I'm writing this post on my birthday (May 2), but by the time you all read it in your inboxes or online, it will be May 3. This is how I write my daily posts, which means when I'm trying to write about something very timely, I sometimes have to adjust my headspace by a day or be off by a day.

I have always loved my birthday. I woke up this morning to freshly baked croissants from Bianca. That's hard to beat! This year is also a special birthday for me because I'm going to be this old when our first child (a girl) is born in the coming weeks. Maybe she'll be a stubborn Taurus like her dad, or maybe she'll stay cooking for the recommended amount of time.

I often think of my life in terms of decades. My twenties were all about school, gaining experiences abroad (I spent summers in Taipei and Dublin, and went to grad school in Philadelphia), and, quite frankly, figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. I finished my MBA, which was my second master's, when I was exactly 30, and I started writing this daily blog that same year.

My thirties were then about establishing myself in a career. I started working full-time in real estate development when I was 26, right after my first master's in architecture and real estate, but things take time, and it wasn't until my thirties that I started hitting my stride. I spent most of this decade working at Slate, and I look back on this time as being both highly productive and a hell of a lot of fun.

Shortly after I turned 40, I decided to get married and leave Slate at exactly the same time for maximum life change. The love part is not something I thought I could ever plan for, though. I just knew it when I met Bianca. But when it came to my career, the next decade had arrived, and it was time to focus full-time on my own thing (Globizen).

It's certainly a tough real estate market in Toronto right now — the toughest since the early '90s — but I don't doubt this decision for a second. We're creating the opportunities that we can, and I'll never give up. (See stubborn Taurus.)

I'm now firmly a quadragenarian, working each and every day on things I feel passionate about (making money in this market is an entirely separate matter), and about to add a little human to the mix. I feel fortunate. I've also had three croissants today, and I am in no way opposed to having a fourth before the day is done.

I recently heard David Brooks, whom I appreciate very much, say that we should try and aim for at least three big life adventures each decade. I think this is a fantastic plan. We tend to think back on our lives in terms of punctuations created by milestones, so I'll be sure to keep aiming for this. Here's to more adventure!

Toronto, by and large, does not like car-free urban streets. I mean, we have very few of them. Let's try and name them. The most notable would be the Distillery District. Next to this would perhaps be the intersection of Gould Street & Victoria Street on TMU's campus. Then there's Willcocks Commons at the University of Toronto, though it's not the prettiest.

After this, I can only think of small, unremarkable or temporary ones. I'm not counting seasonal closures. Technically, the Toronto Islands are the largest car-free community in North America, but I wouldn't call this urban. So I'm now at a loss. If I've missed any noteworthy ones, I would be happy to be corrected.

This concise list makes the recently revealed masterplan for the island formerly known as Villiers — now called Ookwemin Minising (or OM) — all the more exciting. The 16-block plan now includes a 760-metre-long, fully pedestrianized public space called Centre Commons. It runs east-west in the site plan below, and is intersected by a north-south street called The Sandbar Trail.

As designed, Centre Commons is expected to be the longest car-free street in the city and look something like this:

This is the space in between the buildings. Equally important is the fact that the new masterplan unlocks a 27% increase in finer-grained density, without compromising on the quality or quantity of public space on the island. This is a major improvement over the previous masterplan, which had all the hallmarks of bland pseudo-urbanism. Meaning, it was supposed to be urban, but it wasn't actually.

I love the above massing diagram because it feels like a real, organic city, as opposed to just a series of repeating towers on podiums. It has a variety of scales and a more fine-grained urban pattern. This, as we have talked about, is notoriously difficult to achieve in new master-planned communities. But it is possible: loop transit through the island, lower the parking requirements, and give developers the freedom to build.

The design team includes SLA of Copenhagen (landscape architects), Trophic (Indigenous-owned landscape architects), GHD (prime consultant and technical lead) and Allies and Morrison of London (architectural lead). And when built out, OM is expected to support approximately 12,000 new homes (including 3,000 affordable homes) and 2,900 new jobs.

I say we build it.

Cover photo by Allies and Morrison

Aerial image from Waterfront Toronto

Centre Commons rendering by Norm Li via SLA

Area plan and massing diagram by SLA

The Missing Middle Initiative just released its latest Greater Toronto Area and Greater Golden Horseshoe Housing Report Card. If you'd like to download a copy and see the generally abysmal grades, there's a link at the bottom of this page. But here are the high-level findings (based on Q4-2025 data):

• Housing starts are down 34% year-over-year across the 34 municipalities covered in the report.

• Condominium starts, in particular, are down over 50% year-over-year.

• Pre-construction sales, which are a precursor to housing starts, are down 89% for condominiums and 58% for ground-oriented houses.

• The only exception to the above is purpose-built rental starts, which increased 39% year-over-year. But this increase doesn't come close to offsetting the declines seen in both condominiums and low-rise housing.

Once again, we are reminded of the looming housing shortage that, I think, could be felt as soon as next year. New construction is inherently slow to respond to market changes, and, as of right now, the ship is clearly headed toward almost no new supply. For that to change, we will almost certainly need to see pre-construction sales return.

Cover photo by Dmitry Gerasimenko on Unsplash