve baked into our entitlements process the ability for a neighbour to stall the development of much needed housing which is consistent with existing planning policy, as confirmed by four out of five COA members. At minimum, this neighbour should be made liable for costs incurred if our COA decision is upheld by the TLAB. As it stands, there is little disincentive to simply being a nuisance and throwing sand in our gears.MR1**: The last time I submitted an application package for a Pre-Application Consultation (PAC)—just two years ago—the wait time was something like three weeks. Well, we’ve submitted ours for MR1 in early May and our PAC has now been scheduled for late June. Seven weeks. And mind you, this is just to have the meeting that gets us our checklist of materials needed for a complete Zoning Bylaw Amendment (ZBA) application.
…
Yea.
In the meantime, we’re making early progress on some of the materials we know we’ll need. This should shorten the time needed from PAC to ZBA application submission.
*Forever Hold 1. A proposed four-storey multiunit rental building in Toronto’s west end that we plan on holding forever.
**Midrise 1. A proposed nine-to-eleven-storey multiunit residential building (tenure to be determined) in Toronto’s west end. We’re starting with a rezoning and we’ll see where we take it from there.
stuff I’ve enjoyed
Article: I’ve written a bit about state capacity in general in past editions of this letter, and about Robert Moses in particular. His biography, The Power Broker, is one of my all-time favourites. And this 2016 review, which was just shared with me by a friend, is an excellent addendum. The whole thing is quotable. It recognizes, contra Caro, the desirability of a highly competent builder, working in a sclerotic bureaucracy within a broader vetocratic political context, actually Getting Things Done. You have to read it.
Book: I’m wrapping up Tony' Fadell’s Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making. It’s ok. Tony is obviously a very smart, accomplished, and generally impressive guy, but the book doesn’t offer anything groundbreaking, or even all that novel. Some decent life and career advice. It’s the sort of book you only read because it’s new. At the risk of being too harsh, I don’t think anyone will be reading it in five years.
I guess this doesn’t quite count as “stuff I’ve enjoyed”. So how about this: if you want really great life and career advice, check out Paul Graham’s essays instead.Podcast: Stripe Press, one of my favourite published, has launched a podcast. It’s called Beneath the Surface, it’s about infrastructure, “from transit systems to supply chains”, and it’s great. My favourite episode to date was the most recent, featuring Flexport’s Ryan Petersen.
Video: Barstool Sports’ Dave Portnoy was in Toronto this past month. Naturally, he tried some of our local pizza spots and filmed his reviews. The top three were:
North of Brooklyn - 8.4
Badiali - 8.3
Conzo’s - 8.2
All great choices.
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And that’s it for now. Here’s to a good and productive June.
Feel free to reply to this email with any comments or questions. I love chatting about everything discussed above.