Toronto Pearson Airport has just announced a $3 billion investment called LIFT, which stands for Long-term Investment in Facilities and Terminals. (This feels like a "how do we make this acronym work" kind of name.) The investment includes an upgraded baggage system, an expansion of the airfield to 2.2 million square metres, and a bunch of new tech.

Following this, the plan is to refresh Terminals 1 and 3, and look for opportunities to create some net-new terminal space. And when it's all said and done, the program is expected to grow the airport's capacity to about 65 million passengers per year by the early 2030s.

My first reaction when I read the announcement was, "Great, let's make Pearson better." My second reaction was, "Why only 65 million passengers? Why not 100 million or even 125 million?" (Side note: I love airports and I think it would be a lot of fun to design and/or work on one.)

For those of you who are curious, here are the top 10 busiest airports in the world by annual passenger volume (according to Gemini):

My follow-up question to Gemini was my second reaction: Why not target 100 million passengers? The response I got was, "Yeah, well, the airport is physically constrained and simply doesn't have the room for this kind of volume." So then I asked it to give me the land area in both acres and square kilometres for the same list of airports:

The obvious question: If Tokyo and London can achieve close to 100 million passengers on less than 4,000 acres, why can't Toronto? Gemini then said, "Okay, yeah, I guess it might be possible," but then gave a number of reasons why it's currently more challenging; everything from the layout of the runways to the high percentage of origin & destination travel over connecting flights.

I frankly don't know enough about the operations of international airports to comment intelligently, but at the end of the day, the LIFT program is fundamentally about densifying the existing airport lands and unlocking additional capacity. And that's what it will take to eventually get to 125 million!

Cover photo by Michael on Unsplash

Montreal-based Jesta Group has just announced the acquisition of a bulk condominium portfolio in downtown Toronto valued at $30 million. This also marks the launch of a larger $500 million program targeting more than 1,000 residential units over the next 12 months. Here's a snippet from the press release:

"Toronto's fundamentals remain strong and the current market environment has created a unique window to deploy capital at scale," said Anthony O'Brien, Senior Managing Director at Jesta Group. "We are aggressively pursuing opportunities that fit this investment ethos and encourage developers with qualifying inventory to reach out directly."

Anthony's email is aobrien@jesta.com.

Sentiment seems to be changing here in Toronto. Maybe it's because summer is coming and the winter was long, or maybe it's because our looming supply bottom is drawing nearer. Regardless, a $500 million program certainly suggests that somebody believes we are at or near the bottom.

Cover photo by Rodolfo Flores on Unsplash

There's a conventional school of thought that the best place to raise a kid is in the suburbs. Walkable, urban centers are great for young singles, but when it comes time to grow your family, the default assumption is that it's time to move on. Anecdotally, I can tell you that, now that we're expecting, some people assume we're obviously going to move from our condominium in the city to a low-rise house somewhere else.

But this viewpoint also shows up in the data. According to a recent article from The Economist, between 2010 and 2024, the total population aged under 18 declined by 22% in Chicago, by 23% in Los Angeles, and by 12% in New York. These figures are the sort of thing that lead some people to conclude that the suburbs are simply a natural market outcome. It's what families want, right?

However, it turns out this isn't universally true! The same dataset also reveals a clear exception: rich white families. Over the same time period, the number of white children grew by 6% in Chicago, by 13% in Brooklyn, and by a staggering 62% in Washington, DC. In certain inner-city neighbourhoods in Chicago, namely Wicker Park, the number of white children has increased by 39% and 94% (based on the two zip codes that make up the area).

Here's what's going on:

Families are mostly not moving in; rather people are moving to suburbs less once they become parents. Eric Johnson, a software engineer who grew up in Elgin, an outer suburb of Chicago, now has a ten-month-old baby in hipstery Logan Square. “We love the farmers market…I like not having to drive,” he says. Sara Weston-Shea, a social worker, grew up in suburban New Jersey and now has two children in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. “We can just easily access the wonderful resources that a city has, the arts, music, whenever,” she says. She likes that her kids are growing up in a multicultural neighbourhood, and that she can cart them around on a cargo bike.

What this tells us is that, no, the suburbs aren't necessarily a de facto market outcome for everyone. There are families who have the means to live wherever they want, and they are choosing walkable, transit-oriented urban communities. These are crucial data points because if rich white families are making this decision, how many others would do the same if only they had the means or, more importantly, if we were able to deliver more housing within their means?

This is a core city-building thesis of mine. There are families who move to the suburbs because that's what they prefer, and that's totally cool. But there's also a segment of the market that moves because they have no other choice. How big this segment actually is can only be accurately determined by figuring out how to meet that demand. And that's why addressing this need is one of the great opportunities and challenges facing large cities today.

Cover photo by Brad Knight on Unsplash