The Urban Land Institute Toronto is hosting an event and panel discussion on April 8, 2021 about the future of high-rises in our cities. Here's the blurb:

Against the backdrop of the pandemic and its toll, what is the future of high-rises in our cities? What role do tall towers now play in shaping Toronto’s identity? While the pandemic has accelerated existing large trends, residential tall towers are proving the durability of a quality urban centre and hyper-urban lifestyles in Toronto and around the world.

An introduction will be provided by James Parakh (author, Fellow of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, and Urban Design Manager for the Toronto & East York District) and then a discussion will be moderated by Robyn Player (Director, BTY).

The discussion will be focused on what ULI is calling three of Toronto's most exciting tower projects under development: Pinnacle One Yonge, One Delisle, and 11 Yorkville.

I will be on the panel (talking One Delisle) alongside Lee Koutsaris (VP, Sales and Marketing, Metropia) and Anson Kwok (VP, Sales and Marketing, Pinnacle International).

If you'd like to register, you can do that over here. It should be a great/timely conversation.

Today was the 2019 Land & Development Conference here in Toronto. I was on a panel in the morning about Proptech. I then sat in on a discussion about construction costs. But after that I had to get back to the office to prepare for a couple of meetings.

Here are my tweet takeaways (from the back of the room) during the construction cost session. You may need to click through to see the full thread.

The construction cost escalations that we have seen over the last 2-3 years have had a significant impact on new construction in this region. Niall Finnegan's view is that we are 85% of the way through this "storm."

From his experience, it takes 18 months or so for hard costs to respond to changes in demand. And so the storm we are currently in is a result of elevated condo sales from 2017-2018.

The general consensus from the panel was that costs should start to moderate sometime soon, though maybe not this year. Nobody really knows when that will happen. But if/when hard costs do adjust, it typically happens quickly.

One comment that didn't make it into my tweets, but that I found interesting, was about how uncertainty and volatility in the market -- like what we are seeing today with construction costs -- could actually stifle innovation.

Because it creates additional project risks, it limits people's appetite for other kinds of risks -- like trying new things. I can see that.

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