Urbanexus Update - Issue #11
Please scroll down for my weekly collection of information and opinion about real estate and community development.
Real estate investment and management
A ranking of some of the world’s largest real estate investors has captured more than $1.23 trillion in real estate assets.
IRR, cash returns and equity multiples
Real estate investors and developers need uniform ways to evaluate and compare the expected (ex-ante) and realized (ex-poste) returns of real estate investments.
Technology, strategy, and growth — leadingvoicespodcast.com
Matt Slepin of Terra Search Partners interviews Fred Tuomi to learn about his 30 plus year career, including leadership roles at both Equity Residential and Invitation Homes and how technology has enabled and transformed these asset classes.
Housing and community development
Median house price to income ratio The rule of thumb is that the cost of your house should equal roughly 2.6 years of income. But in some U.S. cities, home prices are almost 10 times what the median household earns.
Meet a new housing movement — www.thenation.com
A future in which the private market is diminished and noncommercial, community-controlled housing plays a central role in American life?
Why are new apartments so expensive? — openhousing.net
Here is some math about who gets what along with nine ways to make rents lower based on numbers from Portland, OR.
Creative housing design in Los Angeles
A pure cube, extruded to fit tight on a Koreatown lot.
A stance on homelessness in the OC — www.latimes.com
Refusing to accept homelessness as a way of life, and dedicated to pulling the homeless out of that existence.
Break rules to fix homelessness — www.seattletimes.com
The developer of a now-shelved steel modular housing project for the homeless in Seattle says too many regulations got in the way. If we're going to do anything but tread water on this issue, he says, "we need to break some rules."
Balboa Park Reservoir in San Francisco — sf.streetsblog.org
Designing a residential neighborhood and a park on a site originally acquired for water storage.
An unfulfilled vision — www.citylab.com After Moshe Safdie’s thesis project in Montreal brought him instant fame in 1967, a chance to build a new community in Baltimore turned into a reality check.
Little used rooms in houses — legallysociable.com
Americans may not need such large homes if a recent UCLA study is correct in showing where they spend their time inside their house.
Retail
What about America's failing malls? — www.businessinsider.com
Urbanism experts say they may transform into schools, gyms, food markets, and community centers.
Transportation
Traffic congestion around the world — www.newgeography.com Dallas-Fort Worth and Dayton Ohio have the least traffic congestion among larger cities (urban areas) in the world, according to the 2017 TomTom Traffic Index.
Defensive walking — www.stateofplace.co
A 1.4-mile walk in the suburbs of Miami illustrates how hazardous and stressful (also unhealthful) a walk can be in a typical suburban streetscape.
Why a self-driving car killed a pedestrian — www.economist.com
It was the first fatal accident of its kind.
The twisted electric scooter craze tale — www.cnet.com Betrayal, clipped brake cables and chop shops. And that's just in San Francisco.
Protesters block Google buses citing ‘techsploitation’ — www.nytimes.com
A simmering battle in San Francisco erupts over displacement, evictions, and scooters.
Environment
How far can we get without flying? Hour for hour, there’s no better way to warm the planet than to fly in a plane.
Water reuse as a design opportunity — meetingoftheminds.org
As the “yuck factor” begins to subside, we are seeing a growing interest in water reuse strategies.
Technology
The June 1, 2018 issue of TIME explores how drones are about to change everything in our lives, from major industries to how we get around town.