Now that One Delisle is nearing its final height, the team hired Jacob Côté Photography to go out and capture some progress photos of the site. If you'd like to take a look, they're posted over on Globizen's blog journal. My absolute favourite is the twilight-hour shot with the light blue sky and view toward downtown and the lake. It's the kind of shot that reminds me why I love Toronto.

In other news, the structural backup wall is now underway along the Yonge Street retail frontage. This structure will allow for the reinstatement of the Art Deco facade that was dismantled, catalogued, and stored off-site since the start of construction. Following this, the remainder of the ground floor will be clad in curtain wall (pictured below).

The structural steel for the top of the building, or what we internally call the "architectural crown," was also recently delivered to site. This structure will frame a two-storey volume at the top of the building, conceal the mechanical penthouse, and serve as the building's last important architectural move. Watch for it this summer.

Lastly, we welcomed a select number of brokers to site this week to tour our recently completed model suites. If you have clients you'd like to bring to site or if you yourself are interested, I would encourage you to reach out to the team to book a private site tour. Email sales@onedelisle.com or phone 416-551-4520.

According to recent data from Altus Group and BILD, a total of 1,100 new homes were sold across the GTA in April. This is a noticeable increase from 384 in April 2025, though it's still below the 10-year average of 2,418.

Importantly, this was the first month that new home sales could qualify for Ontario's new HST rebate, and the data suggests that the program is starting to have a positive effect on the market.

But let's not forget that this policy is not yet fully enacted.

The window for buyers is open and everyone fully expects the required federal legislation to pass, but that has not happened yet. The result is that there's still friction around how exactly the rebate will be administered.

As things become clearer, I suspect we will see an even greater uptick in new home sales.

Cover photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Chart via the CBC

So:

Urbanism is failing in Canada, and a two-decade-long effort to reduce sprawl through policies such as urban growth boundaries has caused sprawl to accelerate due to the leapfrogging effect, in which development is pushed out to smaller communities without transit, leaving middle-class workers facing long daily commutes back to the metros where their jobs are located.

Indeed, the data show that net migration out of Canada's largest metro areas is particularly strong among those early in their careers (late-20s to mid-30s). In the words of Mike Moffatt from the Missing Middle Initiative, "Canadians are choosing affordability over density."

This statement highlights the inherent tension between dense, walkable communities and car-oriented sprawl. The former may be nice, better for the environment, and advantageous for agglomeration economies, but the kind of built form that comes along with it tends to be fundamentally more expensive to build.

Now, we can get into a debate about transportation costs, environmental costs, and how people tend to discount the value of their time relative to direct costs, but regardless, it is clear that affordability is dictating where people move.

So Moffatt is not wrong in stating that the communities that we urbanists often like to celebrate as "success stories" are, in fact, the ones that many young people are leaving. And in my view, this highlights a missing success criterion. Great design and urbanism are all well and good but, how attainable is the resulting housing?

The most promising solution right now appears to be happening on the multiplex front. It's the most cost-effective way to build multi-unit homes, and I think our goal should be to apply this same general approach — as-of-right, cost-effective builds — to larger and larger housing typologies.

If we can unlock the same market enthusiasm for six-storey wood-framed builds, then I think we'll really be on to something.

Cover photo by Craig Cook on Unsplash

Chart from the Missing Middle Initiative