Daily insights for city builders, delivered every morning at 6 AM ET. I’m Brandon Donnelly — a Toronto-based real estate developer and founder of Globizen. I’ve been writing here since 2013.
MyHamlet.com is a fascinating public records platform that monitors, transcribes, and indexes municipal and county government meetings across the US. Its primary job is to take unstructured and fragmented public data (such as meeting minutes and video recordings of council meetings) and turn it into searchable data for advocacy groups, real estate developers, and others.
The site covers over 2,400 cities and counties, and it allows you to easily uncover hard-to-ascertain data like public opinion on data centres:
Okay, you knew this already. But their other rankings include topics ranging from pickleball courts to missing middle housing (both of which seem to have broad support):
While it’s a great way to surface data that most people wouldn’t care to read otherwise, it naturally inherits the same structural bias of the public meeting format. In other words, the people who tend to engage and attend these meetings typically have both the time on their hands and a bone to pick. There need to be better ways to capture an accurate cross-section of public opinion.
London did it: they pedestrianized Oxford Street. The section between Orchard Street and Great Portland Street is now closed to all traffic, including buses, cars, taxis, bikes, and scooters. And already, it looks like this. (For reference, here’s the post I wrote at the beginning of the year when London first approved the plans.)
Pedestrianization is a much-debated topic in urbanist circles. Toronto has, for instance, very few pedestrian-only streets and has debated pedestrianizing Kensington Market for as long as I can remember. But with London and Oxford, the street was widely acknowledged to be in decline and that created the political consensus to do something.
I can’t wait to see the data once it becomes available, but even before then, here is my prediction.
Pedestrianizing Oxford will prove to be an economic and urban success for the city. Other cities will then look to London and say “See, we can do that too!” But the critics will respond with “Yeah, but we’re not Oxford Street in London. We simply don’t have the infrastructure. Where will people park? The businesses will suffer!”
And they will be right, though not for the reasons they think: Not every city is willing to be bold.
Stephen Velasco maintains a wonderful set of models for Toronto showing existing, under-construction, and proposed/approved developments. Here’s his website and here’s an aerial he recently shared showing a large section of the city overlaid with subway and LRT stations.
What is abundantly clear from this visualization is the “grand bargain” that has guided development in Toronto for over two decades: we won’t touch most of the low-rise residential land in the city, and instead we will create high-rise pockets next to transit.
This was the path of least political resistance, and while building on top of and next to transit is obviously sound, the extreme density cliff we encouraged created several urban economic and city-building distortions.
Land became artificially scarce, even though there’s lots of room within the boundaries of Toronto. And high density became our only option, eliminating many other housing typologies for Torontonians. But perhaps most importantly, it created an urban fabric of dense nodes that in many cases aren’t actually urban.
What this means is that most of the city remains unwalkable, without urban amenities, and clogged with car traffic. The way to better use our existing transit infrastructure, create more amenity-rich communities, and reduce Toronto’s dependency on the car is to flank these isolated tower clusters with more evenly distributed density.
Towers on top of stations are, of course, good, but there then needs to be a gradient of 4-12 storey buildings across the surrounding avenues, major streets, and interior residential streets.
The good news is that we’re moving in this direction. It’s just going to take time for us to firmly strike a new grand bargain. But in my view, this city-building approach is going to guide the next two decades of development in Toronto.
I clicked on this artist’s loft tour by Joshua Charow for two reasons: (1) it’s the kind of big, creative loft space that I would love to have for fun, and (2) $270 per month for a SoHo loft seems kind of reasonable.
The artist is Ben Schonzeit. He moved into the space in 1972, and this was his all-inclusive gross rent. In today’s dollars, Gemini estimates this to be around $2,175 per month, which no longer sounds so dirt cheap, but remains very reasonable for a massive high-ceilinged loft in SoHo. (As an aside, I don’t think most people calculate in real dollars all that well.)
There’s a lot that comes to mind with Ben’s story:
The creation of architectural cast iron changed the economics around ornate facades like the ones you see in SoHo. But at the time, these would have been seen as cheap replicas of the original stone stuff. Architectural purists would have derided these facades for not following the doctrine of “truth to materials.” Of course, today, many would now view SoHo as an example of “we don’t build things like we used to.”
Cities operate in cycles. But the flexible nature of these buildings, with their wide-open spans and large windows, allowed them to be easily repurposed.
Ben and his artist contemporaries were gentrifiers of the neighbourhood. And they would have long been displaced by the market had they not been protected by policy. One way to look at this dynamic is that they’re getting paid — through below-market rents — for the cultural cachet they created and the sweat equity they put into gentrifying the area.
One of Jane Jacobs’s famous city-building mantras was, “Old ideas can sometimes use new buildings. New ideas must use old buildings.”” The reasoning for this is that new construction is expensive, whereas old, out-of-favour buildings offer the low-cost leeway needed for new ideas.
This was certainly true when Ben was signing his lease in SoHo following deindustrialization. But is it still true today? The new idea du jour is AI, and that seems to require a lot of new buildings. Fifty years from now, will there be new SoHo stories similar to Ben’s?
Many cities today treat local retail the way medieval towns treated tanneries: as an offensive nuisance that must be segregated from where people live. This has led us to our current debate over whether small-scale retail should be allowed deep inside residential neighbourhoods. It’s allowed, sometimes.
The detractors like to get people excited by suggesting that this will lead to all-night raves, multinational chains, or streets being overrun with cars. But of course, that is not what we’re talking about.
There are lots of case studies that we can point to. Japan, for instance, has a national zoning code that permits small-scale shops, home offices, and cafes in even its lowest-density, residential-only zone. From there, all subsequent zones work cumulatively, meaning more intensive zones generally inherit all previous uses. The result is a land-use approach that is default mixed-use.
Of course, there are also lots of examples that we can point to here in Toronto, and that’s because corner stores used to be a part of our daily life. But these remnant examples are generally found in the oldest, and most urban, parts of the city, and rejected in the inner suburbs.
It is no surprise that Toronto is once again divided on this issue and across its typical built-form lines. This division runs deep, and it will almost certainly resurface when Torontonians head to the polls this Monday.
At the end of the day, corner stores and local retail are an inherently urban sensibility. It is about not having to get into a car to grab a coffee or a soft washed-rind French cheese from Haute-Savoie. But we know that not all communities want to be urban.
In the Penthouse Collection at One Delisle, which spans the top three floors of the building, the homes all have a fully covered loggia as one of their outdoor spaces. I say “one of” because these suites all have multiple outdoor spaces. If you’re buying a penthouse, I would imagine you want to own several different pieces of the sky.
Here’s a plan (this particular suite also has curved walls because it’s, you know, sexier):
I was on site this morning as the team was installing the curtain wall and panels for the southwest-facing loggia on the very top floor, and let me tell you that it is wildly impressive in person.
The idea behind these loggias was to create outdoor rooms, protected from the elements both above and on the sides so that they could be used for as long as possible throughout the year. We also provided the option of a hot tub for year-round use, which some purchasers did opt for.
The space was certainly showing off today on what was a beautiful fall day.
This is an important project worth sharing. Designed for Sirivik, EVOQ Architecture recently completed the first four-season solar greenhouse in Inukjuak, northern Quebec (Nunavik). Started in 2017, the initiative is part of a broader effort to strengthen local food autonomy and reduce dependency on shipments from southern Quebec.
The result is a vibrant community hub featuring a solar greenhouse, a hydroponic growing container, a commercial kitchen, and a gathering space for cultural activities. The glazed, pink volume also serves as a fun visual landmark within the village, symbolizing food resilience, social development, and the autonomy of northern communities.
I’m ashamed to admit I’ve never traveled this far north in our country, but it sits high on my list and I hope to visit soon.
At some point, I’m sure that most of you have seen one of those cute little sidewalk robots roaming around your city, probably on their way to deliver someone’s smash burger and fries.
Still, they remain a rare feature in most cities. Here in Toronto, city council unfortunately voted to ban them back in 2021.
But things are a little different over in China, where autonomous delivery vehicles are starting to operate at real scale across both the last-mile and mid-mile segments.
Meituan reported that it had completed over 5.5 million outdoor delivery orders by the end of 2025, while Neolix recently surpassed 30,000 active vehicles with plans for significant growth. The company just announced a new $400 million raise.
What’s unique about the Chinese landscape is that, in addition to cute little sidewalk robots, we’re also talking about high-capacity cargo vehicles.
And to accommodate these vehicles, cities like Shenzhen and Beijing have created regulatory sandboxes where they are allowed to mix with public traffic.
Interestingly enough, these delivery vehicles also seem to be creating a nighttime economy, where they roam around cities unfettered by traffic and human sleep requirements.
Now, I don’t have firsthand experience with any of these Chinese delivery vehicles, but I do think the right approach is to create sandboxes and figure things out rather than outright ban them.
I learned about this development proposal over the weekend through a Toronto Stararticle that I couldn’t read because it was behind a paywall. Oh well, here’s the Twitter post and the headline: “Once built, the 60-unit tower will be the only one on the strip. Locals say it will kill the area’s vibe.”
The original proposal was a 16-storey mixed-use building at 2273-2279 Bloor Street West in Bloor West Village, but through negotiations with the City, it was reduced to 14 residential floors plus a mechanical penthouse wrapped with indoor and outdoor amenity spaces. The height is just under 50 metres, and the resulting FSI for the site is 9.2. What you see above is the revised massing (via UrbanToronto).
So, will it kill the area’s vibe?
One way to look at the proposal is that it’ll be the “only one.” But the other way to look at it is that we’ve historically underbuilt along one of our major subway lines and that it’s a positive indicator that we’re now seeing proposals like this being brought forward. This is good. It’s a fine-grained urban proposal with 50% two- and three-bedroom suites and zero parking.
The question we should be asking ourselves is: how do we encourage more of this? The future of Toronto lies not in the two- to three-storey buildings you see depicted above, but in a mix of denser buildings that will unlock additional homes in the city and allow Toronto to wean itself off its dependency on the car. People are what create the vibe.
The Katy Freeway in Houston has 26 lanes at its widest, and after a $2.8 billion expansion between 2003 and 2008, commute times reportedly increased by 30-50%.
Highway 401 in Toronto has 22 lanes at its widest and is ranked as the busiest highway in North America with an average of ~500,000 vehicles per day. It does not flow freely at most times throughout the day.
Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires is one of the widest surface avenues in the world, but traffic congestion didn’t improve until lanes were converted into a bus rapid transit line.
Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai ranges from 12-16 lanes and acts as the main high-capacity spine for what is a linear, car-dependent global city. It too is known for its traffic congestion.
The common thread among all of these examples is that, irrespective of the width and number of lanes, none of these cities have solved the problem of traffic congestion. I challenge you to think of a counterexample. And that is because it is impossible to build a large, economically vibrant global city centered primarily around private automobiles without suffering severe traffic congestion.
The car is the most spatially inefficient mode of transport for cities, and this doesn’t change with tunnels or with autonomous vehicles (at least sufficiently to make this statement wrong). The fundamental issue is one of space: too many cars for a finite amount of road capacity.
People who live in car-dependent communities are reluctant to accept this reality, but the only proven solution to congestion is to reorient away from the car toward more efficient modes of transport, namely mass transit. And one of the most effective ways to make this switch is to price roads and congestion.
This is not to say that individual cars don’t have a place in global cities; they of course do. It is to say that it’s impossible to rely on them as the primary means of mobility without there being negative consequences.
It’s also worth pointing out that one of the core features of cities is agglomeration economies, which is to say that the spatial concentration of activities leads to cost savings, productivity gains, and greater innovation. Cars demand the exact opposite: spatial dispersion.
