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: Travel

  • 3 degrees

    Yesterday, my knee started acting up again on the mountain. It (sometimes they) has a tendency of doing that. Supposedly it’s my IT (iliotibial) band. But I’m not exactly sure. So I had a low-impact snowboarding day and a high-impact aprés ski day, instead. However, when I was training with Noah Mandel last winter, one of the things that he suggested was rotating my snowboard binding to take some of the pressure off of the side of my knee and move it toward the front. So I did that. I rotated it exactly 3 degrees. And then today, I had one of my best days on the mountain. Sometimes all it takes in life is 3 degrees.

  • The après table test

    There are a number of ways to evaluate a good après ski spot. There’s the food. The drinks. The views/sun exposure. The overall atmosphere. And the simple test of: Am I having fun here? But another important telltale sign is the tables. Yes, the tables. What you want to do is inspect their structural integrity. If they were carefully engineered for dancing upon, then bingo — you’re more than likely at a good après ski spot. And it probably means that at some point in the afternoon or evening, you are going to end up on top of one of them. See above video. If you happen find yourself in this fortunate situation, then there’s no better place than one of the locations of La Folie Douce. I have been to a number of mountains, and I can confidently say that, so far, nothing comes even remotely close. Their tables are robustly engineered.

  • Gone snowboardin’

  • Tornado column

    Lyon is located at the confluence of two rivers: the Saône and the Rhône. And where these two rivers physically merge in the south is a neighborhood called La Confluence:

    A former industrial area and urban renewal project since 1999, La Confluence is now home to world-class architecture, a broad mix of uses, and a club called Le Sucre.

    The most important piece of architecture is probably the Musée des Confluences, which was designed by the Austrian firm Coop Himmeb(l)au. It is situated at the very southern tip of La Confluence.

    And at the very south end of the museum is this column:

    It feels like the exact right place for a column like this.

  • Do not park

    This is my first time seeing a device like this.

    Also, it’s solar powered.

  • The opposite of fast fashion

    I just discovered and purchased a pair of pants from this French brand called 1083. They specialize in jeans and everything they sell is, for the most part, made in France.

    The name 1083 refers to 1083 kilometers, which is the longest possible linear dimension within the “hexagon” of France (a hexagon is often used to describe the geographic boundaries of continental France).

    As an example, their shoes have a message on the insoles that says “this shoe was produced within 1083km of where you are right now.” I thought this was a cool brand story and so I wanted to share it with all of you today.

  • Skinny fabric building

    This skinny 8-story building caught my eye in the Place des Terreaux in Lyon. I think a lot about these sort of small infill buildings because it is generally not how we build, today, in Toronto. But it’s a workhorse of a “fabric building”, and I can think of many streets that would be made better if only we encouraged this kind of built form. Truthfully, it’s probably most streets.

  • Touchdown in Lyon

    We landed in Lyon around 12:30 PM local time today. And it was about 15 degrees and sunny. This doesn’t bode well for fresh snow in the mountains. But it does bode well for getting a nice raccoon tan.

    Our flights and connections were heavily delayed, and so I had started mentally preparing for the possibility of an overnight layover in Montreal. Thankfully, we managed to make our connection. Unfortunately, some of our skis didn’t. Hopefully they come tomorrow.

    It’s for this reason that I usually throw an AirTag in my bag(s). It probably won’t help you get your delayed luggage any faster, but at least it gives you some peace of mind knowing where it is.

    For whatever reason, I also slept really well on last night’s flight. I don’t generally sleep well on planes. So I’ve been up all day, and we’ve been eating our way through Lyon.

    The general rule of thumb with these overnight European flights seems to be that you want to stay up as best you can once you arrive. If you nap, it’ll only prolong the adjustment period.

    Our first meal was during that awkward time in between lunch and dinner when most restaurants are closed. But we went to Bistro Bondy (our hotel recommended it) and it was exactly what we needed. For dinner, we ended up at La Tête de Lard and it looked something like this:

    There was a bit of cream and cheese involved in this meal and so, at this point, I am ready for bed. See you all tomorrow.

  • The rise of global citizens

    Leisure travel, according to Resonance, is growing:

    In fact, spending on leisure travel and recreation has outpaced the overall growth in consumer spending over the last decade, and inflation-adjusted spending on leisure activities as a share of overall consumer spending grew from 9.5% in 2013 to nearly 13% by 2022. This means that the travel and tourism industry is getting a growing share of a growing pie, which bodes well for the long-term future of those hotels and destinations that cater primarily to leisure travelers.

    And so are blended trips (trips that combine business and leisure). Though the way people are going about it has evolved:

    What used to involve adding a day or two on the weekend to a weekday business trip has shifted to the mixing of business and pleasure throughout the week. With a greater percentage of the workforce in the U.S, Canada and the U.K. only going into the office 2-3 days per week, workers from these countries are free to blend their travel for up to a week. And with as much as a quarter of professionals in the U.S. now working remotely, a whole new class of nomadic travelers has emerged who are able to travel anywhere, anytime—as long as their accommodations have adequate high-speed internet and appropriate workspaces.

    At the same time, cities are really clamping down on short-term rentals, which is a common way people do blended trips. Resonance believes this will create new opportunities:

    But while increased regulation and enforcement of the sector will wipe out the businesses of many “professional” hosts and investors, it’s also creating new opportunities for cities and developers to create new neighborhood-oriented hotels that satiate travelers’ desire for local experiences while also being additive to the quality of life of local residents.

    It might be the case that these two things are inversely correlated. More people are traveling for fun and for work, and so now cities are trying to manage that demand; more travel leads to more regulation. Whatever the case, I do agree that this is an important consumption trend.

    My working theory is this: if money wasn’t an object, a lot of people would love to have homes all around the world and live in multiple places. I certainly would. And the list of places is already in my phone. But since this isn’t practical for most, we have Airbnbs, neighborhood-oriented hotels, Soho House global memberships, and the ability to buy fractions of second homes.

    These solutions all respond, at least partially, to our desires for new experiences and for a deeper attachment to places. But now that tech is expanding the reach of cities, these desires are becoming further untethered. And so my view is that there’s going to be a lot of opportunity in the world of “making people feel like they’re global citizens.”

  • Living vs. just visiting — do these two things require different built environments?

    Many years ago I was in a community meeting talking about a proposal we had to add retail uses adjacent to a park. Residential was the highest and best use, but we were excited by what retail could do for the project and area. We were imagining something like a Parisian cafe where everyone would sit facing outward toward the park.

    Much to our surprise, the community was vehemently opposed. And when we eventually asked who had been to Europe and sat outside in a nice cafe, the response we generally got was, “yeah, we have, and it’s obviously nice there, when on vacation. But that’s Europe. It won’t work here and it’s not appropriate for the area.”

    Hmm. This raises all sorts of interesting questions. But for today, let’s ask this one here: Why is it that some people choose to live in places that are so different than the ones they visit when on vacation?

    Is it because we, as humans, want fundamentally different experiences when we travel? i.e. We want to escape from our current reality. “Oh look how novel this is.” In this case, I guess you could say that our markets are fairly efficient and people are getting the kind of lifestyles that they truly want, both at home and abroad.

    Or, is it because, for a variety of reasons, we’ve created rules and obstacles that force certain built form outcomes? We think the other ways won’t work. I often find myself in this latter camp, meaning that when I travel, I at some point end up thinking: “This is a good idea. I want to both move here immediately, and steal this idea and bring it back to Toronto.”

    How about you?

    Photo by DAT VO on Unsplash