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Author

Leo Ariel
January 07, 2024

Beep beep! This is the Magic Taxi Cab. Taking you on a tour of the world’s best knowledge, most unique places, and most fascinating people. Centered around cities and travel, curated for a Gen Z audience.

Update: “Taxi Cab” is rebranded to “Magic Taxi Cab” — inspired by our favorite childhood show — The Magic School Bus.

Without further ado, let’s get on with it!

Today’s Drive

  • Flat Cities vs Hilly Cities

  • Gen Z Home Ownership 📉

  • Uber vs Lyft vs Doordash Vision

🛑 Flat Cities vs Hilly Cities

AI-generated

Natan Gesher has lived in 2 flat (Manhattan, Tel Aviv) and 3 hilly (San Francisco, Seattle) cities. He has a theory:

Topography seems to have an effect on how people meet each other, make friends and form friend groups.

Specifically, in cities with a lot of hills (in my experience Jerusalem, San Francisco and Seattle), neighborhood identities tend to be stronger, it's more difficult to meet new people who don't live in one's own neighborhood and therefore it becomes more important to move to the neighborhood that matches the identity one has (or wants), and friend networks within neighborhoods tend to be more stable. This could be considered "cliquey."

In flat cities (in my experience, Manhattan x3 and Tel Aviv), however, neighborhoods are more fluid, it's easier to meet new people from every neighborhood in any neighborhood and therefore it becomes less important to live in a specific neighborhood than to be within strategic commuting distance of everywhere / wherever interesting things are happening, and friend networks turn over more rapidly. This could be considered "transient."

I've hypothesized that hills within a city may impose a certain psychological barrier - despite the physical barriers that are so easy to overcome with modern forms of transportation - preventing people from wanting to transcend them, and that neighborhood cultures in hilly cities persist longer over decades and absorb new members more thoroughly.

Natan Gesher

Basically: The more hilly a place, the more clique-y people are.

Do you agree?

🛑 Why aren’t young people buying homes anymore?

Check out this graph:

Age at which most residents of each U.S. state are homeowners:

Source: Census Bureau

In 1980, the average age when the majority of people (>50%) were homeowners was 28.1 years old. In 2021, that age has grown by 8 years, to 35.6 years old.

In other words, young people aren’t buying homes anymore.

🛑 Why Are Visions Getting Worse?

Have you noticed? As companies mature, their vision statements seem to get more corporatized and lame?

Here are 3 examples from Uber, Lyft, and Doordash.

Uber

Lyft

Doordash

That’s it for today! See you tomorrow!

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