Population Overload Around the World: Part I

More than 50% of the world's population now live in urban areas. Here are a few ways that over-populated cities around the globe are dealing with clogged channels of transportation.

Sao Paulo, Brazil

As one of the most populated cities in the world, Sao Paulo faces more than 6 million vehicles on the road each day with an equal amount of daily commuters on its subway. With so much congestion, timely transportation is of great demand.

Cachorros locos are motorcycle messengers who make their living weaving through lanes of traffic to make speedy deliveries. These "mad dogs" hold one of the most dangerous jobs in Sao Paulo with approximately 1-2 dying each day.

For the city's elite business executives, helicopter service has become a necessity for staying competitive in business dealings. Sao Paulo has one of the second largest private helicopter fleets in the world.


Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo has almost become synonymous with over-population. Thankfully, the city's locals have found a sensible solution for getting to work on time.

As much as 15% of the city's workforce bike to work every day. That's an impressive figure considering that only half of 1% of workers bike to work each day in New York City. Biking in Tokyo proves to be faster than the car or the subway, and it is the norm to see bikers in business formal attire. You can also find entire families on a bike too.

One quirky bit of infrastructure that has formed because of Tokyo's bike force is the bicycle parking lot.

Check out the Japanese bicycle vending machine that has made its way into the basement of homes and office buildings.


Beijing, China

Back in the 90s, China's urban population got around on the bicycle. Twenty years later, the nation's city dwellers are getting around on the bicycle 2.0: the e-bike.

There are currently 125 million electric bicycles in China today. Costing approximately US$295 and cruising at speeds of 20-50 km/hr, these bikes are becoming China's fastest growing form of transportation. Just how environmentally friendly are they? 我不知道 (translation: I don't know) since they do consume electricity created from coal-powered plants and they run on lead batteries. Yet, there are currently 25 million cars in China, and I certainly don't want to know what the situation would look like if our e-bike riders suddenly decided to purchase an automobile.


The examples above were taken from the in-flight documentary Urban Planet.

上海 | Shanghai

70 million people are expected to pass through Shanghai for the World Expo. If you don't know at least five people who were/are/will be in this bursting cosmopolitan this summer, don't fret because I certainly do.

While it's been five years since I last visited Shanghai, it doesn't take an expert to know that the city's prime real estate is rising in temperature. The Shanghainese landscape that I remember best was bereft of Starbucks, Subway, and Carrefour. Today, the city is in a whole new era. Shanghai has become a global show house for highbrow art, dining, fashion, design, and my favorite of all, the concept boutique hotel.

 

If I had to come up with a name, location, and concept for a hotel, it would've been everything that URBN in Shanghai is today. They seem to have hit all the right concepts:
 
1. Industrial Conversion

Set in the popular French Concession area, the hotel was converted from a factory warehouse.

2. The Green Sticker

URBN is Shanghai's first carbon-neutral hotel. URBN calculates the amount of its carbon emissions and subsequently purchases carbon credits to offset the damage done. With a commitment to green design, the hotel is constructed using reclaimed wood and bricks from old Shanghai homes. Furthermore, heating and cooling are controlled by energy efficient systems, and organic products are used for cleaning and maintenance.

4. Design 

 URBN's lobby is understated and chic with crisp lines and smooth surfaces.

 

URBN's 26 rooms are characterized by Chinese inspired contemporary design.

5. Gastronomical Delights  
 

When the weather is right, sip cocktails and nibble on tapas 'Upstairs' at URBN's rooftop bar. If you're craving some Western comfort food, go ‘Downstairs' to taste David Laris's unique concept menu featuring hand-grown herbs, local produce, and free-range meats. And if you're cool enough (see below), spoil yourself with artisan drinks at 'The Social' on the fourth floor, URBN's exclusive "hidden" bar.

6. An A-List Clientele

Admit it, it's the sign of every hot establishment, that secret club or exclusive guest list that your name is probably not on. Try figuring out the secret digits of the code-locked doors to enter the guests-only rooftop lounge bar on the fourth floor, although there are smarter ways...

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Note to reader: I haven't personally stayed at URBN, so nothing in this post speaks about the quality of the hotel's service. My comments touch more or less on what appears to be brilliant concepts behind this undeniably successful hotel. And indeed, the success of URBN is undeniable. It even brands itself as China's most award-winning boutique hotel. Just take a look at some of the awards it took home:

shanghai's best boutique hotel award 2009, 2010
sustainable hotel of the year award 2008 - hicap
china sustainable business award 2008
40 under 40 award - design awards
conde nast traveller top hot hotels 2008
wallpaper top 150 hotels
new york times top pick

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So if you're a bobo (bourgeois bohemian) and/or an urban yuppie environmentalist, you will be perfectly at the center of your comfort zone at URBN. If you're not, then Shanghai might not be the best city for you my dear.

URBN is owned and managed by SPACE development, a Shanghai-based boutique real estate company by Scott Barrack, Jules Kwan, and Amina Belouizdad, all of whom are fluent in Mandarin.

URBN hotel
186号 Jiaozhou Rd
Jing'an, Shanghai, China, 200040
021-51534600

If you liked the High Line...

If you liked the High Line, then check out LentSpace. You won't be able to pass an entire afternoon there (as you easily could at the High Line), but LentSpace definetly deserves to be your next lunch-break destination. More importantly, it stands as a unique showcase of what can be done (temporarily) to undeveloped, underdeveloped, or vacant parcels of urban land.

 

LentSpace is "a free outdoor cultural space open to the public." It occupies a 27,000 sq ft lot in TriBeCa, New York City, and is surrounded by Grand, Sullivan, Varick, and Canal.

Back in the real estate boom of 2008, Trinity Real Estate, the land's developers, decided to convert their TriBeCa lot, which was housing obsolete office buildings, into a residential condo. However, applying for rezoning was a process that would take upwards of 3 to 5 years. Due to this delay in development, Trinity solicited suggestions from different cultural groups in the city, asking them for proposals on temporary usages of the land.   

One proposal that caught their eye came from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, "the leading voice for arts and culture Downtown and throughout NYC". Other notable projects by LMCC include their twelve year artist residencies program. Under this project, short-term donations of vacant office and industrial spaces are transformed into temporary studios, rehearsal, and presentation spaces for artists in all disciplines--an excellent concept that deserves an entire post of its own.

In a similar spirit, LMCC asked Trinity Real Estate to use their lot as a temporary space for artists to practice in downtown NY, something that wouldn't be feasible otherwise due to the area's high property values.

Trinity agreed to a three year free-of-rent donation to LMCC. Stress was placed on the "temporary" nature of the space, as its name suggests. Because of the project's short lifespan and tight budget, Interboro Partners, the chosen design team, came up with several smart design solutions.

Planter trees were nurtured in movable boxes that will find new homes throughout the neighborhood after the project's 3-5 year lifespan. 

Inexpensive materials were used to construct the space, serving as a constant reminder of its impermanence.

Rotating plywood fences serve both as entry points into the space as well as benches for people-watchers. The fence also tickles the thin line between the space's public and private nature. LentSpace is not a public park (which comes with regulations of its own), but a privately owned piece of land made temporarily available for public entry.


LentSpace is open to the public daily from 7am to dusk. You can get there by taking the A/C/E or 1 trains to Canal Street. Join Adam Kleinman, LentSpace curator, for a tour of the space on September 14.

Just My Kind of Flophouse

You've gotta love when a good concept meets great design under the direction of a visionary. While artsy boutique hotels may be popping up left and right, not many can claim to have catalyzed the renaissance of an entire downtown area. Liz Lambert's Hotel San Jose brought about such change in Austin's South Congress Avenue or SoCo, an area becoming increasingly popular as a shopping and rental district. 

Lambert purchased the San Jose Motel in 1995, back when it was a seedy crack hotel in a neighborhood that had not yet been gentrified. Over years, Lambert was able to transform the dilapidated building into one of Austin's most successful establishments.

On any given night, the courtyard by the pool is inhabited by poets, designers, musicians, and more creative-types sipping on cocktails and what-have-yous. If you want to gauge just how cool this place is, get this: a polaroid camera and an old-fashioned typewriter are available for check-out at the front desk just so you can capture that spontaneous burst of artistic expression. That's reason enough for me to wanna fly down South.

When the hotel hit 90-95% capacity, Bunkhouse Management, Lambert's team, was put in somewhat of a good dilemma. Lambert wanted to raise prices to control occupancy rates, yet she was hesitant to out price her core customer base. Her solution? Diversifying her portfolio.

Enter Hotel Saint Cecilia in Austin, TX, a bit more boutique, a bit more in price...

...and then El Cosmico, a high-concept trailer park in Marfa, TX...

...and then Havana, a historic boutique hotel in San Antonio, TX... 

Lambert is a serial hotelier who invests deeply in the concept of place. Each one of her establishments have retained all the sense, charm, details, and character of its geography even through the limelight. I'm keeping my eyes on this one... and perhaps making a trip down to Texas real soon.