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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Author: Brandon Donnelly

  • Detroit. Move here. Move the world.

    As part of the Amazon HQ2 bid process, a number of cities produced videos. I only discovered them today and so maybe some of you also missed them when they were released last fall. There are videos from Detroit, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las Vegas, Louisville, Atlanta, and maybe others that I am still missing. 

    Some of the videos are bad. (I’ll let you make your own judgement calls.) I like the idea behind Atlanta’s video, which is the journey of someone named Georgia physically delivering their bid to Seattle. And Philadelphia’s video made me feel really nostalgic about my time there. Those were some great years. 

    But my favorite video is Detroit’s video. It feels authentic. The footage is outstanding. And it feels powerful. Though it is probably too long. It was a good reminder that I’m overdue for a visit. So here is Detroit’s video. If you can’t see it below, click over to YouTube.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO4J_PC1b5M&w=560&h=315]

  • The Future of Hamilton

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    As many of you know, we have a development project in Hamilton, Ontario – more specifically in the Corktown neighborhood. We filed our development application earlier this summer.

    Because of this I was invited to participate in a Bisnow event on The Future of Hamilton. It takes place the morning of Wednesday, September 12, 2018 in The Alley by Core Urban. I walked this space last summer while it was under construction and so I’m excited to see it finished.

    For those of you who aren’t familiar with Core Urban, they are doing some really great work in Hamilton and have established themselves as a responsible city builder with a focus on adaptive reuse projects.

    Steve Kulakowsky, who is co-owner of Core Urban, will be speaking at the event along with the mayor, some guy who has pretentiously included his middle name, and many other smart people. To see the full list of speakers and to buy a ticket, click here.

    Photo of Hamilton by Vivek Trivedi on Unsplash

  • Economies of scale in the car and housing industries

    Over the weekend I watched this interview discussion between Elon Musk and Marques Brownlee. If it doesn’t show up below, you can find the video here.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MevKTPN4ozw&w=560&h=315]

    Elon figures that if Tesla works really hard they could probably come out with a USD 25,000 car in about three years. The key to that affordability is twofold: (1) design & technology improvements and (2) scale. 

    So part of the answer is just time. As design and engineering iterations continue to take place, the components will become better and cheaper, just as they have for things like cell phones. Elon estimates that we’re in the 30th iteration of the cell phone today.

    But the second factor is simply volume. And that got me thinking about housing production and the similar importance of scale and density. We do a lot to limit volume, despite saying we want more affordable housing.

  • Planning staff reports

    A bunch of people have asked me lately about what they should do if they want to get smarter on land use planning and on the entitlement process for development projects. It was specific to Toronto, but I don’t think my answer is specific to only this city.

    I took a few planning classes in graduate school when I was in the US. But I was more focused on architecture and real estate, and so I did not leave school an expert by any means.

    I learned about the failures of euclidian zoning and about things like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which always seemed like a sensible supply-side tool to get the private sector to invest in affordable housing.

    But what I have found most useful is to just read planning staff reports. These are the responses to actual development proposals and they show you how staff interpret the policies that are in place and how staff apply them to real buildings.

    I may be in the minority in that I actually find these reports interesting. But regardless, they are a great crash course in planning and development approvals and they can help you manage your entitlement risk.

  • Preliminary design ideas for Toronto’s Quayside

    Last week Sidewalk Toronto held a roundtable discussion here in the city and released some preliminary design ideas and strategies for Quayside. (That’s why Dan Doctoroff was talking on BNN Bloomberg.) 

    I went through the full presentation this morning and below are a bunch of slides that I thought you all might find interesting.

    Here is the extent of “Quayside” along the waterfront. The current land use permissions allow for about 3 million square feet of space and towers as tall as 50 storeys.

    Here is a paving system being explored for the area. It is modular. It may melt snow. And perhaps most interestingly, it would allow for dynamic changes in road use throughout the day. This sort of thing already happens to a lesser degree on streets like Jarvis. This technology could take that much further.

    One of their primary goals is to double Toronto’s usable outdoor hours. To do that, they are proposing simple weather shields (pictured below) and weather-responsive systems.

    They are spending a lot of time thinking about the ground floor of buildings, which they are calling Stoa. The idea is to create flexible and porous spaces that respond quickly to changing needs and that integrate more seamlessly with the surrounding public realm.

    There’s a lot on the potential hierarchy of the street network and how each will function for transit, conventional cars, AVs, cyclists, pedestrians, and so on. I was happy to see “laneways” as a core part of the pedestrian network. They are designed for walking speeds. Access would be restricted for things that move too quickly.

    This image ties in the street grid and Stoa.

    Finally, the goal is to build the neighborhood entirely out of timber, and more specifically, Canadian timber. If they follow through on this, I think it would really push adoption of this material forward in the city.

    I would encourage you to check out the full package, which you can do here. I can’t wait for these projects to get underway along Toronto’s waterfront.

  • Long live the neon

    image

    I like this article and photo essay in the Guardian talking about “Hong Kong’s fight to save its neon shimmer.” Neon lights have been a ubiquitous feature of the Hong Kong nightscape since about the middle of the 20th century. They were an outcropping of increasing economic prosperity. And in many ways they really represent the culture of the city – a frenetic free market where entrepreneurs have no choice but to compete for attention. 

    But thanks to more restrictive sign ordinances and new technologies (though LED can be made to look pretty similar to neon), there’s growing concern that a fundamental part of Hong Kong’s urban landscape may be disappearing. The article mentions a newish (2017) advocacy group called the Hong Kong Neon Heritage Group, which is trying to raise awareness about the city’s remaining lights.

    Love live the neon.

    Photo by Sean Foley on Unsplash

  • North American cities with the most construction cranes

    Rider Levett Bucknall recently released its RLB Crane Index for Q3-2018. Here are the top 10 cities in North America (table via the New York Times):

    For the third consecutive reporting period, Toronto has taken the number one spot at 97 cranes – 85 of which are being used on residential projects. 

    I’m not at all sure how the study defines “mixed-use” projects. But given that Toronto only has 2 of them, it must not include projects with grade-related retail.

    Across North America, residential and mixed-use projects (whatever they are) make up approximately 70% of the total crane count. 

    I am surprised that Miami didn’t make the list.

  • A global hub for urban innovation

    Dan Doctoroff, the CEO of Sidewalk Labs (and the former deputy mayor of New York City), was recently interviewed by BNN Bloomberg about the company’s plans and ambitions for Quayside here in Toronto. 

    He talks about the project; their interest in timber construction; how the company, Sidewalk Labs, might ultimately make money; and how their mission is to create a global hub for urban innovation.

    This last point is, of course, the most exciting opportunity – both for Sidewalk Labs/Alphabet and for Toronto. And it’s why many people believe that Quayside will end up a far greater (economic development) coup compared to HQ2.

    The interview is only 10 minutes. If you can’t see it embedded below, click here.

    https://webapps.9c9media.com/vidi-player/1.5.1/share/iframe.html?currentId=1461888&config=bnn/share.json&kruxId=InSaVlLc&cid=%5B%7B%22contentId%22%3A1461888%2C%22ad%22%3A%7B%22adsite%22%3A%22ctv.bnn%22%2C%22adzone%22%3A%22ctv.bnn%22%7D%7D%5D

  • Cities with perfect climates

    Last year Nolan Gray mapped out “the cities of the world where you don’t need AC or heat.” And just recently he updated his data with the help of Guardian Cities for their “sweltering cities” series. As part of the study, they projected out average temperatures, in both the summer and winter, to 2059, showing which cities may become more dependent on air conditioning. The answer looks to be many.

    In his original study, Gray had 9 climatic categories, all of which were based on average high and low temperatures throughout the year. Category 1 was you definitely don’t need AC or heat. These cities are essentially perfect year round. And category 9 was you definitely need heat and AC. These cities are basically the worst places on earth to occupy from a climate perspective.

    Here is that climate classification system in lovely chart form (note his caption):

    The climatic utopias ended up being places like Bogotá, Guatemala City, Lima, Mexico City, San Diego, São Paulo, and Sydney. The worst places were the southeastern United States, Central Asia, and northern East Asia.

    But one factor that is not included in the study is humidity, which Gray rightly points out has a meaningful impact on comfort. Toronto, for example, is classified in his system as category 7. Heat needed. But AC definitely not needed. Personally, I would bump us up to category 8: AC preferred, but not needed.

    Still, this is an interesting study. There are relatively few cities with so-called perfect climates. And I have always found these sorts of climates fascinating because they empower a very different kind of relationship to outside spaces.

  • Building height fallacy

    Studio Gang has a project currently under construction in New York City called 40 Tenth Avenue. It is also known as the “solar carve tower.” Here are a couple of progress photos taken by Timothy Schenck. The glass is beautiful. (If you can’t see the embedded tweet below, click here.)

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    This is one of my favorite buildings by Studio Gang and one that we all studied when we were kicking off One Delisle. 

    The geometry of the building is a result of carve outs that maximize the amount of sunlight that is able to reach the adjacent High Line (public space). It is form driven by functional logic. Here is a diagram from Studio Gang showing the carve outs that result from the sun’s rays.

    image

    The other thing I like about this project is that it is a clear proof of something that I’m going to call the “building height fallacy.” There can be a tendency to overfocus on building height, which I have argued against before on this blog. 

    In this case, a shorter and squatter building without these solar carve outs, would have actually been worse for the High Line and the surrounding environment in terms of access to light and air.

    The building is responding to site-specific criteria – which is what great architecture should do.