Real estate development is cyclical. Supply adjusts slowly to demand, and so it's common for developers to get ahead of their skis and build too much space. This is what happened in the 1980s when American developers built more office space than in all previous years of the republic's history (yes, it's true), and then nationwide vacancy rates went from 4.6% to 16.9%. And it's what happened following the dot-com crash when office vacancy in Silicon Valley went from almost 0% to over 20%.

Today, things feel kind of similar.

According to Cushman & Wakefield, nearly 37% of the office space in downtown Seattle is now vacant. Since 2020, it is estimated that these office properties have in aggregate lost about $15 billion, or almost half, of their value. This has people repeating the regular refrain that "this time is different" and that "the office market may never come back." And indeed, the commonly held belief is that this time isn't just cyclical, it's also structural. How and where we work has changed.

But unless you believe that offices as a spatial construct will fully cease to exist at some indeterminate point in the future, then the reality is that the demand curve has simply shifted. We may not need office space in quite the same way, but we will still need some office space. This means that, at some point, we will find a new supply-and-demand equilibrium and, at some point, developers will get back to building, and overbuilding, office buildings. It's just impossible to determine when that might be.

Cover photo by Zhifei Zhou

The way CMHC typically tracks and categorizes housing types is as follows: single, semi-detached, traditional row, and then everything else. This "everything else" bucket is called "apartment," and it includes high-rise apartments, mid-rise apartments, low-rise apartments, duplexes, triplexes, multiplexes, and anything else that doesn't fit into one of the other categories.

This taxonomy reflects our bias toward single-family, grade-related housing because if you look at the distribution for a city like Toronto, it doesn't really make sense to do it in this way. For example, if we were to look at housing starts in Toronto proper for 2025, the distribution looks like this:

• Single: 5.2%

• Semi-Detached: 0.4%

• Row: 2.5%

• Apartment: 92%

If we were to look at the entire Toronto CMA, the distribution updates to the following:

• Single: 12%

• Semi-Detached: 0.5%

• Row: 14.2%

• Apartment: 72.8%

Do we really need a separate category for semi-detached houses? And would it not make sense to get a bit more granular with the apartment category given that it's basically what we're building these days? Obviously, markets vary, but in the case of Toronto, we have flipped to an apartment city.

Now, if you were to look at an aerial view of the Toronto CMA, you would see the opposite. You would see concentrations of towers surrounded by seas of low-rise housing, and you would be forgiven for thinking differently about the city. But this is a lagging indicator. The leading indicator is housing starts, and it's pretty clear what that is saying.

These are important stats to think about because they help illustrate the housing problem that needs to be solved. Last year, Toronto saw a net domestic out-migration of 77,500 people. One possible explanation is that some of these people left for more affordable, single-family housing. For the sake of argument, let's assume that's the case.

A portion of this segment may only be interested in single-family housing, and if that is the case, Toronto will never again create the housing they want at scale. But I would wager that there's another meaningful segment that would have stayed in Toronto if only they could have found housing that met their needs. And that is the opportunity that exists today for city builders.

We know that apartments are the future of Toronto, but we also know that they can take many forms, from 100-storey towers to small "missing middle" projects that are still grade-related. The housing solutions we seek are necessarily going to lie within the black box we today call "apartments."

Cover photo by Venrick Azcueta

Periodically, Twitter will surface posts for me that bemoan modern architecture and advocate for good old-fashioned traditional architecture. Sometimes these posts will share a modern building with a disparaging comment like, "Imagine wanting this over traditional architecture," and sometimes I will engage because, yeah, I would prefer the modernist building to traditional architecture.

But let's be clear: I don't have an issue with traditional architecture done well, and there are also countless examples of "modern" architecture that I think are truly abysmal. This is not about architectural tribalism. I love Paris and think it is beautiful, but I also think Brazil's equatorial brutalism is equally beautiful. Both feel authentic.

Here's how I would describe my position.

First, focusing on one style or another is not the goal. Many contemporary architects think of "style" as a bad word. It implies a superficial veneer. Great architecture aims to be something deeper and more intentional. It solves problems, responds to specific conditions, and also presents new ideas.

Second, the beauty of art, architecture, and design is that they are never created in a vacuum. They always reflect the current cultural environment. The challenge I have with traditional architecture is that I find it curious to try to speak to a moment in time that no longer exists. I am much more interested in authenticity and what the future might bring.

And third, movements take time. It's easy to romanticize the past as being better than our current environment. Whether we're talking about Impressionist painters or architecture free of ornament (in the case of modernism), it is intellectually easier to think the old ways were better. But history has shown us that posterity will almost certainly come to see things differently.

Cover photo by laura adai