Centers of Economic Opportunity: Exploring Streams of Income

Cities have repeatedly been referred to as centers of economic opportunity – a trait not to be shed anytime soon. Through efficient infrastructure and services, urban agglomerations function as clusters of knowledge, innovation, transportation, and communication. Consequently, cities' dense accessibility to resources and technology facilitates and diversifies individuals' potential means of revenue, primarily through earned, portfolio, and passive income.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak, however, individual's functioning in private and social spheres vastly changed, mainly since the whole world was confined at home. With re-organizing how we go about the world during a pandemic, the economic domain was significantly impacted. Several were limited by the safety precautions and experienced hardships, like loss of employment. But, on the other hand, some also utilized this circumstance to explore, learn, and adopt new skills.

One of many fields to have gain popularity is real estate investment. Over the past two years, the Canadian market has flourished with wide purchasing options and great interest rates, giving people in diverse economic positions more opportunities. Investing in a primary residence, short-term rental, or long-term rental property can maximize your income in the long run and also contribute to the country's economy. Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) is also a considerable alternative for investing in the market without physically holding a house. These options have also often been a safer venture than other investing routes like stocks. Note, risks and benefits must always be weighed. All investment opportunities come with uncertainties, which underlies the importance for all to convey proper research. Reaching out to advising and consulting resources is also chiefly recommended.

With resources made available more than ever, maximizing your revenue has become a matter of drive, persistence, and determination. The remaining question is, what skill can you apply or learn to expand your income?

References

Pipe, T. (2021). Is real estate a good investment in Canada? Canadian Real Estate Wealth https://www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca/expert-advice/is-real-estate-a-good-investment-in-canada-334551.aspx

Sharma, N. (2021). Montreal is Canada’s leading luxury market: Engel & Völkers. Canadian Real Estate Wealth https://www.canadianrealestatemagazine.ca/news/montreal-is-canadas-leading-luxury-market-engel-and-volkers-334770.aspx

Doughnut in the City: From GDP to the Doughnut

My undergraduate major was in Agricultural Economics. For years agriculture-related themes have taken up a larger proportion of my attention (and interest) than economic-related issues. The term Doughnut Economics, I have to admit, grabbed my attention because of the word doughnut. How can economics, a hard-core, rigid field, be shaped, represented, and interpreted as doughnut, a cheerful and colourful treat?

English economist Kate Raworth shows us how. The concept of Doughnut Economics was first published in 2012 with the aim of offering a vision of what it means for humanity to thrive in the 21st century. The Doughnut calls for meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet. The Doughnut’s inner ring depicts the social foundation which sets out the basics of life on which no one should be left falling short. The outer ring represents ecological ceiling of which humanity should put no further pressure beyond the planetary boundaries.

The social foundation ensures that no one is left falling short on life’s essentials while the ecological ceiling ensures that humanity does not overshoot planetary boundaries. The doughnut comes in between these two boundaries—the doughnut-shaped space lies between the boundaries represent an ecologically safe and socially just space in which humanity can thrive. Raworth emphasises on the urgent need to shift the mindset from endless growth (i.e. the GDP) to thriving in balance—the Doughnut.

The Doughnut concept has been applied to cities to reimagine and remake the urban space.  Earlier this month the City of Barcelona in Spain announced its plan in embracing the tools and concepts of Doughnut Economics to guide actions to address the combat on climate emergency.  

Raworth sets out the seven ways to think like a 21st century economist and posits that when the goal is to achieve human prosperity in a flourishing web of life the economy should be best thought of and drawn like a doughnut.

On Human Expression and Resilience

The past few weeks have certainly been filled with numerous catastrophes: typhoon, earthquake, drought, flood… These environmental events have an impact on millions of people, and climate change seems to be leading us to a future where they will be common occurrences. What, then, becomes the place of urban design in this turmoil? What priorities should municipalities and governments put forward? A million questions emerge as we face such uncertainty.

In the meantime, videos on Twitter have shown Yayoi Kusama’s famous pumpkin turned upside-down in the water, attacked by strong winds and rain. However, it was not destroyed by the waves, and the option to rebuild the structure is being carefully studied (McCurry, 2021). The resistance of this yellow-dotted pumpkin made me think of human resilience. How many catastrophes have we faced in the past, and successfully dealt with? The ability of our species to adapt to varying challenges has already been proven, as we have re-emerged more than once both wiser and stronger.

The human expression will always thrive, whether it is suppressed or not. Diverse forms of art of the ancient world have made their way through the present with archeological digs, archives, or oral tradition transmission. Times of instability only reinforce the need to express oneself, even if the means to do so are limited. Let us instead reinvent urban design to have both a useful and creative purpose. Art is a beam of light in the dark.

Siotu: The City That Saw It Coming

Adapted from a prompt asking for a creative story about a fictional city

In today’s global discourse, climate change is a mainstay that supersedes most other areas of conflict but has the potential to unify us as a human race. However, this conversation is not new. In fact, conversations about the effect our mass industrialization have had on the planet have been happening in academic circles for several decades. But no real municipality heeded to all of the scholarly warnings, except for the small city-state of Siotu (pronounced SEE-oh-TU). Located in the center of the Pacific Ocean, Siotu has long been a mecca for environmental enthusiasts for its harsh laws pertaining to human-caused pollution and its commitment to mitigating the effects of ongoing climate change. We are currently in a place where we, as a whole, should be transitioning from focusing on climate mitigation to focusing on climate adaptation; Siotu started this pivot over 25 years ago and has been a pioneer in experimenting with new forms of urban civilization that are adaptive to our changing climate. For one, the entirety of Siotu lives in an urbanized setting. It is a well-known fact that population density has a negative correlation with carbon footprint and Siotu takes this seriously. Also given Siotu is on an island, there has been numerous efforts to adapt to rising sea levels by raising population density at the high-points of the island and incrementally guiding water to accumulate in unhabituated areas of the island.

Nonetheless due to a great repertoire of respect for the planet, Siotu knows these measures are only temporary fixes and will not fight against the sea as the Earth runs its course. Eventually as the ocean takes more and more of their land, Siotu residents will slowly become environmental refugees until the entire island is submerged. So, what is the future of Siotu? I posit the future of this city is the amount of knowledge gained through its attempts to be a climate-adaptive civilization in a world where that was not a shared priority and proof that adapting to climate change has to be a worldwide endeavor. In this fashion, while the future of Siotu may not be physical, it will still have an impact on cities of the future.

Siotu was loosely inspired by several island cities including:

The 15-Minute City: Re-Planning for a Human-Scale Urban Future

Carlos Moreno of Pantheon Sorbonne University in Paris draws our attention to “the 15-minute city”. Due to Moreno, this concept of cities goes in the opposite direction of modern urbanism, it attempts to provide a human-scale urban life experience. The 15-minute city can provide its citizens a walkable or bikeable access to meet their needs within a 15-minute distance. Hence, Moreno calls for rethinking our cities around four guiding principles, seen as key building blocks to this concept: Ecology, Proximity, Solidarity, and Participation. Furthermore, Moreno illustrates three key features of the 15-minute city as the following: “First, the rhythm of the city should follow humans, not cars. Second, each square meter should serve many different purposes. Finally, neighborhoods should be designed so that we can live, work and thrive in them without having to constantly commute elsewhere”.

Furthermore, Andres Duany and Robert Steuteville in their article on “defining the 15-minute city”, draw attention to incorporating transit into the 15-minute city. They explain the necessity of a walkable urban fabric, considering the quality of the pedestrian experience, to make the 15-minute city work. In terms of transit services, they consider two kinds of stations that need to be incorporated: community and commuter transit stops. The former is accessed through “human-powered mobility” or active transportation (walking and biking), and the latter by cars. They illustrate that the community and commuter transit stops should be located at the center and the edge of the 15-minute city successively to allow access to distant locations.

Moving towards post pandemic recovery, the 15-minutes city concept is relevant. It delivers wellbeing, boosts local economies, encourages community building, provids climate benefits, etc. Hence, by promoting self-sufficient communities, the 15-minutes city ensures a sustainable and liveable urban future.

Did you hear that?

In Deep Mapping the Media City Mattern (2015) draws attention to myriad sensory modes—whether it be aural, graphic, textural, electroacoustic, digital, or haptic. Mattern says that clues in any one of these sensory modes might offer insights into other registers (Mattern, 2015, p. 23). Of these sensory modes, the aural, the sounds, echoes with me profoundly.

Sounds in the city tell stories and feed imaginations. I have fond memories of the time I spent at my granny’s place back in the city of Taipei. Every night, around mid-night time, from the room where we slept, my sister and I would hear a deep buurrroooom sound followed by more and rapid buurrroooom. The volume of the sound was very erratic, sometimes at full power and sometimes whispering. The poor engine of the scooter clearly had suffered and it always took a well couple minutes before we finally heard the buurrroooom-boom boom boom sound—the engine had started and off the scooter went. The quiet midnight alley amplified the sound of the scooter—and the laughter from my sister and me. At the first sound of the buurrroooom, we looked at each other and started giggling and with every failed buurrroooom our laughter grew louder. This sound took and had a role. After a couple of months our midnight sound-venture vanished. We wondered what might have happened to the rider; we hoped s/he was okay. We wondered if the scooter had served her time; we wondered if the rider had got a new scooter. And we also missed the mixed soundtrack of the buurrrooooms with the loud ha-ha-has that echoed across the quiet midnight alley in the city.

Figure 1. Typical ‘old’ scooter seen in Taipei city. Image source: Judy Chen. Taipei, 2017.

Mattern notes that there’s necessarily some speculation involved in piecing together the sensory dimensions of urban history. The speculative aspect of the urban sounds tells stories and feeds imaginations. I am drawn by how a single sound—or a combination of sounds—alone can lead to many possible, speculated scenarios. Speculative models allow urban dwellers to imagine what the city they inhabit looks, sounds, and feels like. Speculative models also bring joy and excitement.

Mattern points out that the representation of the city in, for example, photographs, cinemas, and other digitalised work, continues to be a prominent theme and the emphasis on imaging technologies has reinforced an ocularcentric approach (using historian Martin Jay’s term). In my personal experience I believe seeing is believing does not always hold true. I am fascinated by manual transmissions. One beauty of driving a manual car is that the ocularcentric approach does not prevail. Much driving relies on both hearing and feeling. One can tell a missed shift, poor control of the clutch, or grinding gears by, and only by, hearing the different and distinct sounds produced by the vehicle. These issues are not visually presented on the dashboard; one can only tell and acknowledge through analysing the sounds and the vibrations of the vehicle.

To understand the city we inhabit and to understand how humans and the city evolve together, a deep map could provide valuable insights. Archaeologists Mike Pearson and Michael Shanks (2001) explain that a deep map “attempts to record and represent the grain and patina of place through juxtapositions and interpenetrations of the historical and the contemporary, the political and the poetic, the discursive and the sensual; the conflation of oral testimony, anthology, memoir, biography, natural history and everything you might ever want to say about a place” (as cited in Mattern, 2015, p.33).

The urban environment is filled with myriad sensory modes, each telling its stories and together feed the urban imaginations. Each urban dweller is capable of producing his/her own deep map(s) and together these maps tell the history and the development of the city.