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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Month: March 2021

  • Map art using Google Earth satellite images

    I just discovered the work of artist and photographer Federico Winer. More specifically, I just discovered his ongoing art project called ULTRADISTANCIA, which uses Google Earth satellite imagery as a starting point for beautiful map art.

    Above is a piece from his “Mines” collection. What you are seeing is the Ekati Diamond Mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories. It is located about 310 km northeast of Yellowknife, 200 km south of the Article Circle, and apparently it’s Canada’s first surface and underground diamond mine.

    In addition to using images of mines, Federico has transformed airports, ports, and other urban landscapes. Here is a link to his “Selected” gallery, which includes places ranging from Venice to Minas Gerais, Brazil. I think his work is amazing.

    If you’re interested in learning more about his workflow, you can also check out this short video.

    Image: ULTRADISTANCIA

  • The rise of the second home

    Real estate brokerage firm Redfin recently did an analysis of “mortgage-rate lock data” taken from the analytics firm Optimal Blue. A mortgage-rate lock is an agreement between a lender and a borrower guaranteeing a particular interest rate for a particular period of time.

    What’s potentially interesting about this data is that (1) approximately 80% of mortgage-rate locks apparently result in an actual home purchase and (2) buyers must specify whether they’re applying to secure a rate for a primary home, a second home, or an investment property. So there’s a high degree of intent that goes along with these applications.

    What Redfin found when they looked at the data is that the growth in demand for second homes is exceeding that of primary homes by quite a wide margin. They argue that this is largely a result of people now working remotely.

    But this rise in demand — at least according to the above data — appears to have started in the second half of 2019. So I think a few more data points would be helpful in understanding what’s really going on. Is what we’re seeing more about acceleration than about causation? And what does this look like a year from now?

    Chart: Redfin

  • The climate idol of the unimaginative

    Here’s some food for thought around electrical vehicles. In this recent article in The American Conservative, Jordan McGillis argues that, “the electric vehicle is the climate idol of the unimaginative.”

    Rather than simply changing what’s under the hood of our cars, we should be reexamining the broader impacts that the car has had on the urban landscape. Here’s an excerpt that speaks to this:

    “All of the effort directed towards EV adoption would be better expended on improving our development patterns, bringing them to human-scale and reducing the necessity of the automobile. The obvious reform candidate is zoning. According to the New York Times, it is illegal to build anything other than a single-family home on 75 percent of land zoned for residential use in the United States. Zoning exclusively for single-family homes artificially flattens our cities, necessitates daily automobile commutes, and increases our greenhouse gas emissions. As Istvan Bart has documented for the Climate Strategy Institute, suburban sprawl bears more responsibility for increased emissions from transportation than either population or GDP.“

    There is no question that electric vehicles are helpful to addressing climate change. But Jordan is also not wrong. We can’t ignore that built form is crucial to this discussion, and likely even more important.

  • Upsizing to a larger apartment in New York City

    This is an interesting story about New Yorkers starting to seek out larger homes. Last month, Manhattan saw 140 purchase agreements signed for homes priced at $4 million or more. In the last week of February alone, 40 contracts were signed, which is apparently a weekly record for this price point that hasn’t been seen since August 2016.

    What’s also interesting is that, in some of these cases, we’re talking about buyers who bought preconstruction and then went back to the developer to swap for a larger apartment. Developer Scott Avram is quoted in the above article saying that 10 buyers have “upgraded their contracts” at 130 William (David Adjaye project) over the last six months.

    As we’ve talked about before, this is likely happening for a bunch of reasons. People have been working from home and want more space. Interest rates are low. And New York saw some softening in prices and now people are jumping back in to seize on those opportunities. At the same time, it is yet another example of people going long on dense urban living.

  • How balconies and winter gardens were added to the Grand Parc Bordeaux apartment blocks

    The 2021 Pritzker Prize was just awarded to French architects Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal. One of the most notable aspects of their work is their appreciation for and reuse of existing structures, which, as many of you will know, is far more sustainable than building new. A good example of this approach is their Grand Parc project in Bordeaux, where they transformed three existing tower blocks and 530 dwellings.

    What’s fascinating about this project is how they added balconies and winter gardens to structures that previously didn’t have any. I also like how there are two layers of outdoors spaces. There’s the more enclosed winter garden portion and then there’s an open air balcony-type component, which also happens to be a more public-facing space where you might actually run into some of your neighbors.

    If you can’t see the video above, click here. Once you’ve had a chance to watch the video, I would be curious to know: Are these spaces that you would like to live in?

  • The future of self-driving cars (and LIDAR)

    Here is an interesting podcast with Austin Russell, who is CEO of Luminar Technologies. Luminar specializes in LIDAR vision systems for autonomous vehicles and has already cut deals with carmakers such as a Volvo. Starting as early as next year, Volvo hopes to start rolling out “fully autonomous highway driving” using LIDAR. And, supposedly, Luminar makes the best kind of LIDAR with ranges of up to 250m. But not everyone believes that LIDAR will be a necessary component of autonomy going forward. Tesla instead relies on vision (lots of cameras and fancy AI software), and Elon Musk has famously said that anyone relying on LIDAR will ultimately be doomed. Time will tell, though I am in the LIDAR camp because of the recency bias that this podcast has created. And in the interim, Luminar going public at the end of last year has made Austin Russell the youngest self-made billionaire in America.

  • One cool thing each year

    Last month I wrote a post introducing the One Delisle video series. Well, in case you missed it, the next two episodes in the series are now out, which you can watch over here. My personal favorite (so far) is episode two. It’s about city building at Yonge & St. Clair and a goal that Slate set for itself to do “one cool thing each year.” That thing has ranged from murals to streetscape improvements, and has included work from artists such as birdO (aka Jerry Rugg). If you aren’t familiar with his work, have a look over here.

  • Do you support having more housing built in your community?

    Back in 2019, Lake Research Partners conducted a housing study for California YIMBY. One of the questions that California voters were asked was about whether or not they support or oppose having more housing built in their community. Here is how people responded (about 700 interviews were conducted by phone and about 500 people were asked online):

    What this seems to suggest is that most people (61% of all voters) support more housing in their community, with 38% (the darker bar) feeling very strongly about it. These results also seem to suggest that if you’re already a homeowner and/or if you’re a Republican, that you are then less likely to support housing in your community (51% and 54%, respectively). Even still, one possible conclusion that you can draw from these findings is that, perhaps in all cases, a majority of people (>50%) support the idea of more housing in their community.

    However, the problem with this approach is that you’re ultimately asking a pretty generic and theoretical question about housing supply. I am presuming that this is a scenario where the rubber has not yet hit the road. Indeed, most people will say that they support new housing in their backyard, but is that actually how things will play it? It’s pretty common, for example, to hear things like: “I support new development, but I think this project is simply too ___________.”

    So while I think that there are some interesting directional indicators that one could draw from these findings, I suspect that the numbers in the real world might be slightly less rosy.

  • The crane is now up at Junction House!

    Today was an important milestone for Junction House: The construction crane was erected! The crew started early in the morning and we ended up having a perfect bluebird day (I don’t know where this expression comes from but it’s used all the time by skiers and snowboarders).

    It’s been a tough winter for most of us. And so in my view, it is particularly important to celebrate these kinds of milestones and achievements. Thankfully, there seems to be a general optimism in the air these days. I think it’s going to be a great summer.

    Now that the crane has been installed, it’s time to start building up.

  • Los Angeles adopts “standard plan program” to encourage ADU construction

    The city of Los Angeles has taken an interesting approach to accessory dwelling units (what we generally call laneway or garden suites here in Toronto). In an effort to streamline the approvals process and bolster the supply of housing in the city, they’ve gone out and pre-approved a series of “standard plans” that you can quickly implement on your property. The idea here is that all of their approved plans have already been checked for compliance with the various building codes. So those reviews don’t need to happen before a permit can be issued (though the building department would still need to review any site-specific conditions).

    What that means is that if you’re in the market for, say, a one-storey, one-bedroom ADU at around 450 sf, you can simply scroll through their list and find the one you like the most. Here is one that fits this criteria by Design, Bitches (I just wanted to mention this firm name). The potential downside of this approach is that it could encourage less architectural experimentation. On the flipside, many of their approved designs are really nice and so maybe it’s a boon for those who are lacking in good taste. Either way, if you want to encourage more of something, the way to do that is to reduce friction.

    To start to give you a sense of how meaningful this could become, the city of Los Angeles received 1,980 applications for ADU construction back in 2017. This is the year in which the state changed its regulations so that ADUs were no longer prohibited in some municipalities (I don’t know all of the specifics truthfully). Last year, LA saw 5,374 applications and I suspect the number will be even higher this year. Should other cities look at pre-approving certain designs? And could this be an approach used for even larger building typologies? Speed is good.