Brandon Donnelly

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.

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  • Packing for urban (and beach) travel with a 3-month-old

    We landed on our big-picture luggage strategy for Vivienne’s first trip, and our car seat versus no car seat decision (who wants to drive?), so now let’s look at some of the smaller stuff. As a reminder, we’re going to be operating with one large 85L check-in bag, a Patagonia 30L carry-on backpack, another smaller carry-on bag, and the Ergobaby Metro 3 travel stroller. Below is a mostly comprehensive list of the other, less-obvious things we’re bringing. Most of what you see pictured will be going in my carry-on backpack.

    Pictured (from left to right):

    • Baby carrier for urban exploring on foot
    • Portable fan that attaches to our travel stroller (charges via USB-C)
    • Diaper pack cube with 20 diapers and a fresh pack of wipes (this is going in our carry-on just in case we once again become quarantined at Brest Airport and we can’t buy diapers for 24-48 hours)
    • Smaller packing cube with clothes, burp cloths, and other important stuff for Vivienne
    • Smaller diaper bag that we’ll use for diaper changes (instead of carrying the bigger diaper pack everywhere)
    • AIAIAI headphones for the plane (these will get cut if we end up short on space)
    • Various chargers and cables
    • Plane and beach reading material (including Monocle’s summer newspaper, Med, Mountains & More)
    • Fujifilm camera (it’s been a while since I’ve taken this out)
    • GoPro, and selfie stick, which also doubles as another stand for our baby monitor (these are liable to be cut as well)
    • Cycling cap and cycling shoes not pictured here (plan is to do some road biking even though I’m the furthest thing from conditioned this summer)
    • Vivienne’s brand-new passport, where she could pass for George Costanza (reminder that I don’t love Canada’s most recent passport design)
    • MacBook Air (I used to carry my Pro around everywhere; this is a game-changer for weight)
    • Memory card reader
    • Sunglasses (including a pair for cycling)
    • Handheld luggage scale
    • Apple USB-C European plug block (we picked one up a few years ago for simplicity)
    • Baby monitor travel stand (for the Nanit)
    • 2 x universal travel adapters
    • Laser distance measuring device so I can nerd out about European built form
    • 45W battery pack with USB-A and USB-C plugs (note, this cannot be checked and must go in a carry-on)

    Not pictured:

    • Change of clothes for the flight in case we are victims of a blowout
    • First aid / pharmacy kit for Vivienne
    • Breast pump apparatuses & bottles
    • Pacifiers and clips
    • Disinfecting surface wipes for diaper changes on the go
    • Doggie bags and Ziploc bags for wrapping up dirty diapers and other such things
    • Floating pool lounger with sun shade for infants
    • Portable beach tent for Vivienne
    • Portable sound machine (charges via USB-C)
    • AirTags in our checked bag and carry-on

  • One of Canada’s wealthiest families unveils bold vision for St. Clair Square

    This week, Wittington Properties (which is owned by Canada’s Weston family) unveiled a bold vision for Yonge and St. Clair in midtown Toronto, which they are now calling St. Clair Square. Alex Bozikovic wrote about it, here, in the Globe and Mail.

    Here are some of the key things to know:

    • 1.6 million square feet of new construction alongside the existing shopping complex and two office towers.
    • Kohn Pedersen Fox is leading urban design and architecture for two of the three towers (37 and 46 storeys tall), as well as a private amenity building called the Ravine Club.
    • Herzog and de Meuron are the architects for the third tall building, which will be 24 storeys and house only 72 large condominium residences (you all can do the rough math on the average suite size).
    • A flagship, mass-timber cultural building (bottom right in the above AI rendering) designed by Canadian design firms Omar Gandhi and Bruce Mau Design. This building will replace Delisle Court (on the west side of Yonge, north of One Delisle) and is expected to house a 300-seat performance hall, a cafe, and potentially a new Toronto Public Library.
    • A large car-free public square (in the shape of an “L”) designed by PUBLIC WORK will “define the area” and is expected to be lined with small shops and restaurants no larger than 1,000 square feet each (fine-grained).
    • Construction is expected to begin in 2027 — on the entire complex.

    Herzog and de Meuron is one of my favourite architecture firms, and we have spoken to them over the years about potential projects in Toronto. They have yet to build a project in Canada. Though nothing ever came to fruition, I’m excited that they’re working at Yonge & St. Clair alongside such an incredible design team.

    In my humble opinion, our project One Delisle is one of Toronto’s next architectural landmarks (the building on the right in the above rendering). St. Clair Square promises to add to this rich context and layer on some cultural cachet with its flagship building. We should all be excited about the future of Yonge & St. Clair.

    Congratulations to the team!

  • Cynics sound smart but optimists build the future

    There’s an old saying that “cynics sound smart, but optimists move the world.” And indeed, studies show that we typically perceive pessimism as a sign of intelligence. On some levels, this makes sense because it requires intellect to understand something, and then expose its vulnerabilities.

    But at the same time, pure cynicism can be inherently passive. It’s an easy armour to wear, one that protects the user from (1) taking risk, (2) being proven wrong, and (3) doing the hard work to determine whether something might actually work. Importantly, cynicism generally creates zero new value. It may protect you from a bad decision, but it also blocks you from the really great ones. Value creation demands action.

    Now, blind optimism is not the answer. Risk management is essential. In fact, some of my real estate developer colleagues describe the business purely in these terms: “I manage risk for a living.”

    The right answer is a kind of rational optimism. Because the greatest value creation comes when you believe something is true or possible, even if it has never been done before. If someone has already proven the thesis, it doesn’t require the same degree of optimism; it only requires research.

    If you’re looking for evidence of this in practice, consider that the most entrepreneurial cities in the world have robust capital markets that are inherently tolerant of risk. Venture capital, for example, is rational optimism scaled across an asset class. It operates on a power-law distribution. The assumption is that most investments will be a failure, but a select few will more than make up for it.

    This is an important feature because it rewards bold ideas that can change the world. But for all of this to work, you need a healthy dose of institutional optimism. Without it, these bets go unmade and the future gets created by someone else. Let’s not ignore this key ingredient as we build our cities.

  • A 6-storey boutique hotel proposed for Kensington Market

    Fun fact: The bike I used throughout most of undergrad at the University of Toronto was a jaunty-looking red thing that I purchased from Bikes on Wheels in Kensington Market. I used it every day. It was a workhorse.

    And when I eventually moved to Philadelphia for grad school, I took it with me. Let me tell you, I probably stood out like a sore thumb riding that thing through the depths of West Philly. But then it got a flat tire and it sat in the corner of my apartment for the rest of the school year. I couldn’t tell you what happened to it after that.

    This is a mostly irrelevant story except that a development application was recently filed for a site in Kensington that includes the former home of Bikes on Wheels. It’s a new six-storey boutique hotel designed by Joel Gerber Architect. The design looks great, and I like the yellow pitched-roof top hat that comes with it. It will look fun on the Kensington skyline.

    But even more importantly, this is exactly the kind of infill development that Toronto needs, all over. We should be doing everything we can to reduce the barriers to building at this scale. It’s not easy, which is one of the reasons why we are not seeing a flurry of 6-storey buildings all along our avenues, even though they are technically now permissible.

    So, whoever the team is behind this project, I wish them a speedy and straightforward approval.

    Project rendering via blogTO

  • How AI is transforming architectural workflows

    I recently came across an online post criticizing a Canadian Tire ad that was very clearly created by AI. The text was illegible (most AI models aren’t excellent at text). The model’s face was plasticky. And everyone was piling on, saying things along the lines of: “Shame on Canadian Tire. They should have hired a Canadian model, photographer, and graphic designer.”

    While I can appreciate where this is all coming from, the reality is that the cat is out of the bag. As I’ve said before: What is real anymore? It doesn’t matter. We all have to adapt. I have, for example, noticed a dramatic change in the architectural workflow on our projects. We are now seeing an infinite number of visualizations throughout the design process, and that is making it a lot easier to iterate and refine ideas. So much for the quick blue foam models.

    On some projects, where we have a collaborative working relationship with the design team, we now send AI renderings back and forth in group chats: “I’ve changed the material on these soffits and modified the brick coursing. What do you think?” None of it is perfect. But neither were the physical models and other tools that we used to rely on to test ideas.

    If anything, it’s overwhelming in the best possible way. The creative possibilities are endless.

  • Data centres will soon claim 15% of total US grid capacity

    Here are some recent data centre figures to help put things into perspective. By 2035, BloombergNEF now expects there to be 194 GW of data centres online in the US. This is an upward revision of 83%! The reason for this revision is that “the announced data center pipeline in the US has grown by a further 101 GW since December 2025.”

    But here’s another interesting thing. BNEF also estimates that the shipment of AI chips between 2023-2033 could total as much as 325 GW of data centre capacity in a theoretical world with no other constraints. Of this figure, they expect 207 GW to go to the US.

    However, they also identify a shortfall of 63 GW between this expected supply of AI chips and what is actually forecasted to get built due to grid constraints. So in other words, the chip market may be overshooting what can actually be physically deployed (though there are nuances to consider here).

    Regardless of what ultimately ends up happening, we’re talking about enormous numbers. The recent clean energy investment here in Canada is expected to generate an additional 14 GW of clean, renewable power. It goes to show just how many of these big announcements we are going to need for Canada to become a data centre superpower.

    At the end of 2025, the entire utility-scale electricity-generation capacity of the US was 1,280,799 MW, or about 1,280 GW. So when we’re talking about an install base of 194 GW by 2035, we’re talking about ~15% of the country’s current grid capacity.

  • Mapping 70,000 trains across Europe

    I just came across a fascinating visualization of rail in Europe. You can also visualize other places like the US, but as you know, there isn’t much to see there in the way of trains. What is shown in the above screenshot is Germany, the Benelux, Switzerland, and France. I paused the visualization at 7:20 AM and there were 5,293 trains running, with the vast majority of them (4,360) being regional rail.

    Here’s what stood out:

    • France operates a monocentric hub-and-spoke network with Paris as the clear central hub. Trips almost always route through Paris, which reflects France’s historically centralized economy. In contrast, Germany operates a decentralized mesh network with more point-to-point travel and no single dominant city.
    • Regional rail is the workhorse. When I paused the visualization, over 82% of the trains in operation were regional rail. High-speed rail is sexy, but it clearly needs to be supported by a dense regional grid that brings people to and from major high-speed routes.
    • Smaller countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland have such a dense network of intercity rail that they almost read as continuous urban regions.

    If you love trains, as I do, you’ll want to take a look.

  • How Junction House built laneway towns for urban families

    Junction House was designed with 7 laneway towns on the north side of the building. The above photo is from 2023, right after we installed the wayfinding signage, which is why you can see the construction fencing sitting in the laneway. Alongside Superkul (architects), we made the design decision to incorporate ground-related towns for two reasons.

    First, we are supporters of laneway housing, and one of our city-building agendas is to find ways to revitalize and animate these spaces in Toronto. Incorporating laneway towns was a natural way to do this.

    Second, we were able to tuck these two-storey suites into the same height as our ground-floor retail on the south side. This meant that, even though our sales team was advising us that these would likely sell for a relatively low price per square foot compared to the rest of the building, it was the right business decision. It was still more accretive than additional single-level retail (or retail with a far less valuable mezzanine space) or some other unproductive back-of-house space.

    As a development aside, we originally designed these towns to be raised up from the laneway, accessible via a few steps. But during the rezoning process, the city asked us to shave down the overall height of the building to meet some symbolic height in metres that the local City Councillor demanded we achieve. It was frustrating, but we complied, and that’s why the towns are designed the way they are.

    Looking back on these suites a few years later, I continue to believe that we made the right big-picture decision, especially because of how they are now being lived in. These suites have a very high percentage of families with young children — children who often make use of and play in the quiet laneway.

    In hindsight, this makes perfect sense. These are larger, grade-related suites that offer some degree of relative affordability. In my view, it’s further evidence that not all families want to flee to the suburbs. We just have to find ways to deliver the right kind of urban housing for them.

    Second photo by Doublespace Photography

  • Canada keeps exporting its best builders, but the fix is right in front of us

    Canada has a smart, highly educated, and entrepreneurial population base. The problem is that too many are leaving to build elsewhere. Here are some alarming stats from Barn Ventures, using data from Dominion List.

    The list shows 517 US-based companies with a Canadian founder. Of these founders, 88% were educated in Canada (12% were only born here), and the top feeder schools are the exact ones you’d expect: University of Waterloo, University of Toronto, and McGill University (in that order).

    Collectively, these companies have raised something like $414 billion of capital and 56 of these founders are now worth at least $1 billion. This is wealth being generated outside Canada, and then being reinvested into things, people and opportunities outside the country.

    The good news is we already have the raw ingredients. Excerpt from Jesse Rodgers at Barn Ventures:

    The thing Canada has is the one input none of these programs can manufacture: the builders. The Dominion data proves it — 88% of those founders are our graduates. Waterloo produces them on a schedule. The missing piece isn’t talent, or even capital — it’s the infrastructure to recognize and back people before someone in San Francisco does, and now “before” means before they’ve finished a degree.

    If we wait until a smart young person has graduated, started a company, and proven out their idea (which is often what Canadian capital wants), it’s too late! That founder is gone, living in the US, and raising capital for audacious, stupid-sounding ideas that have a small chance of 100x payoffs.

    As they should.

    This is one of the reasons why I think our current real estate downturn will be a net positive for the country in the medium and long term. Too much capital was getting allocated to real estate, starving other economic development opportunities (and I say this as a real estate developer).

    We need to be taking more bets on young Canadians with crazy ideas and accepting that failure is a normal part of the process. Because if we don’t, another country clearly will.

  • Why uploading Toronto’s highways to the province won’t fix traffic congestion

    In 2023, the City of Toronto announced a deal that would “upload” the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkway from the city to the province. This was a big deal because these highways were previously the city’s largest state-of-good-repair liabilities, and so, before this deal, the city was, you know, trying to figure out how to pay for them.

    One option was road pricing (or expressway tolls). And in 2016, this became a real possibility with City Council overwhelmingly endorsing the plan, before it got rejected by the province. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I was in support of it and writing about it at the time.

    In 2016, Toronto estimated that 40% of all trips on these two expressways were by non-residents, and yet they were being funded by Toronto taxpayers. When I said this on Twitter, many of you got upset and argued that people coming in from the suburbs are a boon for the city. No doubt. But the reality is that this was an inequitable funding structure.

    Let’s look at the 2022 Transportation Tomorrow Survey results, which I wrote about here.

    The mode share for all trips to downtown Toronto (from within the city) was 75% non-car, with transit making up the largest share at 40.4%. And the mode share for home-based work trips to downtown Toronto (people who leave home in Toronto to go to work downtown and then come home) was about 80% non-car! In this case, transit made up nearly 50% of the trips.

    The effective result is that the people who tended to drive the least to work were paying for the highways with their tax dollars, and the people driving into downtown were not. This is in no way intended to be an attack on the latter camp. The simple reality is that driving into downtown and buying a chicken souvlaki pita from Jimmy the Greek at lunch isn’t enough to offset the road usage costs.

    The uploading of the highways to the province (which is still advancing but has already relieved Toronto of its financial obligations) is a more equitable solution. It shifts the cost burden to Ontario taxpayers, reflecting that people from all over the region use these highways and that Toronto is part of a broader economic agglomeration.

    But this only solved the jurisdictional problem. We still have worsening congestion and an inefficient funding model. The problem with using broad-based taxation to obfuscate infrastructure costs is that direct usage then goes unpriced, and that leads to what is known as a “tragedy of the commons.”

    We all tend to act in our own short-term self-interest, and the result is that road demand constantly outstrips the available supply. There’s zero marginal cost to actual usage, whether you drive 100 kilometres each day or bike to work. The most effective way to manage traffic congestion is to remove the hidden subsidy for driving and price the costs and negative externalities.