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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  • The Venice syndrome — or is it?

    We were walking through Old Nice today and we stumbled on a fresh pasta shop called Clé aux Pâtes (highly recommend). I went in to grab supplies for dinner and then started chatting with the friendly lady behind the counter. She explained to me that all of the pasta is made on-site every morning and that the shop has been there since 1932.

    I then made a comment that their customer base must have changed considerably over the decades. Underlying this statement was an assumption that it is now mostly tourists. But she corrected me and said that lots of locals also shop there. I then turned to look at the line behind me and, for what it’s worth, there was French being spoken.

    But I left thinking about the composition of the neighbourhood. Old Nice is made up of several statistical areas. The oldest and densest is called Vieux Nice-Sainte-Réparate. It’s just under 50,000 square metres, which is about the size of the Distillery District in Toronto. As of 2022, it had a total full-time population of 1,187 people. This works out to a respectable figure of 23,912 people per km2.

    However, the area’s population has been in decline since at least 2007, when it had 1,798 people. The obvious culprit is more hotels, short-term rentals, and secondary homes. I had Gemini review the area’s census data, and it estimates that only somewhere between 35-45% of the area’s housing serves as primary residences.

    This data would suggest that Old Nice is another example of what has been called the “Venice syndrome.” Tourism is now the trade, leading to a decline in population. But it’s interesting to think about the extent to which the area may also serve as an open-air mall for locals. That’s a more resilient place to be. Of course, all I have to go on is a pasta anecdote.

  • How do you make a street less touristy?

    La Rambla is arguably Barcelona’s most famous street. It’s a tree-lined street that runs 1.2 kilometres from the Plaça de Catalunya in the north to Port Vell in the south. Its origin dates back to the 15th century when the original stream was drained and the semblance of a street started to emerge.

    In the centuries that followed, the street came to serve as an important anchor for urban life in Barcelona. It provided a spine of open space within a dense medieval fabric of narrow streets. But alongside the rise of Barcelona as a global tourist destination, the street came to be seen more as a place for tourists than as a place for local urban life.

    This desire to create more “sustainable tourism” is one of the impetuses behind the ~€56 million revitalization project that is currently underway and is expected to be completed in 2027.

    But this raises a fascinating city-building question: How do you actually make a street less, you know, touristy? Tourists like visiting Barcelona and walking on this street, and so aren’t business owners going to just naturally cater to them? And aren’t landlords just going to rent to whoever will pay the highest rents?

    Here’s some of what Barcelona is doing:

    • Transversal flows: This one is fascinating to me. It was found that tourists tend to walk the street longitudinally (up and down), whereas locals tend to walk it transversally. In other words, locals are more likely to cross it coming from one of the surrounding neighbourhoods. The new design now privileges these more local flows.
    • Expanded pedestrian zones: Car traffic is being reduced to one 3.5-metre lane in each direction. This frees up more space for pedestrians, which is expected to help with overcrowding.
    • Room for culture: Dedicated spaces are being created to allow for more cultural programming. This is also part of a broader strategy to elevate the kind of tourism that the city receives.
    • Commercial licensing restrictions: As I understand it, the city is actively working to limit the licenses given out to souvenir shops (and the like) along the street. A meaningful amount of retail is also housed in kiosks and stands within the public right-of-way, where the city has even greater control.
    • Mercat de la Boqueria: One of the main anchors on La Rambla is the publicly owned market. But over the years, the product mix started to skew toward ready-to-eat foods and other to-go products designed for tourists. New restrictions have been put in place, or will be, that cap tourist-oriented offerings at 50%, allowing more space for local shopping needs. Interestingly enough, I have read that the merchants were in favour of this cap because the emphasis on tourist products was driving down margins. You instead want people coming in and grocery shopping for their families.

    These are just some of the initiatives that are being undertaken to rebalance La Rambla and find a more sustainable equilibrium between tourists and locals. It also dovetails with some of the other broader moves that Barcelona has implemented, such as its short-term rental ban and the right of first refusal (ROFR) that it enjoys over certain buildings and homes in order to grow the city’s public housing stock.

    It’ll be interesting to evaluate the effectiveness of these moves once the street is complete. La Rambla has many centuries of history and it has always evolved alongside Barcelona. Today is no different.

    Images from Barcelona City Council

  • Le col de Vence — testing the Ironman cycling course in Nice

    So, it turns out that if you want to do the 92-kilometre Ironman World Championship bike course in Nice, it’s a good idea to practice a little beforehand. At the very least, you probably want to get on your bike more than a handful of times. I tried it today and came up short.

    The circuit includes le col de Vence at its summit, which is a 9.7-kilometre stretch with a 963-metre peak elevation and an average pitch of 6.6%. I was within 6 kilometres of the top, but my quads completely seized up and I turned back towards Vence, then continued south back to the water.

    I really wanted to get there and reward myself with a sugary crêpe, but my legs were saying otherwise. I’ll be back, col de Vence.

    Shoutout to Guinness World Record holder Austin Kjorven, who will be representing Canada at the Ironman this weekend and has no problem climbing le col de Vence. He was also super patient as I attempted the climb. Follow him here.

    The course:

    What I did:

    The ride:

    Some of the local cycling infrastructure:

  • Gone ridin’

  • Travel isn’t always pretty

    Sometimes there’s an elevator down to the metro, but more often than not there isn’t. 

    Sometimes there’s AC, but oftentimes there isn’t.

    Sometimes Vivienne is peacefully sleeping in her stroller or carrier, but sometimes she’s having a diaper blowout meltdown and screaming loud enough that passersby start giving concerned looks.

    Traveling can be positively inconvenient at times. We’ve never traveled with so much paraphernalia before. We’ve never had to keep breast milk chilled on ice and think about bottle expiries while navigating busy metro trains with no room for our stroller. 

    But in my mind it’s like exercising. It’s work, especially with kids, but it changes you for the better. We also want Vivienne to grow up to be adaptable, resilient and patient in the face of hot, urine-soaked transit elevators and the like.

    As Anthony Bourdain once said:

    “Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”

    We finished our week in Paris, walking and taking transit everywhere. We didn’t step into a car once. We averaged just over 10k steps a day, which is significantly lower than what we would have done sans baby, but it’s still respectable. 

    Seeing the data on my watch and my surging step count reminded me how sedentary my life has gotten over the last two years while working from home (at least from a steps per day perspective).

    It’s unacceptable and I need to make some life changes when I get back to Toronto. But for right now, it’s time to head south.

  • Raw meets refined

    I love how Saint Laurent’s creative director, Anthony Vaccarello, has taken a form of brutalism — corduroy-imprinted concrete and generally raw and exposed materials — and elevated it to high fashion. It’s a perfect example of “raw meets refined.” And you’ll find this approach in its stores all around the world, including in Toronto on Bloor Street. For me, it’s also a great microcosm of Paris. This is a city with a deep, rich history, but one that isn’t afraid to disrupt that history and look forward when it makes sense to do so.

  • We are now in a post-camera world

    This is a wall of 20th-century filmmaking equipment captured at the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé. For background, Jérôme Seydoux is a French businessman and movie producer (and the grandfather of French actress Léa Seydoux). Pathé is the second-oldest operating film company in the world. It was founded by the Pathé brothers in the late 19th century. (For architecture fans, the Fondation itself was designed by Renzo Piano. Note: Full architecture tours only happen once a week.)

    Seeing this taxonomy of equipment and reading about its market adoption reminded me that technologies change, but human impulses tend to remain remarkably static. Film cameras at the beginning of the 20th century were made for industry. They were expensive, bulky, and required teams of people. But as you’d expect, by the middle of the century, these devices became more affordable and suitable for individual use. This gave rise to amateur filmmakers and eventually, you could say, proto-influencers.

    The introduction of smartphones made creation even easier and social media platforms completely changed the game of distribution, turning content creation into an even bigger business. But in the end, the human desire to capture, create, and share remains the same. Today, however, the game is fundamentally changing. AI eliminates the need for handheld devices and physical models and locations. Now you can just prompt. The possibilities are endless.

    As I was walking around the Fondation and reading about how it took a year to cast the right female lead for L’Amant (Jane March was eventually found in the suburbs of London), I couldn’t help but think about how AI completely collapses this process. Today, there’s no need to look; you just need to describe exactly what you want. Invariably, this is going to feel like some kind of loss to purists. Isn’t this artificial?

    We are now in a post-camera world. But what will never change is our desire to tell stories.

  • Micro-retail on the corner of rue de Mogador

    This corner, the corner of rue de la Victoire and rue de Mogador in Paris, could have very easily been nothing. The side wall of the main building is, for whatever reason, blank. There’s a tall mural, two advertising billboards, and a remnant parcel of land that looks to be no deeper than about 3 metres at its absolute deepest.

    But instead, you’ll find a Japanese street food restaurant called Mian Fan Onigiri (I’m not sure what the Taiwan sign is all about). The interior can’t be larger than 20 or so square metres, but it’s surrounded by a 0.7-metre-deep patio that wraps around the outside of the space and runs about 10 m in total along three faces (see city terrace permit document).

    It’s a simple and unfussy space. The patio consists of milk-crate furniture. But these kinds of small spaces punch well above their weight in what they contribute back to a city in terms of street animation and public life. Cities would do well to reduce the barriers to this scale of business and encourage more small entrepreneurs to hang a shingle.

    And until they do, we’ll never know how much of this urban spirit is being suppressed.

  • New acquisition for Globizen Flats: 571 Oakwood Avenue in Toronto

    This week, Globizen announced a new acquisition for our Flats division: 571 Oakwood Avenue in Toronto.

    This is an exciting moment for us because it marks the first project in our strategy of unlocking underutilized urban sites to create thoughtfully crafted, design-forward rental homes in walkable, transit-oriented communities across Toronto.

    The mission is simple:

    • Fill a Housing Need: We believe there’s a gap in the market for spacious, well-designed, family-oriented rental homes at accessible price points.
    • Support Toronto’s Urban Evolution: We believe that Toronto is at a unique turning point in its urban history, transitioning from a monocentric downtown surrounded by low-rise suburbs to a polycentric city that fundamentally rethinks its relationship to the car.
    • Invest in Renewable Energy: Canada needs more clean energy capacity. We see this as an opportunity to create a decentralized renewable energy asset alongside our communities.

    Globizen Flats is a response to these beliefs.

    Check out the full post in the Globizen Journal. You can also subscribe and follow Globizen Flats (@globizenflats) on Instagram.

    As an aside, I initially created the above toilet image as a joke. It’s a photo of the bathroom in the existing house on site. But my partners thought it was cool and that we should share it publicly, so here we are. I bet that toilet was the neatest thing when it was first installed.

  • Window-to-wall ratios and density in Paris

    One of the reasons Paris’s built form works so well is that the buildings aren’t all glass. The window-to-wall ratios afford a degree of privacy, despite the high densities and minimal separation distances. Imagine how different the city would feel if this wasn’t the case.