“Cities have become the basic platforms for global innovation and economic growth, supplanting the corporation as the fundamental organizing unit of the contemporary economy.” -Richard Florida Richard Florida and Patrick Adler of the Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto have been doing some research on… Read More
Earlier this week, Union Square Ventures announced that it was leading a Series A investment in an online education marketplace targeted at K-12 students. The platform is called Outschool, and you can think of it as a form of homeschooling. Today, there about 55 million… Read More
Today was the 2019 Land & Development Conference here in Toronto. I was on a panel in the morning about Proptech. I then sat in on a discussion about construction costs. But after that I had to get back to the office to prepare for… Read More
Real estate development has historically been, and unfortunately still is, a male dominated business. (The story of Florence Casler is, however, a great outlier.) If you want some empirical evidence for this, pay attention to the length of the line for the men’s bathroom the… Read More
Last week the Government of Canada filed a 2,100-page submission with the United Nation’s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. Under UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCOLS), states with coastal territory have the exclusive rights to about 370 kilometers beyond… Read More
Being a sports fan is like having a bipolar disorder. The highs are high. And the lows are low. But right now — with the Toronto Raptors having clinched their first ever NBA Finals appearance — we are all on a high. Though the job… Read More
Across the 50 largest metro areas in the US, about 31.9% of millennials — those aged 18 to 34 — owned a home as of 2017. And according to recent census data (via the Redfin), only 5 of these cities had a millennial homeownership rate… Read More
The most recent episode of The Urbanist is about the role of private developers in shaping public spaces and public life within our cities. How do you balance private and public interests? Much of the discussion focuses on the redevelopment of King’s Cross in London,… Read More
In 1937, New York created taxi medallions as a way of dealing with the sheer volume of unlicensed cabs in the city. About 12,000 were initially sold. They cost $10. And you needed one, fastened to your car, in order to operate a taxi service.… Read More
This past weekend I toured my friend’s purpose-built rental project in Wynwood, called Midtown 29. It was completed last year and has already been stabilized. Real estate development is very much a local business. It is that way because so much of it is driven… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 