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.
Today, one of the top landscape architects in Canada — Claude Cormier — died from complications associated with something known as Li-Fraumeni Syndrome. He was only 63.
Claude, and the firm he founded CCxA, have been responsible for some of the most beautiful, whimsical, and critically acclaimed public spaces in Canada.
Those of you familiar with Toronto will know Berczy Park, Sugar Beach (pictured above), the new Love Park, and others. These are easily some of the most successful public spaces in the city, and for good reason.
CCxA is also the landscape firm behind our 100 Lombard project, where we have been similarly working to create a new and whimsical public space in downtown Toronto.
We’re all sorry to see you go, Claude. Canada is a better — and more fun place — because of your work.
The Dutch now believe that the number is 230cm. This is an increase from a previous recommendation of 200cm. The thinking behind this number is roughly as follows. Apparently there are Dutch laws stipulating that bikes can’t be wider than 75cm. So this is the starting point.
But since it’s impossible to always ride in a perfectly straight line, there seems to be a generally accepted rule that, at an absolute minimum, cyclists need about 100cm of width to themselves.
If you now double this so that two people can ride side-by-side, you’re at 200cm. This is an important design criteria because the Dutch also seem to believe that (1) cycling is a social activity and (2) a child should be able to ride beside their parent. (Love this!)
Finally, add in a bit of buffer so there’s room to pass slower cyclists and/or nobody feels like they’re going to crash into oncoming cyclists, and you get to 230cm as the ideal width of a single bike lane.
I’m not sure I had given this much thought before, so I look forward to scrutinizing (and possibly measuring) every bike lane I ride in going forward.
I don’t normally write about food on this blog. But hear me out. Yesterday was Bianca’s birthday and we had an incredible experience at Osteria Giulia. We sat at the bar, as we like to do, and everything was perfect: the food, the service, and the interiors.
First, let’s talk about the food.
Anchovies, grilled sourdough, and a lot of delicious butter:
Endive, pear, burnt honey vinaigrette, toasted almonds, and ricotta:
Ricotta filled pasta, mushrooms, and artichokes:
Sea bass, leeks, artichokes, fava beans, and charred tomatoes:
Now, let’s talk about the interiors. They were designed by Guido Costantino Projects. And to get a good feel for their approach, I suggest you first check out their Instagram and then move onto their website. They do really beautiful and calming work.
Design always matters.
And I’m pretty sure that the cream-colored stones and light-oak details made everything taste that much better last night. If you haven’t been and you get a chance, I would highly recommend you try Osteria Giulia. It’s now one of our favorites in the city.
And it retracts/opens up like this (the glass panels stack neatly to one side when you want to create a traditional balcony and guard condition):
Obviously the idea here is to create outdoor spaces that can be enjoyed for more months of the year. In the summer it opens up so you get a typical balcony condition. And then in the cooler months or on a windy or rainy day, you get a solarium. Maybe it even works in the winter with the right sun exposure.
But obviously there is a cost to adding something like this to new projects. So my development question to all of you today is: Would you be willing to pay a premium for a balcony glazing system like the one shown here? And if so, how important would you rank a feature like this for multifamily buildings?
If you have a few minutes, please let me know in the comment section below.
Back in 2020/2021 when we were getting ready to launch sales for One Delisle, the team came up with the idea of pill-shaped kitchen islands for our residences.
What that means is we wanted to use perfect semi-circles on both ends. We didn’t want oval islands. We didn’t want distorted semi-circles. We wanted islands shaped like pills!
We felt these opened up the kitchens and also looked really unique. So with Studio Gang and the rest of the team, we proceeded to design a few different types.
We needed ones that would work for smaller suites, we needed ones that would work for larger suites, and we needed to accommodate breakfast bars/seating.
When we approached Scavolini Toronto about this idea their first response was, “we’ve never done this before. It would be a first.”
However, their second response was, “but we’ll figure it out with you.” And based on this response, we built (by hand) a pill-shaped island for our condominium sales gallery, and then included them as part of One Delisle.
Fast forward to 2023 and we are now in the “let’s figure it out phase”. This week we reviewed the very first production prototypes in Scavolini’s factory in Pesaro.
They are everything we could have hoped for, and we are thrilled that Scavolini was a willing partner in this endeavor.
It’s not easy doing new things in construction. The smallest things can (usually?) end up being a lot more work. But it all feels worth it when you get to see the results.
I love my Canadian passport. It is both a part of my own identity and my ticket to the rest of the world. And as much as I also love technology, I hope that we never do away with old fashioned passport stamps administered by grumpy customs officials. I don’t care if the data is being stored on a blockchain somewhere — which will likely be the case — I would really like a barely legible and awkwardly placed stamp inside of my personal paper folio.
Of course, now there’s a new passport.
This week, Canada unveiled a new design featuring enhanced security features (presumably all of which are vitally important) and a lot more images of nature. Perhaps not surprisingly, it has received a lot of criticism. But it doesn’t seem to be the usual, “this is new and I just don’t like change” kind of criticism. It seems to be the “this is objectively bad” kind of criticism.
Supposedly, many of the visual changes were done because they were thought to better represent who we are as Canadians. Really?
Families, Children and Social Development Minister Karina Gould, who helped announce the changes, and who oversees Service Canada, said that the redesign – including images of polar bears, people jumping in a lake, and birds in winter – capture the “spirit of who we are as Canadians.”
At the highest level, I think it is clear from this redesign that we are struggling with our own sense of national identity. Who are we? And what kind of nation do we aspire to become? This is evident through at least two features of this new passport:
The way we are communicating the monarchy of Canada
The iconography that we believe captures the “spirit of who we are as Canadians”
The current passport design — which I have in front of me right now — features the Arms of Canada prominently in the middle of the cover. The new design (pictured above), moves the Arms of Canada to the bottom left, though it appears to remain the same size as before. However, this move makes room for a partial maple leaf to tuck behind the Arms in the center of the cover.
Ignoring that these two objects feel visually incongruent with one another, I generally hate both designs simply because I hate the fact that Canada is a constitutional monarchy. However, I will give credit to the previous design and say that at least it was decisive. It had one visual image in the center of the cover that clearly communicated something: our monarch is first and foremost.
Now what we have done is decided to timidly introduce a partial (and minimal) maple leaf behind it. It is perhaps the softest way we could have done it: “Sorry, mind if I just insert this here?” But rather than assert brand Canada, it merely signals that we’re shy, and we don’t really know who we are.
If it were up to me (and it isn’t), the Arms would come off the cover completely (it can go somewhere inside as part of our history), and I’d place a single small red maple leaf under the word “Passeport.” Nothing on the back cover. Ironically, I think this would be infinitely more impactful — and confident — than what is shown here.
The next problem has to do with the iconography that we believe captures the “spirit of who we are as Canadians.” As of 2021, it is estimated that over 82% of Canadians live in an urban center, and this number continues to increase. So while I appreciate that we have a very large land mass and that our natural environment is precious, it does not actually reflect the current reality of how the majority of Canadians live.
Perhaps the argument is that deep down inside we all secretly wish that we were living in the woods next to nature (or at least in a luxury “cottage” in Muskoka). This is the true “spirit of who we are.” I don’t know, maybe it is for some. But there’s something to be said about recognizing the reality we live in today and the importance of our cities in driving the Canadian economy forward.
Equally important is recognizing the people, moments, and symbols that form part of our history. Much of that was stripped from this new design. So is it time to go back to the drawing board? I think so. Our visual symbols tell the story of who we are and who we want to become. If we can’t get these right, then how will we actually get to where we want to go?
Let’s assume that you’re Mayor of your city and that, for whatever reason, you have no need to pander to voters. You’re a benevolent dictator. You can do whatever you think is best overall for the city and it will just happen. What would you do? This is more or less the question I asked on Twitter this morning, and I think it’s only fair that I answer my own question. So here is a non-exhaustive list of items that came to mind while thinking of Toronto:
Substantially increase the pay of public sector workers throughout the city and bonus them based on measurable outcomes. Forget things like time limits on development applications; instead align incentives. For example, if we’re trying to get more shovels in the ground on affordable housing, incentivize people based on building permits issued. I’ll never forget what Roger Martin told me while I was at Rotman. When he became Dean of the school, Rotman was a whatever business school that wasn’t faring all that competitively in the rankings. One of the problems he discovered was that the school’s professors were getting paid far less than those at Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, and so on. So if you were a star, why would you ever want to teach at Rotman? He immediately matched the salaries of those top-tier schools and then, not surprisingly, the top-tier talent arrived. You get what you pay for.
Immediately price roads and congestion, and direct, to the fullest extent possible, the funds toward transit and cycling infrastructure. At the same time, the planning and building of transit would be depoliticized. There would be a reccurring funding stream and a plan that we’re continually building out. Minimize protracted debates. Never stop building. There’s a lot of talk this mayor election about solving traffic congestion. I have yet to see a plan that will actually work. Accurately pricing congestion likely won’t be popular, but I can guarantee you that it will be highly effective.
Ensure that property taxes are sustainably covering the costs of operating the city and then, at a minimum, peg all future increases to CPI.
Make any new housing development less than 12 storeys as-of-right. That would mean, no rezoning process and no site plan approval; just straight to building permit.
Empower the private sector to build affordable housing through incentives and subsidies. Affordable housing isn’t feasible to build on its own, which is why nobody is doing it. Inclusionary zoning also won’t get us there. Make developers want to build it and they’ll do it.
Liberalize licensing and cut red tape to empower small entrepreneurs across the city in various industries. A perfect example in my mind is street food. Toronto is the most diverse city in the world with some of the best restaurants, and yet the only thing you can buy on the street is a stupid hot dog. If we empowered small entrepreneurs to setup shop on our streets, we would easily have the best street food scene in the world. And I am positive that there are countless other latent opportunities in this city that are being held back by dumb and archaic rules.
Focus on art, design, culture, and innovation as central pillars of Toronto’s brand. Miami is a good example of what this approach — along with favourable taxes and nice weather — can do for a city. I’ve said this before, but here’s just one example: Toronto is in many ways the birthplace of the cryptocurrency Ethereum. Why is nobody talking about this? Why are we not celebrating and leveraging this? It’s a missed opportunity. Broadly speaking though, I think just having and doing three things can be effective in promoting new ideas for these pillars: have reasonably affordable housing, be a city that young people want to live in, and remain open and tolerant to immigrants.
Stop thinking of the night-time economy as a nuisance and instead think of it as a powerful economic development tool. I recently responded to this “night economy survey” that the City of Toronto released and the obvious bias is that nighttime things are seen as a terrible nuisance. In other words, “tell us how do we make all of this less annoying for grouchy voters.” My response was to extend last call to 4am and to start thinking of it as an opportunity to draw in young people, tourists, and whoever else. This complements my previous point.
This is, again, a completely non-exhaustive list. But if I had to summarize the overall ambition, it would be to make Toronto a truly exceptional and remarkable city. We should never be happy with mediocrity.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams today appointed Ya-Ting Liu as the city’s first-ever chief public realm officer, delivering on a key promise from his State of the City address. In this newly created role, Liu will coordinate across city government, community organizations, and the private sector to create extraordinary public spaces across the entire city and continue to drive the city’s economic recovery.
As chief public realm officer, Liu will focus on delivering two components of Mayor Adams’ “Working People’s Agenda.” She will execute on a plan to invest $375 million to create and expand high-quality public spaces in all five boroughs, which includes the Broadway Vision plan, a full reconstruction of Jamaica Avenue from Sutphin Boulevard to Merrick Boulevard, and permanent upgrades to Open Streets in the Bronx and on Staten Island. At the same time, she will lead the administration’s work to deliver a permanent outdoor dining program in partnership with the City Council that works for businesses and residents, building on the massive success of the pandemic-era temporary Open Restaurants program, with clear design guidelines and accessible tools for restaurant owners and communities.
When done right, public spaces have been proven to promote economic development. Perhaps the most obvious example in New York is the High Line. The first two phases cost around $153 million to construct, and as of 2014 it was already attracting some 5 million visitors a year and thought to be responsible for over $2 billion of economic activity. As of 2019, the number of annual visitors had increased to 8 million.
So if New York ends up with more of these spaces — you know, enjoyable spaces that attract lots of humans and investment — this could be a good idea.
You can tell a lot about a place by the quality of its public toilets. I don’t know about you, but if I’m at a restaurant and the toilets are filthy, I automatically assume that the kitchen is at least as filthy.
And so what does it say about Japan that it decided to hire the country’s leading architects to design 17 new public toilets in Tokyo?
I first wrote about “The Tokyo Toilet” back in the summer of 2021. But now that the majority of them have been constructed, I figured it was time to revisit the project.
The two toilets designed by Shigeru Ban are particularly noteworthy in that they are clear glass boxes that become automatically opaque when in use. This was done so you can see if there’s anyone lurking inside.
But of course, all of them are remarkable and all of them are probably better than the general level of public architecture that you’ll find in most other cities.
I am really interested in these sorts of spaces. In this case, these is an old brutalist office building in Kanazawa, Japan that was purchased in 2019 by artist Hiraki Sawa. The original intent was to turn it into a co-working space, but eventually the idea evolved into a hybrid “co-being” space that can be rented as a place to stay and/or as a place to facilitate creativity.
The space itself was left mostly raw and exposed, but neon movable walls were inserted by AB Rogers Design that allow you to configure the volumes as you’d like. What’s interesting about spaces like these is that they enable play and experimentation. Maybe it also makes money, or maybe it doesn’t. But that doesn’t seem to be the main point.
The point is to empower creativity. And finding spaces to do this can be tough in competitive markets where demand is consistently outstripping supply. Oftentimes you need some slack in the system so that there’s literal breathing room for new ideas, or rich people who can make it so.
Whatever the case, I am a believer that when given the opportunity, people will generally find a way to imagine and create. So if you happen to find yourself in Kanazawa and would like to book this space, which is called Fish Market, click here. Guests are being asked to submit a request explaining how and why they’d like to use the space.
