Month: August 2022

• Stairs and balconies

  Perhaps the two most distinctive features of Montreal’s low-rise architectural landscape are (1) lots of exterior stairs and (2) lots of balconies. (Their density is, of course, also noteworthy, particularly in a North American context.)

  The exterior stairs are somewhat curious to outsiders given all the snow the city gets. But it’s maybe a good case study and follow-up to yesterday’s post about 1925 Victoria Park Road and its proposed exterior corridors.

  As for the second feature, the Globe and Mail recently published this wonderful little ode to the Montreal balcony. It is a great reminder that, when designed well, people really do love balconies and exterior spaces.

  This is an ongoing debate in the world of multi-family development, and the outcomes often vary by city and sometimes by housing tenure. But at the end of the day, I have yet to meet anyone who doesn’t appreciate getting outside in the summer.

  2022.08.21

• Project Profile: 1925 Victoria Park Road, Toronto

  

  A recent development proposal at 1925 Victoria Park Road (Toronto) by Well Grounded Real Estate (developer) and Partisans (architect) is noteworthy for a number of reasons:

  • The 12-storey, 168-suite residential mid-rise building is proposed to be built out of mass-timber.
  • It is targeting Toronto Green Standard Tier 4, which is a voluntary, difficult-to-achieve, and expensive sustainability target. It is the equivalent of net-zero and I believe the only projects to date that have achieved this level in the city are public projects.
  • The circulation spaces are exterior single-loaded corridors that face an internal courtyard. This approach is very common in some cities, but almost non-existent in Toronto. Usually because someone will cite our winters as being a problem and because double-loaded corridors are typically the most efficient (rentable area / gross construction area). But the benefits are that you don’t need to heat/cool these corridor spaces and you open up the possibility of suites with windows on both ends.
  • The design doesn’t generally follow the typical “pyramid-shaped confection” that has come to define Toronto mid-rise buildings, though it does seem to generally conform to the 45 degree angular planes that we love to obsess over. Instead, it is starting to resemble a typical European courtyard building. Good. For some more commentary on this, check out John Lorinc’s recent piece in the Globe and the Mail.

  This is unquestionably an ambitious project. And ambition is what cities need. So I am pleased to write about it today on the blog. If you’d like to learn more, check out their project website.

  Image: Partisans

  2022.08.20

• On not going pens down

  Back in May, I wrote a post about time to market and managing costs in condominium projects. What I wrote then remains true and equally, if not more, important today. But given all the uncertainty that we are continuing to see in the market, I thought I would elaborate on a few points.

  It used to be the case, when I first started working on condominium projects back in 2007 or so, that you would go pens down on your design drawings while you launched pre-sales and worked toward meeting your construction financing requirements.

  Once you hit 50% sales, or maybe once you completely reached your financing hurdle, you would then call your architect back up and kindly ask them to get started on working drawings.

  And the reason you did it this way was because working drawings are kind of expensive and so you wanted to make sure that your sales were going to be there. You were also trying to push as many of your costs out to after you had your construction loan in place so that you had a lower peak equity requirement.

  You can’t do this today.

  Since the beginning of this year, we have seen average high-rise construction costs increase by about 12% in the Greater Toronto Area and, for the balance of this year, some are predicting as much as 4% per month. What this means is that if you wait like the old days, you will likely see costs run away from you and you won’t be able to finance your project based on the sales you do have in place.

  So what you want to do is not go pens down. Keep going on drawings. Start buying construction (i.e. tendering). And work toward locking in as many of your costs as possible.

  How much is ultimately up to you and the exact market conditions at the time. But I know a number of condominium developers now targeting at least 50% tendered, which means securing most of your key contracts: formwork, concrete & rebar supply, windows, M&E, and so on.

  A lot of us are hoping that costs will eventually come down and follow certain commodities in the near term. But as our cost consultant effectively said to me this week, “just because the price of cold-formed steel has come down, do you really think you’ll be able to walk into a BMW dealership and ask for a deep discount?”

  2022.08.19

• Optimizing for cars

  Vox recently profiled what they are calling the deadliest road in America — a certain section of US-19 running along the Gulf Coast of Florida. It is generally an 8-lane road — 9 at most intersections — and so as you might expect, it is place that was designed for cars.

  From 2017 to 2022, US-19 saw 34 pedestrian fatalities involving a car for every 100 miles. Indeed, this stat makes it the deadliest highway in the state of Florida for people on foot.

  The other telling stat for me is the road’s crosswalk spacing. This is a place that is lined with restaurants, hotels, and many other commercial uses, and yet the crosswalks are sometimes spaced miles apart.

  This kind of street scale is mind boggling for pedestrians. No one in their right mind is going to go out of their way a mile or two just to cross a road, and so it’s no wonder that people are jaywalking and that too many people are getting hit.

  I know that our tendency is to try and solve these problems with things like flashing lights, speed radars, and orange flags that people can unceremoniously waive as they cross the street. But at the end of the day, this is an urban design problem.

  Spaces that are optimized for cars are, by definition, not optimized for pedestrians. The choice is ours.

  2022.08.18

• Introducing 100 Lombard

  

  Earlier this week, Slate Asset Management and Forum Asset Management submitted a new development proposal for 100 Lombard Street in downtown Toronto.

  At the time of writing this post, the applications (zoning by-law amendment and site plan control) hadn’t yet hit the city’s website. So here’s some information about the project, including its big moves:

  • This is the first mixed-use residential project in Toronto designed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). The proposal includes residential, office, and retail spaces.
  • Architecture by OMA and WZMH Architects. Heritage by ERA Architects. Landscape and public realm by Claude Cormier + Associés. Planning by Urban Strategies. Structure by Stephenson Engineering.
  • The principal architectural idea is to create a vertical urban village through a series of “urban rooms” interspersed throughout the tower. These spaces would serve as amenities for the building and house a variety of different functions. See above rendering.
  • The proposal introduces three important public realm moves: (1) a new public plaza that pays homage to the site’s former neighbor to the east — Second City; (2) a new mid-block pedestrian connection running north-south from Richmond Street East to Lombard Street; and (3) an outdoor public art gallery featuring oversized art tableaus.
  • The site currently houses one designated heritage building (86 Lombard Street), and the design contemplates relocating and fully retaining this building on the eastern edge of the site. Once you see the drawings, you’ll fully understand why this was the most logical move.

  The entire project team is very excited to get this proposal out and into the world. And we hope that you will see it as being representative of our ongoing and lasting commitment to elevating architecture, sustainability, culture, and city building in Toronto.

  2022.08.17

• A few charts on the US housing market

  Here a three interesting charts about the US housing market from Redfin (via Charlie Bilello’s weekly newsletter).

  Bidding wars, which are defined as an offer with at least one other competing bid, declined from nearly 70% of sales at the beginning of this year to about 44% as of July 2022.

  

  Stale inventory, which is defined as a home sitting on the market for more than 30 days, is up 12.5% year-over-year. This is the highest jump since 2012, not counting the spike at the beginning of the pandemic (April 2020).

  

  The number of US homes that cut their asking price over the last 4 weeks is now up to 7.8% as of the first week of August 2022. This is the highest percentage since 2015. The seasonality exhibited in this chart is also interesting.

  

  All of this said, the median sale price for a home in the US is still up 8.2% on a year-over-year basis. Though since June of this year, prices have fallen about 4.1%. I don’t know about all of you, but I’d much rather be buying today than in January of this year.

  2022.08.16

• Adam Neumann raises $350 million to revolutionize the apartment market

  Today it was announced that venture firm a16z has made a $350 million investment in Adam Neumann’s new residential rental company called Flow (which is kind of ironic).

  The company is set to launch in 2023 and nobody on the outside seems to be entirely clear on how it plans to revolutionize the multi-family rental market, but supposedly this funding round values Flow at more than $1 billion and supposedly Neumann will be rolling in the 4,000 or so apartments that he has been buying up.

  In any event, here’s how a16z described the opportunity (I think the key sentence is probably the one about creating a system where renters become like owners):

  Only through a seismic shift in the way industry relationships are structured and the mechanisms through which value is delivered can we hope to address the underlying problems of the current system and build the solution. Doing this requires combining community-driven, experience-centric service with the latest technology in a way that has never been done before to create a system where renters receive the benefits of owners. This means rethinking the entire value chain, from the way buildings are purchased and owned to the way residents interact with their buildings to the way value is distributed among stakeholders. And given the fragmented nature of the ecosystem today, we can only hope to accomplish any of this by bringing every aspect of the living experience together.

  What I will say is that I think it’s great to see this amount of innovation-focused money flowing into the residential real estate space, which is, after all, the biggest asset class in the world and one that could certainly use some fresh ideas. Apparently it’s also the biggest funding round that a16z has ever done.

  But I also find a16z’s characterization of the problems a bit odd. Renting an apartment is described as this soulless and profoundly lonely experience where you’re so ashamed of where you live that you’re even hesitant to invite friends over. They also conflate house with home, as if to say that you can’t have the latter without the former.

  On second thought, maybe these are exactly the right problems to be solving. It is our biases that we need to do something about.

  2022.08.15

• Income vs. wealth in California’s housing market

  Here is a chart from MetroSight that compares housing tenure in California in 2000 and then between 2015-2019:

  

  Two things you might notice immediately are that the number of renter-occupied households has generally increased and that the number of owner-occupied households without a mortgage (i.e. they own their home free and clear) has also increased for every age category except for those 65 or older.

  MetroSight uses this data to argue that a new “wealth-related phenomenon is emerging” in California. Instead of the housing market being largely driven by income (that is, I make this much per year and I can afford this much house), it is being driven by accumulated wealth.

  The possible explanations for this are as follows:

  • The share of renter-occupied households is increasing because people increasingly can’t afford to buy
  • The share of owner-occupied houses with a mortgage is decreasing because less people can afford to buy given California’s price-to-income ratios
  • The share of owner-occupied houses without a mortgage is increasing because people are increasingly inheriting homes or getting gifted cash from their families

  Consider that the share of owner-occupied houses without a mortgage even increased for the 18-24 age category. Unless you’re the next Zuckerberg (who was a billionaire at age 23), this is pretty challenging to do without some kind of assistance, especially in a place like California.

  This outcome also provides a possible explanation for why the over 65 age category is the only segment that has seen a reduction in free and clear ownership. It is because they are transferring their wealth to the next generation so that they too can obtain homeownership.

  Chart: MetroSight

  2022.08.14

• Turns out, pedestrianization actually increases retail sales volumes

  As many of you know, I have been keeping a close eye on the pedestrian-only pilot that is currently underway on Market Street. And judging from all the engagement that my tweets usually get, a lot of you would love to see a lot more of this kind of urbanism both here in Toronto and elsewhere. (When Kensington Market?) The below photo was taken on Friday evening and Cirillo’s Academy, which is a culinary event space at the foot of the pedestrian-only stretch, was running some sort of event. All of the tables were filled with diners and it was basically a full fledged restaurant in the middle of the street. It was great to see.

  Market Street on a Friday night. We got rid of the parking and somehow all the restaurants didn’t close down. pic.twitter.com/xhd3xpj4Ue

  — Brandon Donnelly (@donnelly_b) August 13, 2022

  But the question that always comes up with these sort of initiatives, particularly here in North America, is: Will it hurt the businesses? To answer that, here’s a study that @economistcarson shared with me on Twitter that looks at the economic impact of street pedestrianization in Spanish cities. What the researchers did was essentially look at card transaction data from a major Spanish bank and then overlay it on top of land-use changes from an Open Street Map dataset. In doing so, they discovered some pretty important takeaways.

  Here’s what they found:

  • Pedestrianization actually increases retail sales volumes
  • Geographic location within a city tends to be insignificant
  • The two key factors for driving revenue are: (1) store density and (2) store category
  • For store category, the largest positive effect was observed for cafes, restaurants, bars, and other non-tradeable, local consumption activities

  What this last point is saying is that people, at least in Spanish cities, tend to prefer pedestrian-friendly environments when it comes to experience-based activities. And that makes complete sense. On the other hand, if you’re just running out for a little toilet paper and hemorrhoid cream, having a nice pedestrian-first experience is less critical. And this also makes sense.

  Some of you, I’m sure, will correctly point out that Spain has, on average, better weather compared to a place like Canada. And that their store densities and overall densities are likely higher, and that they have deep historic urban fabrics to rely on. All of these things are certainly factors. But I don’t think any of this should stop us from working to better optimize our cities for pedestrians. There are lots of successful examples all across Canada. It can work. Just look at Market Street.

  2022.08.13

• Casey Neistat needs to make a YouTube video about cycling in High Park

  I love High Park. It’s the second largest green space in the City of Toronto and right beside the Junction neighborhood. But there are some problems. Despite having a subway line on its northern boundary, we’ve gotten the built form along its edges all wrong.

  There’s very little functioning retail. The densities and heights are not nearly high enough. The streets aren’t great walking streets. And we’ve even gone and created undignified bus stops like this one here.

  On top of all this, we’re now doing this silly thing where police are ticketing cyclists for riding around the park with too much vigor and enthusiasm. I’m sure somebody called to complain and this is all reactionary politics, but an even bigger reaction has now been set off.

  For those of you who haven’t been following or aren’t from Toronto, hundreds of cyclists took to the streets this week to peacefully protest what has been going on in High Park.

  The Globe & Mail then followed it up with this important piece calling for an end to cars inside the park. The boundaries currently house about 5 km of roads and almost 600 parking spots.

  We ride. pic.twitter.com/2Fjw8P0jR8

  — James McLeod (@jamespmcleod) August 11, 2022

  Given all this, I figured now is probably a good time to revive one of Casey Neistat’s original YouTube videos called “bike lanes.” The story is that he gets a ticket for not riding in a bike lane. And so he films a video of himself only riding in bike lanes — even if there are obstacles in his way.

  It’s an awesome video with nearly 30 million views. And I’m sure that many of you have felt like doing exactly what he does when faced with this same situation. I know I have.

  2022.08.12