Cities, Skyscrapers and Development with William Strange | EP135

William Strange is a Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy at the Rotman School. William is former Editor of the Journal of Urban Economics (with Stuart Rosenthal), and he served in 2011 as President of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association. He works in the areas of urban economics and real estate. His research is focused on agglomeration, industry clusters, labor market pooling, skills, private government, real estate development and real estate investment.

In this episode we talked about:

• William’s Background and how he got into Real Estate
• Rotman School Real Estate Program
• Paper Analysis of Skyscrapers
• Macroeconomic Outlook
• Urban Economics Resources

Useful links:

Book “Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier” by Edward Glaeser

Book “The New Geography Of Jobs” by Enrico Moretti

https://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/Faculty/FacultyBios/Strange.aspx

Transcription:

Jesse (0s): Welcome to the Working Capital Real Estate Podcast. My name's Jessica Galley, and on this show we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. Ladies and gentlemen, my name's Jesse for Galley, and you're listening to Working Capital, the Real Estate Podcast. My guest today is William Strange. Will is a professor of economic analysis and policy at the Rotman School that's at the University of Toronto.

 

He's the former editor of the Journal of Urban Economics, and he served in 2011 as president of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association. He works in the area of urban economics and real estate. His research has focused on industry clusters, labor market, pooling skills, private government, real estate development, and real estate investment. Will, thanks for being here. How's it going?

 

William (58s): Thanks a lot for having me, Jesse. It's going great.

 

Jesse (1m 1s): Well, I appreciate you coming on. Like we said before the show, I thought there's a couple different areas of research that I thought we could jump into and, and I think the listeners would get a lot out of. But before we do that, why don't we kind of circle back to you in, in your current role at the University of Toronto and kind of what you're working on today, how did that all come to fruition? How did you get into, into this business of real estate?

 

William (1m 25s): Well, I got into real estate as an urban economist, so when I went to graduate school, my favorite undergraduate econ class was urban. I liked it because there are so many things going on in cities. Cities are just interesting organisms. And so I, I pursued a PhD at Princeton with Ed Mills, who is the father of the feet, modern field of urban economics. That ended up with me at U B C amongst the real estate folks. And I gradually came to understand just how interesting real estate is too, and just how much an urban economist will have to say about real estate, you know, both on the residential and commercial side.

 

I feel incredibly fortunate that I've lucked into a, a career as satisfying as this one has been.

 

Jesse (2m 8s): That's great. And the current role