The central bank tightening and interest rate hikes that we saw last year will come to an end in the first quarter of 2023 as inflation gets under control. This will ultimately lead to a recession but my sense is that it will be more… Read More
It has become tradition around here that at the end of each year I write down my predictions for the following one. And in 2022, I did that here. The overarching point of writing something like this down publicly is not necessarily to be right… Read More
It is well known that Hong Kong has some of the most unaffordable housing in the world and that one response to this has been to build increasingly smaller homes — some with the moniker of “nano apartments.” But then earlier this year Beijing decided… Read More
I tweeted two polls today. The first one is mostly useless: It asked whether developers should build more 3-bedroom apartments/condominiums. And not surprisingly, the vast majority of people voted yes. Of course, the problem with this poll is that it says nothing about the overall… Read More
Three quick and unrelated things for today’s post: 1. A handful of years ago, before the pandemic, Bullpen Consulting, Slate Asset Management, and AD HOC STUDIO started a somewhat irregular basketball meetup for Toronto’s development industry called City Builder Ball. It, of course, fell off… Read More
“On some level, we’re [Toronto] still trying to be a Victorian city.” —Peter Clewes It is not an exaggeration to say that Peter Clewes, of architects-Alliance, is one of the most important architects working in Toronto today. Over the last two decades, Toronto has built… Read More
This week AN announced its 2022 Best of Design Awards, which is intended to celebrate outstanding built and unbuilt architectural projects from around the world. And this year I am excited to share that Studio Gang was awarded two editors’ picks: one for 11 Hoyt… Read More
Earlier this year, the Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, and the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, assembled a panel of civic leaders and industry experts to try and come up with a plan for a “New” New York. Initially, this panel was… Read More
It is an overwhelmingly positive thing for cities when you can somehow figure out how to turn a site like this (which looks to have been a single-family home): Into 13 homes and new ground-floor retail that looks like this (non-Google street view images can… Read More
Anyone who has ever worked on a development pro forma will know that the process generally works like this: You start with a bunch of assumptions. You assemble those assumptions in a way that will allow you to determine if the project in question is… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 