city planning

When it comes to the collapse in office real estate, there's a lot of focus on who owns the debt, and what kind of pain must eventually be realized by someone. But there may be an even deeper challenge for big cities like New York or San Francisco. Office buildings, and the various restaurants and shops that cater to daily workers, are big contributors to the tax base of many cities. What happens if that goes into decline? In theory, you can get a doom loop of population loss leading to lower activity, leading to lower taxes, leading to lower spending, leading to worse public service, leading to more population loss and on and on it goes. So is that still a risk in 2024? On this episode we speak with Arpit Gupta, associate professor of finance at New York University's Stern School of Business, who has been tracking this risk for awhile. He gives an update on where things stand and why some of the pain may still be possible in the future.

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The vast majority of urban apartments in the US are geared towards single occupants, couples without kids or maybe young professionals with roommates. It's hard to find apartments with the kind of layout that would fit families. Anyone who's gone looking for that type of space is probably familiar with bedrooms that look and feel like closets, or if you do find an apartment that has multiple good-sized bedrooms, it probably costs a fortune. So why is this the case? Why is so much apartment construction skewed towards non-families, and why does there seem to be an inherent assumption in the real estate market that families will always want to live in houses out in the suburbs? On this episode of the Odd Lots podcast, we explore the hidden incentives and regulations that deter builders from making more family-friendly buildings. We speak with real estate developer Bobby Fijan, and also Stephen Jacob Smith, executive director at the Center for Building in North America, for their perspective.

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Since stepping down as Walmart’s president of e-commerce at the beginning of the year, billionaire entrepreneur Marc Lore has had a busy year of big ideas. In the spring, it was announced that he reached a deal to purchase the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves and the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx, alongside Alex Rodriguez. And then last month, he outlined his plans to build a new American city called Telosa, centered around sustainability and inclusion. Lore, who co-founded Jet.com, an e-commerce company that sold to Walmart in 2016, says that he approaches these moonshot ideas in the same manner: by reverting to the fundamentals and naming the mission and values. "VCP: vision, capital, people,” he says. “If you get VCP right, everything else falls in place."

Read a transcript of this interview at: mastersofscale.com

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So you're telling me slime molds can solve mazes and recreate trade routes? Yes, indeed we are. In this episode, Julie and Robert explore the "intelligence" of slime molds and why they force us to re-think the evolution of intelligence.

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