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.
In this particular case, it’s an example of a customer being guided to a particular screw in a large hardware store.
The company, which is called Hyper, is also working to expand their product to other physical locations, such as malls, campuses, airports, and hospitals. And broadly speaking, their mission is to “build the digital layer for the physical world.”
Where they have started seems to make a lot of sense. If I’m in a large hardware store and I’m trying to find a very specific product, I’d be more than happy to pull out my phone and have it guide me there.
I could also see myself pulling out my phone if I were standing in Yosemite National Park and I wanted to know all of the important points-of-interest. So from these perspectives, AR seems obviously useful.
But these are discrete moments in time. I’m looking for something right now, help me. And this is arguably how we will all start regularly using AR — with our phones for brief periods of time.
But at some point, it is likely to become more seamless and constant. Maybe that sounds far fetched (or completely undesirable). But I’m still hoping that this becomes possible with a cool pair of sunglasses.
It is well known that Salt Lake City has some of the biggest blocks and widest streets in the United States. This is typically a challenge if you’re trying to create a walkable urban environment; however, it can also be an opportunity, because it means you have a lot of public space that you can do other things with.
It is for these reasons that SLC is working on something called the Green Loop:
And the idea is to turn a ring of downtown streets into a new linear park that looks something like this:
More specifically, the Green Loop wants to do the following five things (copied verbatim):
Develop a robust downtown urban forest
Serve as an active transportation corridor for walking and biking
Improve water quality through stormwater management
Create inviting social spaces that provide a variety of amenities and attractions
Create public front yards and gardens within the downtown that support the needs of all users
In my mind, albeit as a non-Salt Laker, this has the potential to be truly transformational for the city and as impactful as the High Line was for New York. So if you are a local, I would encourage you to complete this short project survey. It’s open until Nov 30.
This, according to a NYC government website, equals 8,660 active shed permits covering 1,959,444 linear feet. And on average, these construction sheds are erected for 493 days. If you’ve been to New York recently, this will all sound right to you.
I thought I had read somewhere that this has to do with a property tax benefit. Something about if you keep your hoarding up after construction completion, you can avoid immediate reassessment.
But according to some sources, the proliferation of sheds is mostly driven by the city’s Facade Inspection & Safety Program, which requires that all buildings taller than 6 floors have their facades closely inspected every 5 five years.
So presumably, keeping these up for an extended period of time is the less costly and less risky option.
You may not have ever used this exact term before, but I’m sure that most of you know what it is. On his blog over the weekend, Witold Rybczynski wrote about a new architectural term he just learned called: “multiple expression.” What it refers to is the use of different architectural styles on a long facade in order for the building to appear as if it’s multiple smaller ones.
And today, I would say that this is largely viewed as a positive thing. Typically it is done to “break up a massing” or create a “fine-grained retail experience.” In fact, you’ll find things like this in some design guidelines. Here’s one from Toronto’s mid-rise performance standards:
This doesn’t explicitly stipulate that architects should use “multiple expressions”, but it does suggest that long repetitive facades are suboptimal, and that they should be broken up. But Witold’s view is the opposite. He argues that this “bespeaks a lack of confidence, a poverty of the imagination.” And he gives the example of Park Crescent in London, designed by architect John Nash.
It’s long (well over 60m) and it’s repetitive:
Perhaps a good counter example to this would be Mirvish Village in Toronto, which was designed by Henriquez Partners and which has been largely celebrated as a way of creating the feeling of fine-grained urbanism in a larger master-planned development. Here it is on Google, still under construction:
So what is it that makes Mirvish Village a generally desirable outcome in today’s planning environment, even though I suspect that most people would still appreciate what John Nash did on Park Crescent back in the early 1800s? Are we saying — with our guidelines — that we like Park Crescent, but that we shouldn’t do that ever again today?
And to what extent do age and architectural style play into these opinions? Are long repetitive facades over 60m acceptable as long as the architectural style is “Regency” and the buildings aren’t too tall? Is modernism the problem? Because here’s another example from London: The Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate.
Built in the 1970s, it is a Brutalist housing estate with a largely repetitive design, and even a slight curve reminiscent of Park Crescent:
Does this have confidence and imagination? Witold would probably say no.
In the end, I guess the answer is that it all depends. Guidelines are just that — guides. They are not set in stone rules that must never be broken under any circumstances. That would be to reduce architecture to a strict science, and there’s clearly also an art component to building great cities.
“Multiple expression” is usually done to create the feeling of finer-grained urbanism. But sometimes — if you’re old and regal-looking enough — the opposite can be okay too.
This past week we poured the first bit of concrete in the giant rat slab foundation (or mat foundation) that sits, or will sit, at the bottom of One Delisle. At its deepest point, below the building’s core, it will be over 4m tall. Meaning, the area occupied by the gentlemen in the above photo will be fully covered in concrete when it’s complete. Note the height of the rebar in the middle of the photo. This picture doesn’t even do it justice, though. You need to be on site and down in the bottom of the hole to really feel it. There’s a lot of bar, and it’s going to be very deep.
In our case, this raft slab foundation will, as it sounds, serve as the building’s foundation. This is what the tower will rest on. However, raft slabs can also serve the function of withstanding hydrostatic pressures from below (groundwater). That is the case with the raft slab foundation at Junction House given that we have a watertight “bathtub” design for the underground. However, that’s not the case here at One Delisle, as the groundwater levels aren’t as high and this will not be a “bathtubbed” underground. So the job of this giant slab is as a mat foundation.
Disclaimer: I am not a structural engineer or a hydrogeological engineer. What do I know?
Here’s some recent data, via CityLab, suggesting that Americans are walking less and driving less, but killing more people when they do drive around. (The report is based on data from 2019 to 2022.)
My first reaction to these high-level findings is that they seem to make sense. This time period was the pandemic. And people were locked away at home (though I used to take some seriously long walks around downtown during this dark time).
So I don’t know, I’m not sure we can conclude that walking less is truly a structural phenomenon. Similarly, I’m not sure that we can immediately conclude that cars are becoming increasingly more dangerous.
According to Wikipedia, deaths per capita, deaths per billion vehicle miles traveled, and total deaths, have all been generally declining in the US since the 1960s.
However, I do wonder if there’s some sort of correlation between people walking less and car-related fatalities. The most dangerous streets, in my mind, are often the ones that don’t have a lot of pedestrians.
That’s why, broadly speaking, it feels safer walking around Manhattan than it does Los Angeles. So maybe less people walking is enough to trigger an increase in pedestrian fatalities.
Back in undergrad, I spent a summer living and working in Taipei and Hong Kong. It was my first time being in either of these cities and I absolutely loved it. I was studying architecture. I was really developing my love of big cities. And these felt like two very real and big cities.
Below is a cheesy tourist photo that I paid someone to take of me from the Kowloon Pier. I still have access to it because obviously my mom has it framed and prominently displayed in her kitchen:
I’m sharing this photo because one of the things that really stood out to me about Hong Kong, in particular, was how they lit their buildings. There were neon signs (which is something that Hong Kong is, or least was, famous for); lights shining up into the sky (bad, I know); and full light shows and animations across entire building elevations.
I immediately thought to myself: “Why don’t we have fun like this? Especially considering that Toronto can get kind of dark during the winter.”
Well, some twenty years later, we are now starting to have more lights. We fought hard for our placemaking sign at Junction House. The CN Tower has since been illuminated. And most recently, we got 160 Front Street West. But it turns out that building lights can be a little divisive:
My view is exactly what it was when I first landed in hot and humid Hong Kong. And so I respectfully disagree with Jocelyn Squires (though I have great admiration for her work). Architectural lighting adds color and dynamism to our cities. It can also help our cities from all looking the same.
Let’s stop being so conservative and have some fun. Nice work, 160 Front.
During COVID, every developer was terrified that their costs were going to run way from them. According to this recent Globe and Mail article, residential building costs increased 55% since 2020. At the same time, city fees were being increased and some people, for whatever reason, believed this would not have an impact on home prices. Developers will always seek to profit maximize and charge whatever the market will bear, so why bother trying to reduce costs? This is/was one school of thought.
Despite this cost fear, the market managed to keep up for a period of time. Capital was cheap, as we all know. And that kept things going, until it was no longer the case. According to the same Globe article, there are 83 residential projects and 28,428 homes that have not launched (sales) over the last two years in the Greater Toronto Area because of market conditions. This year alone, the number is estimated at 14,000 homes. So supply has fallen off, and that’s because demand and buying power have fallen off.
But let’s think of this in economics terms. Price and quantity demanded are usually inversely correlated. Meaning, if the price of something goes up, demand will go down. And if the price of something goes down, demand will go up. So in theory, there are still prices that will get 28,428 people excited to buy a new home. I mean, if I were to list a condo in downtown Toronto for $500 psf right now, I’m pretty sure that most with the means would jump at the opportunity.
The problem is that whatever these prices are, they are largely beneath the floor price of where most developers can build to today. Developers weren’t bluffing, costs really are too high now. And when this happens, the answer is simple: you can’t build. A new equilibrium will eventually be found. But in the short-term, we should all expect new housing supply to remain limited. And because there’s always a lag with real estate, the effects of this shortage will be felt in the years to come.
The Quay Quarter Tower in Sydney has been just been awarded the “best new tall building” of 2023 by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). Deigned by 3XN and BVN, it’s a great adaptive reuse story.
The project is a renovation and expansion of an existing 1970s building. And the team managed to retain 65% of the original structure (slabs, columns, and beams) and 95% of the original core.
This results, according to their calculation, in 12,000 tons of embodied carbon savings. The equivalent of 35,000 flights between Sydney and Melbourne. At the same time, the team managed to add 45,000 m2 of new floor area to the site by grafting new slabs onto the existing ones.
But let’s get back to these carbon savings.
According to this site, there are 37 direct fights between Sydney and Melbourne each day. That’s about 13,505 flights per year, meaning that the carbon savings from not fully demolishing this building (and starting fresh) are equal to about 2.6 years of people not flying back and forth between these two cities.
If you consider how long buildings typically last (this one was relatively young at under 50 years), it kind of makes buildings seem less bad. Of course, we’re only talking about and comparing embodied carbon. There’s also the ongoing operation of the building.
In any event, a deserving project. Congrats to the team. For more on the project, click here.
He is talking about Junction House and he is, of course, right. It is a very cool feeling to create homes for people.
It’s not easy building buildings. People get upset at you. They tell you that you’re ruining their community. And broadly speaking, it can feel like every imaginable obstacle has been placed in front of you to make things more difficult.
But at the end of the day, once the dust settles, there will be places to live where places did not exist before. And then people will move into these places and transform them into homes.
They’ll make them their own, create new memories, and, in the case of the people that Bill was referring to, they’ll raise a family.
I’m not trying to make this sound more grandiose than it deserves to be. But I am being honest when I say that I know the team feels both a sense of honor and a great sense of responsibility because of the work we do.
You want people to be happy and you want the city to be a better place. So it’s hard not to feel a little emotional when you see people moving into a place that you’ve worked tirelessly on for several years.
