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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Category: Paris

  • How the Grand Paris Express is stitching together Greater Paris

    September 10, 2025 · View original

    Paris has a massive transit project that is currently under construction called the Grand Paris Express. It consists of 4 new metro lines, 1 line extension (at both ends), 68 new stations, and 200 km of new tracks. The first phase was the extension of Line 14. That opened last year. And the new lines are planned to open in stages up until 2031. I have no idea if they’re on schedule and/or on budget, but here’s a map of the GPE project:

    Here’s what it looks like if you overlay all existing metro lines (note how concentrated they are in Paris proper and how they’re clearly designed to bring people into the core):

    Here’s what it looks like if you overlay all existing tram lines:

    And finally, here’s what it looks like if you overlay all existing RER lines (suburban rail):

    At this point, the map is getting visually pretty cluttered. But if you look at how the GPE lines compare to what’s existing, I think you’ll start to see just how important this project is for the Métropole du Grand Paris (or Greater Paris). It creates a new set of concentric rings in the inner suburbs and, for the first time, it will allow Parisians to travel around the region (via rail) without first passing through the core of the city. So it’s in effect both an expansion and a stitching together of the city.

    But let’s put some numbers to this.

    According to a recent memo by Apur, which looked at the economic composition of the station areas, about 21% of all salaried employees in Grand Paris are located next to one of the new 68 stations. As a total number, this works out to about 934,000 employees (2022 figure). And included in this figure is La Défense, which is the office district where Paris decided to put most of its tall buildings. This has the highest concentration of jobs at approximately 163,599 salaried employees (again, 2022 figure).

    Another way to think about these station areas is that they represent what many are now calling New Paris. This is a part of Paris that is less encumbered with history and, therefore, more open to change and new ideas. This creates an exciting opportunity, and already we’re seeing that take hold. Later this week on the blog, I’ll talk about a specific project in Greater Paris that is currently under construction and that I was fortunate enough to tour on this trip.

  • How Paris creates such beautiful social housing

    August 16, 2025 · View original

    Back in the spring, I wrote about a small social housing project in Paris at 18 rue Pradier. And the reason I wrote about it is because it’s one of those beautiful European projects that makes every city builder in North America wonder: Why don’t we build projects like this?

    I mean, it’s nicer than most market-rate housing projects.

    As part of my post, I did some internet sleuthing to find out the site area, the gross construction area, and what appeared to be the land price. But it was a modest piece. Thankfully, developer Brendan Whitsitt (of Imprint Development) just published a far more comprehensive summary of the project.

    In it, he pieces together the building’s mechanical systems, the wall assemblies, the project costs, and even the capital stack. He also compares everything back to what’s typical and allowable by code here in Toronto. It’s well worth a read.

    However, I am going to spoil the punchline: Building in Europe is not cheaper. 18 rue Pradier is a beautiful — but very expensive — project. It only works because of subsidies. No private-sector developer would build it otherwise.

  • Attention Paris city builders

    July 7, 2025 · View original

    Neat B and I just booked some end-of-the-summer travel. We’re going to bounce around to a few different places, but the plan is to end up in Paris and then spend a week there working remotely — you know, from the Paris office.

    And by the Paris office, I mean a generous 323 sf aparthotel with a small kitchen, workspace, and shared laundry facility that we rented in the 10th. I started by searching diligently for an Airbnb; but I couldn’t find anything we liked, so I ended booking something through Edgar Suites.

    As part of this trip, I’m aiming to meet as many industry people as possible and hopefully tour some development projects. One of my goals is to better understand how Paris consistently pulls off beautiful infill housing projects like this.

    So if you’re a developer, architect, investor, or other kind of city builder based in Paris, please drop me a line at brandon.donnelly@globizen.com. I’d love to connect and learn more about your city and market, and about what you’re up to.

    Coffee and yummy pastries on me, of course.

  • France just banned smoking in all public spaces

    June 21, 2025 · View original

    One of my least favorite things about Europe is the experience of sitting on a cafe terrace and having someone smoking beside you while you’re trying to enjoy a gelatinous pig foot from Au Pied de Cochon. (I kid; gelatinous pig foot isn’t my favorite.)

    So here’s some news: France has just announced that, starting July 1, smoking will be banned from nearly all public spaces, including parks, beaches, public gardens, and bus stops. That said, the ban does not yet include cafe terraces. So I can still expect my gelatinous pig foot experiences to be horribly ruined.

    Still, this is a giant step in the right direction, especially for a country with one of the highest smoking rates among OECD countries. As of 2023, the national average for daily smokers was estimated at 23% for adults aged 18 to 75. The region with the highest percentage of smokers was the southeast (~29.5%) and the region with the lowest percentage of smokers was Greater Paris (~21.9%).

    In addition to varying by region, smoking is also strongly correlated with socioeconomic status. INSEE, France’s national statistics agency, estimated the following daily smoking rates as of 2022:

    – 42.3% of unemployed adults – 33.6% of people in the lowest income tier – 30.8% of people without a degree (baccalauréat level) – 16.8% of people with higher education (above baccalauréat level)

    But even among high-income groups, the rates are significantly higher than what you’d find throughout the rest of Western Europe, and in places like Canada and the US. We’re in the 10-11% range. All of this is why the French health ministry is now aiming to create a generation “free of tobacco” by 2032.

    The majority of French people also seem to support this new public space ban; which maybe isn’t surprising, given that the majority don’t smoke.

    Cover photo by Marie-Sophie Tékian on Unsplash

  • Paris votes to pedestrianize an additional 500 streets

    March 25, 2025 · View original

    This past Sunday, Paris voted in favor of greening and pedestrianizing an additional 500 streets in the capital (5-8 per neighborhood). This will add to the 300 or so streets that have already received this treatment since Mayor Hidalgo started her second term in 2020. And as a result of this expansion, it is estimated that about 10,000 on-street parking spaces will be removed, which represents about 10% of the city’s total inventory.

    Exciting. But who voted for this? Of the Parisians who voted, 66% voted in favor of the initiative. And it carried in 14 of 17 arrondissements (with the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th counted as one). But similar to prior referendums, voter turnout was extremely low: only 4.06% of eligible voters showed up (approximately 56,500 people). And this is after the voting age was lowered to 16 years old for the first time.

    For context, when Paris voted on whether electric scooters should be banned, 7.46% of voters showed up. So while low, this situation is not entirely unique. Though it does, once again, raise the question of whether the outcome of this referendum truly reflects public opinion. My outsider view is that it probably does. Because I take the apathy to mean some level of support, or at the very least, an absence of strong aversion.

    Think, for example, about who shows up at community meetings for new development projects. The vast majority of people in attendance have concerns they would like to air. It’s very rare for someone to show up and say, “I didn’t have much going on tonight so I decided to come by and see everyone. I have no real concerns. Project looks cool. Carry on as you were.”

    If you agree with this logic, well then it suggests that many/most Parisians do generally support more pedestrianized streets, even if it means the removal of parking. That’s an accomplishment in my books.

    Cover photo by Maximilian Bungart on Unsplash

  • Paris has a hell of a lot of vacation rentals and second homes

    March 20, 2025 · View original

    Last week, we spoke about affordable housing in Paris. Today, let’s talk about tourist rentals in the city. The city of Paris and Greater Paris (i.e. la Ville de Paris and la Métropole du Grand Paris) recently commissioned Apur (which is a non-profit that I regularly follow) to do two studies on this topic. The first was for Paris proper and the second was for Greater Paris. What they found is super interesting:

    – In August 2024, Greater Paris had 149,936 tourist rentals, of which 124,988 were available for immediate booking. This represents an 84% increase compared to August 2023, which is a massive number, but maybe not entirely surprising given that Paris hosted the Olympics last summer. – Paris proper had 97,975 listings in August 2024 and 90,299 in December 2024. Overall, the city sees fairly muted seasonality. It’s also worth noting that 31% of these listings belong to hosts that own multiple properties (that is, at least two).

    But let’s put these figures into context. Here’s a map showing the density of Airbnb listings:

    Here’s a map showing the number of Airbnb listings compared to the number of principal residences:

    And here’s a map showing the percentage of unoccupied homes in the city, which totalled 268,500 as of 2021:

    The report defines an “unoccupied home” to be any home that is not used as a household’s primary residence. So in addition to flat out empty homes, it includes homes that are used sporadically throughout the year for pleasure and/or for work. And as you can see, there are large sections of the center of the city where “unoccupied” and second homes make up over 28% of the total housing stock.

    These areas also closely mirror the areas where tourist rentals are most popular, and where Airbnb listings make up over 20% of the housing stock. (See the second chart above.) And as far as I can tell, these are mutually exclusive classifications, meaning there are sections of the city where a large percentage of the housing stock (perhaps up to half?) is either a short-term rental or a second home.

    This tells you a lot about the housing market in Paris, especially when you compare it to other global cities:

    NYC, for example, is shown here as having 8.8 million people, compared to 7.1 million people in Greater Paris. And yet Greater Paris has about 4x the total number of short-term rental listings. The number of available listings (where the property was available for at least one day of the year) also increased by 84% from August 2023 to August 2024 in Greater Paris; whereas it dropped by 16% in NYC, likely because the city basically banned short-term rentals.

    The two reports can be found here and here (note they’re in French). And they’re rich in data if you’d like to learn more about some of the dynamics impacting Paris’ housing market.

    Cover photo by Kris Atomic on Unsplash

  • How “viager” transactions work in France

    March 12, 2025 · View original

    In the 9th century, France enacted into law a way to buy and sell property through something known as une vente en viager. My understanding is that there are other European countries that also allow this, but that it’s most popular in France, even if it still forms a relatively small portion of the market.

    Here’s how it typically works. You’re an older person (or older couple) and you want to use your home to generate some cash, but you also want to stay living in your home until the very end. So you offer it up for sale en viager occupé. (This is the most popular option, but there’s also le viager libre, where the seller moves out immediately.)

    Whoever buys it will usually pay you, the seller, in two ways. They will pay you an upfront lump sum (called le bouquet) and a recurring payment (called la rente viagère) up until the day you die (or both of you die). Once this happens, the buyer then gets full enjoyment of the property. The transaction is complete.

    So why would either party want to sell and buy in this way?

    Well, if you’re the seller, the obvious benefits are that (1) you get to continue living in your home and (2) you get some money now and for the rest of your life. This can be useful if you, say, run out of cash during retirement. It’s a means to financial independence.

    For buyers, it’s the opportunity to maybe acquire a property below its current market price. Because if you don’t have access to the home until some undetermined date in the future, well then a discount will obviously need to be applied. The initial lump sum payment is often around 30% of the current value. The other attractive feature is that it’s a form of financing for buyers who may not have all the money they need today.

    In the end, this is a bet on life expectancy. Because if the seller ends up living for a really long time, then they get the benefit of more annuity payments. However, if they end up living fewer years than expected, then the buyer benefits from having to pay less in annuity payments. They got to buy below market.

    It’s a fascinating pricing and time-value-of-money exercise, but it’s also a potentially morbid way to buy real estate. On the one hand, you could be helping someone live a dignified retirement. On the other hand, you stand to benefit if they die sooner than expected.

    Cover photo by Zach Dyson on Unsplash

  • The biggest developer in Paris today is the mayor

    March 9, 2025 · View original

    The other night, I went down a Parisian real estate rabbit hole on Twitter. And one of the things that kept coming up was this half joke: The biggest developer in Paris today is the mayor. The reason for this is that the city is targeting 40% of all homes to be public housing by 2035 (of which 30% will be social housing and 10% will be moderately affordable).

    Supposedly this is to stem the steady outflow of people from the capital as a result of housing being too expensive. But it means that a lot of new public housing will need to be created. As of January 1, 2021, the official estimate was 260,563 “logements sociaux” in the capital, which translates into 22.4% of all principal residences.

    To hit this 40% goal, the city is going to need to create somewhere around 140,000 new public housing dwellings between now and 2035. So how does it plan to do this? By being a developer, of course. A big part of the strategy seems to be to convert existing buildings (d’adapter l’existant). And to execute on this, the city is leveraging something known as “le droit de préemption.”

    The way it works is like a right of first refusal clause (ROFR), except that it’s not something that was contractually negotiated between market participants, it’s just the law. What it means is that if a property owner goes to sell their building and they receive an offer, the city has an automatic ROFR and can choose to buy the building at whatever that third party was willing to pay.

    Over the last two years, the city has elected to do this 84 times and has spent over €1.1 billion, according to Business Immo. And since the beginning of this year, they’ve done it 9 times, spending about €67 million on the following properties:

    For those of you who are visual learners like me, here’s the first property on the list:

    It’s certainly ambitious.

    But, for the most part, it does not create a lot of net new housing, even though the city is also aiming to buy office buildings, parking garages, and other non-residential buildings. APUR previously estimated that for every 1 unit of new public housing, 0.6 existing units are being demolished. So the most accurate way to think about this initiative is that it represents the socialization of Paris’ housing stock into public hands.

    This runs in contrast to what we’ve been talking about recently with cities like Minneapolis and Austin, who have instead added a lot of new market-rate housing in order to temper rents and increase affordability. Paris is reducing its stock of market-rate housing.

    At the same time, the city also enacted new policy prohibiting homes that consume more than 450 kWh/m2 from being rented. This is intended to force landlords to renovate, but it will certainly have a further impact on supply, at least in the short term.

    It’s also worth noting that all of this is happening at a time when Paris’ housing market is in broad decline (less transactions, higher days on market, lower prices, and so on). Like Toronto, it started around the middle of 2022. And it’s something that Paris hadn’t seen since the 2008 financial crisis.

    Chart by CoStar via Business Immo; cover photo by Salomé Watel on Unsplash

  • Demographic trends in Greater Paris

    January 20, 2025 · View original

    The work of l’Atelier parisien d’urbanisme (or Apur) is right in my wheelhouse. Run by an architect, they are a group that analyzes, documents, and then develops strategies for urban matters impacting Paris and Greater Paris (la Métropole du Grand Paris). For example, last year they published a book called Paris Atlas, which contains 150 original maps and lots of statistics about the city. And this month, they published a note talking about population and demographic trends in the city. Here’s a brief summary of this latest report.

    As of January 1, 2022, there were 7,115,576 people in Greater Paris:

    Between 2016 and 2022, its population grew by about 0.2% per year or about 14,800 people per year. This is slower than the previous reporting period (2011 to 2015). It’s also all because of natural births:

    When it comes to migration, more people leave the city each year than come to it:

    This runs in contrast to a city region like Toronto, where the vast majority of our population growth comes from positive net migration. This is also true of Canada as a whole. Still, Paris is not immune to lower birthrates and a declining average household size:

    Another factor impacting population, according to the report, is the decline in principal residences (homes occupied for more than 6 months of the year) and the rise of what the report calls “unoccupied homes”, which includes secondary homes and vacation rentals. As of 2021, the number of “unoccupied homes” was estimated at approximately 19.2%:

    However, in four arrondissements (1, 6, 7, and 8), the number of homes not used as a principal residence is thought to exceed 30%! This is making it even harder to build enough new homes. For example, between 2015 and 2021, Paris built approximately 30,300 new homes. (Reminder, the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area completed about that many in one year last year.) But at the same time, the city counted 14,600 fewer principal residences. This is, I guess, what happens when you’re one of the most visited cities in the world.

    To end, I’ll leave you all with this population density map:

    The darkest areas represent more than 250 people per hectare. That works out to more than 25,000 people per square kilometer (just divide the above numbers by 0.01). At the same time, between 2016 and 2022, the population of Paris proper (not Greater Paris) decreased by an average of 12,800 people per year. This is in comparison to an average decrease of 11,900 people per year for the period of 2011 to 2016. As is the case in many/most cities, Paris’ population growth is happening largely in the suburbs and in the outskirts.

    Cover photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash

  • Paris may have the busiest bike route in the world

    In my opinion, we need far better urban data if we’re actually going to make evidence-based decisions. Thankfully, there are lots of great companies that are focused on this space. One of them is Eco-Counter, which makes devices to count pedestrians and cyclists, among other things. This is an important job, because as Peter Drucker used to say, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.”

    Let’s look at their bike counters. According to their global map, they have 464 of them installed around the world. Montreal has 58 of them, which we’ve spoken about before, and is an impressive install base. And Toronto looks to have only one, which is located on Bloor Street on the north side of High Park.

    The busiest route/counter in Montreal is at St-Denis Street and Rue des Carriéres. So far this year — up to November 17, 2024 — this counter has seen an average of just under 5,000 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 1,600,468 trips. Both of these metrics are notably up compared to 2023 when I last looked at the data.

    The busiest route in Eco-Counter’s entire network is on Boulevard de Sébastopol in Paris (an important main roadway, not a side street). It has seen an average of 13,667 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 4,386,996 trips. Not surprisingly, the Paris counter exhibits less seasonality. People still cycle in the winter in Montreal, but it’s less than in the warmer months.

    Finally, our lone Toronto counter adjacent to High Park has seen an average of 1,186 trips per day and a year-to-date total of 380,813 trips. Not quite Paris or Montreal (the latter of which has a colder climate), but I would argue that this really isn’t an indicative location for Toronto given how underdeveloped the area is. Plus, you need to see each route as part of a network.

    If you look at Montreal’s top 5 bike counters, all of them have a year-to-date total that exceeds 1 million trips. This is important information if you’re trying to make mobility decisions and these are significant figures. Imagine if these millions of people got off their bikes and instead decided to take transit or drive a car. That would change things.

    Photo by Celine Ylmz on Unsplash