Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
It's not always as straightforward as it may seem to measure the size of a city or urban region.
There's the problem of which urban boundary to use. And then once you've landed on that, there's the additional problem of estimating how many people live within it. This can be particularly challenging when it comes to informal settlements, where there isn't reliable population data.
The most common approach is to use the continuous built-up area as the urban agglomeration, as opposed to any sort of "city proper" boundaries. And this is exactly what the United Nations has done in its latest World Urbanization Prospects report.
Here, they have fundamentally revised their measurement methodology by using a new, so-called harmonized geospatial approach. If you'd like to nerd out on the specifics, you can do that here.
But one of the key takeaways is that this new methodology has resulted in a reordering of the world's largest urban agglomerations. At the top is now Jakarta, followed by Dhaka:
Previously, Tokyo was thought to be the world's most populous megacity, but it has dropped down to 3rd in this new report. And by 2050, it is forecasted to drop even further to 7th place:
As we spoke about yesterday, the world's economic center of gravity is rapidly shifting toward Asia. And that shows up in these charts.
I have a strong desire to visit the largest cities in the world. It's fascinating to see how such large urban clusters manage to organize themselves. There are always systems that naturally emerge to make things work, even if it feels chaotic on the surface.
I've only been to 3 cities from the 2025 chart, so I have my work cut out for me.
Cover photo by Rifki Kurniawan on Unsplash
Whether you live in North Dakota or Texas, there's a reasonable chance that when you travel internationally, you enjoy going to Cancun. Or perhaps you fly into Cancun and then go to a neighboring town like Tulum. United Airlines just released the following map showing the most-booked international destinations from every state for passengers traveling on United Airlines between January and October 2025. The top three destinations are London, Cancun, and Tokyo:
It's fun to examine projects that I could never underwrite or build in Toronto. Here's another one from Tokyo — a 10-storey, single-stair apartment building on a busy street, next to a metro station.
It's not always as straightforward as it may seem to measure the size of a city or urban region.
There's the problem of which urban boundary to use. And then once you've landed on that, there's the additional problem of estimating how many people live within it. This can be particularly challenging when it comes to informal settlements, where there isn't reliable population data.
The most common approach is to use the continuous built-up area as the urban agglomeration, as opposed to any sort of "city proper" boundaries. And this is exactly what the United Nations has done in its latest World Urbanization Prospects report.
Here, they have fundamentally revised their measurement methodology by using a new, so-called harmonized geospatial approach. If you'd like to nerd out on the specifics, you can do that here.
But one of the key takeaways is that this new methodology has resulted in a reordering of the world's largest urban agglomerations. At the top is now Jakarta, followed by Dhaka:
Previously, Tokyo was thought to be the world's most populous megacity, but it has dropped down to 3rd in this new report. And by 2050, it is forecasted to drop even further to 7th place:
As we spoke about yesterday, the world's economic center of gravity is rapidly shifting toward Asia. And that shows up in these charts.
I have a strong desire to visit the largest cities in the world. It's fascinating to see how such large urban clusters manage to organize themselves. There are always systems that naturally emerge to make things work, even if it feels chaotic on the surface.
I've only been to 3 cities from the 2025 chart, so I have my work cut out for me.
Cover photo by Rifki Kurniawan on Unsplash
Whether you live in North Dakota or Texas, there's a reasonable chance that when you travel internationally, you enjoy going to Cancun. Or perhaps you fly into Cancun and then go to a neighboring town like Tulum. United Airlines just released the following map showing the most-booked international destinations from every state for passengers traveling on United Airlines between January and October 2025. The top three destinations are London, Cancun, and Tokyo:
It's fun to examine projects that I could never underwrite or build in Toronto. Here's another one from Tokyo — a 10-storey, single-stair apartment building on a busy street, next to a metro station.
First, it's important to keep in mind that this data only includes people flying on United; it doesn't capture all international air travel. Second, maps like this are necessarily going to be influenced by an airline's biggest hubs. In the case of United, its hub-and-spoke model relies on major airports and routes like San Francisco-Tokyo and Newark-Heathrow.
Still, specific destinations appear on this map for a reason. Cancun is the number one "vacation" airport for Americans, which is an incredible success story, because it wasn't a place until the 1970s. Prior to Cancun, Acapulco was Mexico's top resort destination, but it was becoming constrained, and the government needed a replacement conduit for extracting US dollars from the American middle class. So, they developed Cancun.
The popularity of Tokyo is likely partly a result of a weaker yen, in addition to being an important Asian hub and an incredible place to visit. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), over 2.7 million Americans visited the country in 2024 — a 33% year-over-year increase and a 58% increase compared to 2019.
The country also saw 3.7 million international visitors in January 2025, which is the highest ever for a single month. Countries like the US and Canada also set all-time records for January arrivals. Part of this, I'm sure, has to do with Japan's legendary "Japow." I was part of this year's cohort, and I've never seen so much snow as I did on the island of Hokkaido.
There are also very specific one-off relationships that appear on United's map. The number one destination for the state of Arizona is, for example, Taipei. And this is being driven by a semiconductor boom, specifically Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's direct investment in the state. At the time, it was heralded as "the largest foreign direct investment in a greenfield project in American history."
So, there's a lot that can be gleaned from a map like this. If we were to zoom out and look at all international air travel, we would likely see some reordering. I suspect Paris would jump ahead of airports like Vancouver, given its hub status for other airlines. But it's unlikely you'd see a completely different list. Americans fly east to London, south to Cancun, west to Tokyo, and north to Toronto. These are the primary hub airports.
The site itself is only 59.49 m2 (~640 ft2), and the building footprint is 47.97 m2 (~516 sf), for a total of 388.28 m2 (~4,179 ft2). There's retail on the first and second floors, one home per floor on levels 3 through 8, and then a two-storey home on levels 9 and 10. All of this is serviced by a single elevator, and a single open-air egress stair off the back.
The building itself uses a simple structural system involving 6 columns (which you can see evenly placed on the plans). According to the architect's notes, they started with a simple 4-column design, but apparently the columns were too large and compromised the suite layouts.
Tokyo is a unique city and this kind of housing wouldn't work everywhere. But there's a universal lesson here: removing barriers and allowing small infill projects is a good thing for cities. Until these projects are feasible, we won't know exactly what the market actually wants and could support.
Photos from Hiroyuki Ito Architects
First, it's important to keep in mind that this data only includes people flying on United; it doesn't capture all international air travel. Second, maps like this are necessarily going to be influenced by an airline's biggest hubs. In the case of United, its hub-and-spoke model relies on major airports and routes like San Francisco-Tokyo and Newark-Heathrow.
Still, specific destinations appear on this map for a reason. Cancun is the number one "vacation" airport for Americans, which is an incredible success story, because it wasn't a place until the 1970s. Prior to Cancun, Acapulco was Mexico's top resort destination, but it was becoming constrained, and the government needed a replacement conduit for extracting US dollars from the American middle class. So, they developed Cancun.
The popularity of Tokyo is likely partly a result of a weaker yen, in addition to being an important Asian hub and an incredible place to visit. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), over 2.7 million Americans visited the country in 2024 — a 33% year-over-year increase and a 58% increase compared to 2019.
The country also saw 3.7 million international visitors in January 2025, which is the highest ever for a single month. Countries like the US and Canada also set all-time records for January arrivals. Part of this, I'm sure, has to do with Japan's legendary "Japow." I was part of this year's cohort, and I've never seen so much snow as I did on the island of Hokkaido.
There are also very specific one-off relationships that appear on United's map. The number one destination for the state of Arizona is, for example, Taipei. And this is being driven by a semiconductor boom, specifically Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's direct investment in the state. At the time, it was heralded as "the largest foreign direct investment in a greenfield project in American history."
So, there's a lot that can be gleaned from a map like this. If we were to zoom out and look at all international air travel, we would likely see some reordering. I suspect Paris would jump ahead of airports like Vancouver, given its hub status for other airlines. But it's unlikely you'd see a completely different list. Americans fly east to London, south to Cancun, west to Tokyo, and north to Toronto. These are the primary hub airports.
The site itself is only 59.49 m2 (~640 ft2), and the building footprint is 47.97 m2 (~516 sf), for a total of 388.28 m2 (~4,179 ft2). There's retail on the first and second floors, one home per floor on levels 3 through 8, and then a two-storey home on levels 9 and 10. All of this is serviced by a single elevator, and a single open-air egress stair off the back.
The building itself uses a simple structural system involving 6 columns (which you can see evenly placed on the plans). According to the architect's notes, they started with a simple 4-column design, but apparently the columns were too large and compromised the suite layouts.
Tokyo is a unique city and this kind of housing wouldn't work everywhere. But there's a universal lesson here: removing barriers and allowing small infill projects is a good thing for cities. Until these projects are feasible, we won't know exactly what the market actually wants and could support.
Photos from Hiroyuki Ito Architects
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