Yesterday news broke that Target is opening a two-storey, 145,000 square foot store at the base of a new mixed-use development in Toronto’s emerging South Core neighborhood. The site is at the north east corner of York Street and Harbour Street. And the larger development,… Read More
If you check out the “What I read” page that I recently added to Architect This City, you might notice a blog by Charlie Gardner called the Old Urbanist. I discovered it a few months ago (when he added ATC to his blog roll) and… Read More
Growing up, I had one of the best English teachers around. He was the kind of English teacher who would dim the lights, light incense and play Bob Marley in the midst of class. He had also previously taught in Jamaica, which might help to… Read More
I’m in the midst of reading Ben Horowitz’s new book called “The Hard Thing About Hard Things.” You may have noticed all of the random quotes I’m posting over on my tumblog. It’s good stuff. At one point, he talks about two types of metaphorical… Read More
With the cold winter that we’ve had in Toronto this year I’m going to be honest and say that I’ve, on occasion, wondered why I haven’t moved somewhere warmer. There aren’t any great mountains nearby, so it’s not like I’m putting up with this cold… Read More
I was planning to write about something else today, but then I saw Fred Wilson’s post on revitalizing urban cores and I had to switch topics, because I think he makes a great point about turning around declining cities: I’ve been asked by civic leaders from… Read More
Yesterday, Toronto’s Chief Planner, Jennifer Keesmaat, tweeted out a link to this primer on the proposed Development Permit System (DPS) here in the city. The entire initiative is being branded as ResetTO. And it’s intended to convey that the DPS is really about starting again with… Read More
When I was in grad school at Penn, real estate mogul Sam Zell used to come in and talk to students about once or twice every year. He permanently endowed the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at the school and so there… Read More
Fred Wilson (New York VC) wrote a post on his blog this morning called The Bubble Question. In it, he talks about how everyone asks him whether or not there’s a tech bubble, which he has been asked for the past 4 years now. It… Read More
I’ve been a big fan of MIT’s Senseable City Lab since I was a grad student at Penn. Their work sits at the intersection of cities and technology, and so I’ve always found it incredibly fascinating. Recently, the lab examined data from all of New… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 