The October issue of The New Yorker has an interesting piece called: Naked Cities – The death and life of urban America. I find the article ends up rambling a bit, but I like the idea presented right at the beginning. The idea that cities… Read More
On Monday evening I gave a 45 minute talk at the Rotman School to a delegation of about 70 people from Portland. The talk was about Toronto housing, but more specifically about the history and possible future of high-rise housing in this city. Thanks to… Read More
https://500px.com/embed.js It’s raining this morning in Toronto. The sun really hasn’t come up and out yet. And I’m spending the morning drinking coffee and reading a City Journal article from this past summer called “Hongcouver.” The article talks about how the Chinese – first from Hong… Read More
On Sunday afternoon I went to see the Blue Jays. It was the last home game of the season before the postseason and the only game I’ve gone to see this season. (Thank you Chris for the ticket.) And what a last game it was. … Read More
This morning I’m working on a presentation that I’m going to be giving one evening next week to a delegation coming in from the US. The title of the presentation is the title of this blog post: Toronto housing – where we came from and… Read More
In 1956, a large 57 acre urban renewal project was completed in St. Louis. It consisted of 33 apartment buildings, each 11 storeys tall. The entire complex was known as Pruitt-Igoe. Early residents seemed to really like the buildings. The first tenant, Frankie Mae Raglin, called… Read More
One of my closest friends, who also happens to be in the same industry, is currently testing out a new construction marketplace idea. It’s called Tenderlet and it’s an online platform that helps your average house or condo owner “find the best local construction professionals… Read More
https://500px.com/embed.js I recently heard someone say, in a pejorative way, that all real estate developers think of what they build as “products.” I imagine this is in contrast to thinking in terms of buildings as spaces for people to live, raise a family, do their life’s work,… Read More
Yesterday the Washington Post published a great chart showing the housing types of the 40 largest cities, by population, in the US. The list is ordered from lowest to highest according to the percentage of single-family houses in the city (green bar). Here’s the chart:… Read More
https://500px.com/embed.js Ed Glaeser, Giacomo Ponzetto, and Yimei Zou recently published a new academic paper called, Urban Networks: Spreading the Flow of Goods, People and Ideas. The paper looks at whether it’s more advantageous to build huge and consolidated mega-cities or build connected networks of smaller… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 