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.
I’m off this week to South Florida to check out Art Basel (among other things). This week isn’t a great week to be leaving the city since it’s the Toronto Real Estate Forum and lots of people are coming to the city for that. But I’ve wanted to go to Art Basel for over a decade, so it was about time I did that.
I also decided to pick up the new Monocle Travel Guide to Miami. This is the 8th city that they’ve covered and, as you might know from reading this blog, I’m a big fan of Monocle. (I’m still waiting for the Toronto edition, guys.)
As part of this guide launch – which was timed to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach – they also released a short video that is worth watching.
When most people think of Miami they probably think of sun and flash. And that is certainly part of the DNA of the city. But Miami has also grown into a global city with important and extensive connections to Latin America. It’s also an incredible place for those who love art, architecture, and design. If you watch the Monocle video, I’m sure you’ll feel that.
Miami is absolutely one of my favorite cities.
On Thursday night I spoke at Product Hunt Toronto about the overlap between real estate and tech. My slide deck will be made available online and I’ll be sure to tweet it out and link to it in the comment section of this post.
What was amazing to see was a room filled with 250 people coming together from almost two different worlds. I’m generalizing here, but you had the real estate people in suits and the tech people in t-shirts. But they were all mixing together to figure out how technology is going to disrupt the real estate industry. That is great to see.
This was not the case 5+ years ago when I started obsessing about the overlap between these two spaces. I remember pitching at a Startup Weekend here in Toronto where I was pegged as the fringe outlier for wanting to work on a real estate idea. Now I can’t keep track of all the startups who are tackling this space.
But this is a trend that is happening not only in real estate but in almost every other vertical. Here’s a quote from Fred Wilson that I used last night:
“One of NYC’s great strengths is the diversity of its economy – finance, real estate, media & entertainment, retail, fashion, health care, education, and now tech. And the reason tech is growing so fast in NYC is that it is embedding itself in all of these other industries.”
It’s an exciting time.
In any event, for those of you weren’t able to attend, the 3 startups that presented were Evercondo, PiinPoint, and MappedIn.
Evercondo is a condo communication and management tool for property managers and boards. PiinPoint is a data-driven tool that helps businesses find the best places to locate within a city. And MappedIn creates digital wayfinding solutions for (primarily) retail stores and venues.
If you know of any other interesting startups tackling the real estate space, please share them in the comment section below. Early stage companies need all the support and exposure they can get.
The Neptis Foundation here in Toronto just recently published a fantastic report looking at the regional economic structure of the Greater Golden Horseshoe area. It’s called Planning for Prosperity.
In it they identity the polycentric nature of employment in the Toronto region by way of downtown Toronto and three suburban “megazones.” Here’s one of their maps showing overall employment density and the megazones (light blue circles):
I’m off this week to South Florida to check out Art Basel (among other things). This week isn’t a great week to be leaving the city since it’s the Toronto Real Estate Forum and lots of people are coming to the city for that. But I’ve wanted to go to Art Basel for over a decade, so it was about time I did that.
I also decided to pick up the new Monocle Travel Guide to Miami. This is the 8th city that they’ve covered and, as you might know from reading this blog, I’m a big fan of Monocle. (I’m still waiting for the Toronto edition, guys.)
As part of this guide launch – which was timed to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach – they also released a short video that is worth watching.
When most people think of Miami they probably think of sun and flash. And that is certainly part of the DNA of the city. But Miami has also grown into a global city with important and extensive connections to Latin America. It’s also an incredible place for those who love art, architecture, and design. If you watch the Monocle video, I’m sure you’ll feel that.
Miami is absolutely one of my favorite cities.
On Thursday night I spoke at Product Hunt Toronto about the overlap between real estate and tech. My slide deck will be made available online and I’ll be sure to tweet it out and link to it in the comment section of this post.
What was amazing to see was a room filled with 250 people coming together from almost two different worlds. I’m generalizing here, but you had the real estate people in suits and the tech people in t-shirts. But they were all mixing together to figure out how technology is going to disrupt the real estate industry. That is great to see.
This was not the case 5+ years ago when I started obsessing about the overlap between these two spaces. I remember pitching at a Startup Weekend here in Toronto where I was pegged as the fringe outlier for wanting to work on a real estate idea. Now I can’t keep track of all the startups who are tackling this space.
But this is a trend that is happening not only in real estate but in almost every other vertical. Here’s a quote from Fred Wilson that I used last night:
“One of NYC’s great strengths is the diversity of its economy – finance, real estate, media & entertainment, retail, fashion, health care, education, and now tech. And the reason tech is growing so fast in NYC is that it is embedding itself in all of these other industries.”
It’s an exciting time.
In any event, for those of you weren’t able to attend, the 3 startups that presented were Evercondo, PiinPoint, and MappedIn.
Evercondo is a condo communication and management tool for property managers and boards. PiinPoint is a data-driven tool that helps businesses find the best places to locate within a city. And MappedIn creates digital wayfinding solutions for (primarily) retail stores and venues.
If you know of any other interesting startups tackling the real estate space, please share them in the comment section below. Early stage companies need all the support and exposure they can get.
The Neptis Foundation here in Toronto just recently published a fantastic report looking at the regional economic structure of the Greater Golden Horseshoe area. It’s called Planning for Prosperity.
In it they identity the polycentric nature of employment in the Toronto region by way of downtown Toronto and three suburban “megazones.” Here’s one of their maps showing overall employment density and the megazones (light blue circles):
Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of the scale of these megazones:
“The Airport megazone, one of the three employment megazones outside Downtown Toronto, is the second largest concentration of employment in Canada, after Downtown Toronto. It represents almost 300,000 jobs, more than the central business districts of Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary individually.”
And here’s a chart showing the hard numbers:
Downtown Toronto dominates in terms of employment. But it’s also fascinating to see how much more efficiently it provides that employment. It has the smallest physical area of all the employment zones (2,540 hectares or 6,276 acres) and the lowest percentage of car trips (29%).
But the big takeaway from their report is that we have not been focused enough on employment in our planning. Instead, we seem to be thinking residentially. Here’s a final snippet:
“This study shows that the Growth Plan and The Big Move, which are currently under review, do not address the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing regional economy or the reality of a transforming economic landscape.
The Growth Plan’s focus has largely been on managing residential growth rather than non-residential and employment-related development. Indeed, the Growth Plan is based on shockingly little hard evidence on the evolving economy of the region. Plans for city-regions a fraction of the size of the GGH typically involve more economic research, analysis, and evidence.”
Clearly we need to be looking at both the residential and non-residential sides of the equation as we grow the region. To read the full report, click here.
Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of the scale of these megazones:
“The Airport megazone, one of the three employment megazones outside Downtown Toronto, is the second largest concentration of employment in Canada, after Downtown Toronto. It represents almost 300,000 jobs, more than the central business districts of Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary individually.”
And here’s a chart showing the hard numbers:
Downtown Toronto dominates in terms of employment. But it’s also fascinating to see how much more efficiently it provides that employment. It has the smallest physical area of all the employment zones (2,540 hectares or 6,276 acres) and the lowest percentage of car trips (29%).
But the big takeaway from their report is that we have not been focused enough on employment in our planning. Instead, we seem to be thinking residentially. Here’s a final snippet:
“This study shows that the Growth Plan and The Big Move, which are currently under review, do not address the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing regional economy or the reality of a transforming economic landscape.
The Growth Plan’s focus has largely been on managing residential growth rather than non-residential and employment-related development. Indeed, the Growth Plan is based on shockingly little hard evidence on the evolving economy of the region. Plans for city-regions a fraction of the size of the GGH typically involve more economic research, analysis, and evidence.”
Clearly we need to be looking at both the residential and non-residential sides of the equation as we grow the region. To read the full report, click here.
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