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: Urbanism

  • Density is good

    When it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, we know this:

    Households in denser neighborhoods close to city centers tend to be responsible for fewer planet-warming greenhouse gases, on average, than households in the rest of the country. Residents in these areas typically drive less because jobs and stores are nearby and they can more easily walk, bike or take public transit. And they’re more likely to live in smaller homes or apartments that require less energy to heat and cool.

    We also know this:

    Consider housing. For decades in the United States, the majority of new homes have been built in the suburbs and, increasingly, exurbs, where climate footprints are larger. As a result, for many people today, it is often easier and cheaper to find a home in a high-emissions community than a lower-emissions one.

    An important caveat to these points is that if you use consumption-based carbon accounting — that is, you consider all of the goods and services that people tend to consume — then other things like income also play a major factor. Wealthy households, for example, tend to fly more frequently, and that is bad for emissions.

    But even with this more accurate accounting, the two biggest contributors to a household’s carbon footprint still tend to be housing and driving. And that’s why when you look at emission maps, like these over here, the urban core still usually performs the best. Density, it turns out, is hard to beat.

  • New ideas like buildings people don’t want

    There is a very common story that plays out in cities. It starts with an area that has seen disinvestment and is probably a little seedy and/or dangerous . This creates an environment where rents and real estate as a whole are relatively inexpensive. New, cool and creative businesses start to move in (attracted by said inexpensiveness) and the area begins to turn around. Eventually it becomes suitable for institutional-type investors, and this ultimately leads to everything becoming expensive as a result of demand outstripping supply. Gentrification complete.

    The great irony of this story is that you sometimes, or oftentimes, lose the very things that made the area cool and interesting in the first place. Here is an example from Miami:

    The result has been a property speculation boom that, when combined with the city’s relatively low wages, put many businesses and residents on the street. Asking rents for industrial space, for instance, went up by 53 percent in the last year alone. Nobody can afford to buy, let alone rent, adequate space for a music venue because so much land has been snapped up by outside investors with a predilection for grand, “world-class urban” designs. 

    And for some areas, it is arguably the result of a careful and deliberate plan that was put in place nearly two decades ago:

    Teele’s commissioner district in the early 2000s included both Park West and the historically Black neighborhood of Overtown. At the turn of the millennium the area was blighted and crime-ridden thanks to years of racist, regressive policy decisions from segregation to redlining. His plan was simple but incredibly effective. He spearheaded a campaign to revitalize the area by granting a limited number of 24-hour liquor licenses to clubs like Space. Dozens of venues rose up on and around 11th Street, including vast, multi-room clubs like Metropolis, live venues like Studio A and Grand Central, and more intimate spots like Vagabond. Sporadic police raids also gave the area a druggy, dangerous reputation, inadvertently raising its allure. 

    This reoccurring arc has led some people to conclude that cities and/or areas seem to want to follow a kind of binary outcome: they’re either dying or they’re too successful. Why can’t we just have urban homeostasis? I don’t think this is necessarily always the case. Cities go through cycles just like any other market. I also know that it’s complicated. But I do feel strongly that we need to be mindful that part of what makes cities such wonderful places is that they are factories for new ideas and creativity.

    I can’t remember when or exactly how he said it, but YouTuber Casey Neistat once described New York City as an incredible island (Manhattan?) where misfits from all over the world come to do whatever the hell they want. And that part of the reason for this is that nobody cares what you do, because everyone is just so damn busy. You could certainly argue that New York isn’t what it used to be. But the lesson here remains the same: Cities are at their best when they allow humans to create, build, experiment, and express themselves.

    And oftentimes a great place for that is in a space that nobody else wants.

  • What AI thinks about missing middle housing

    I don’t know if any of you have had a chance to play with ChatGPT yet, but it is pretty incredible. Here is something that my friend David Fitzpatrick, who is a planner, tweeted out:

    https://twitter.com/_DavidFitz/status/1600886386734682112?s=20&t=nxrqQJM8AQ6unugSs7eP9w

    There is really no way of telling that AI produced this. It sounds natural and, in this particular case, it also feels like it understands that this is an ongoing debate: “the by-law may not provide enough flexibility to allow for…”

    It’s a good thing I don’t write for a living.

  • On-street EV charging stations are the next street light

    On-street electric vehicle charging points are starting to roll out across Toronto. Here is one that I came across this morning in the Junction on Annette Street. The stations are from Flo.

    At its core, this is, of course, a great thing. Ubiquitous charging points are a critical component of overall EV adoption. But at the same time, it was a good reminder that (1) above-grade electrical wires are ugly (this is the typical Toronto approach) and that (2) on-street EV charging is a design challenge that is going to need to be solved.

    In the above example, the charging stations were mounted to an existing electrical pole and two bright yellow bollards were installed on either side to make sure nobody smashes into said charging stations while they’re parking and/or trying to watch TikTok videos on their phone.

    But what happens when nearly everyone has an EV? There are only so many electrical poles, so we will need to move on to standalone stations at some point, and that is obviously already being done. But if we’re going to have charging points practically everywhere, how should they work and what should they look like?

    I am sure that lots of very smart people are already thinking about this. But as someone who is not directly involved in this space, it feels like we need to think about these in a similar way to street lights. Because they are going to be just as ubiquitous, if not more so. That means there is a strong cause for making them both functional and beautiful.

    In fact, this feels like a real city branding opportunity.

  • Toronto’s first apartment boom (1900 to 1920)

    North American cities have long had a problem with apartment buildings.

    One the one hand, they were viewed as an important requirement for world-class status. Regardless of whether there was an economic imperative to build in this way, you needed grand buildings to communicate that you were an important and sophisticated city.

    But on the other hand, apartments were viewed as clearly inferior to low-rise houses. Apartments were too dense; they were thought to morally corrupt people (infidelity meant just walking down the hall); and by definition — until the rise of condominiums — they were filled with renters.

    I recently stumbled upon this 1989 research paper by Richard Dennis (through Bob Georgiou’s blog) and it is a fascinating account of Toronto’s first apartment-house boom from 1900 to 1920:

    One of the first apartment houses to be completed in the city was the Alexandra Palace Apartments (pictured above) on University Avenue near Elm Street:

    The next building to be completed, the Alexandra, on University Avenue, was on an even grander scale. It was promoted by the Union Trust Company, but subsequently owned by the specially constituted Alexandra Palace Co. Ltd., and opened in 1904. The building, of stone, brick and steel construction, comprised 72 suites on seven floors; it also included dining rooms. In 1905 more than a quarter of its suites were vacant, mainly on the upper floors (although the very top floor was fully occupied); its tenants included a leading judge, two barristers, a professor, a doctor and a prominent real estate agent, but otherwise its social standing did not quite match that of St George Mansions. In 1915 occupants included Professor James Mavor. There were more tenants aged in their thirties than in St George Mansions, but overall the average age of 42 and household size of 2.6 was not dissimilar.

    But perhaps the most interesting part of the paper is Toronto’s reaction to this apartment boom. We moved to stop it:

    Nonetheless, it is clear that the attempted invasion of high-status single- family areas in Parkdale and, more especially, Rosedale and Avenue-St Clair, provided the catalyst to action. For all the moral outrage and sanitary evidence, there was little concern as long as apartments stayed downtown or in lower-status neighbourhoods. This becomes even more apparent when we examine what happened in the months following the passage of the by-laws.

    Toronto’s housing stock has changed dramatically over the last 100 years or so, and we are now nearly 50% apartments/condominiums over 5 storeys. But at the same time, some things seem to never change.

  • French people like electric scooters

    Toronto doesn’t like electric scooters. Something about them being dangerous. But here are some interesting statistics for France, which has apparently become the leading scooter market in Europe:

    • The Fédération des Professionnels de la Micromobilité (FPMM) — yes, this exists — estimates that there are about 2.5 million regular scooter users in France.
    • In 2021, about 900,000 units were sold in the country, which represents a 42% increase compared to 2020.
    • Sales directly to users is outstripping the revenue from self-service operators such as Lime, Bird, Dott, and Voi. Current annual estimates are in the range of €310 million and €40 million, respectively.
    • About 50% of scooter sales are happening at grocery stores, compared to 30% at other retailers, and 20% online. (This is kind of interesting. I wonder if people are impulse buying while shopping for food.)

    I am a big fan of electric scooters. And all of this suggests to me that scooter adoption is likely to continue, that we are going to need to start thinking more about how best to incorporate them into our cities, and that eventually Toronto will have to stop being so conservative.

  • How Sydneysiders got to work in 2021

    I’m not sure how much you can actually glean from this Australian Bureau of Statistics data (taken from this recent New Geography article):

    The data was collected on August 20, 2021 and, at that time, there were still a number of pandemic lockdowns in place. But consider the fact that during the last census (2016), Sydney’s “work @ home” share was only 4.9% and that its transit share was 26.2%.

    Where Sydney is sitting today is obviously somewhere between where it was in 2016 and where it was in 2021. Who knows where exactly things stabilize — that is largely unknowable — but at least I got to use “Sydneysider” in a blog post title.

  • Learning from Kyoto’s machiya

    Japan has a building typology known as machiya. They are found throughout Japan, but my understanding is that they are most closely associated with downtown Kyoto. The typical machiya consists of a long wooden home with a narrow street frontage, and at least one interior courtyard garden.

    But perhaps the most interesting aspect of these townhouses is that, for the centuries that they have existed, they have always been mixed-used. The front of the building traditionally served as a kind of “shop space”, and the private residential spaces were tucked behind it (though this line between public and private was fairly fluid).

    And so for hundreds of years, the humble machiya became a flexible building typology that allowed shops, restaurants, and various other small businesses to flourish. This has changed over the years. People went off to work in offices and Western ideals around housing started to infiltrate Japan, among other reasons. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t important lessons to be learned from Kyoto’s machiya.

    Here in Toronto, we remain deeply terrified of things like triplexes creeping into our single-family neighborhoods and we remain reticent to allow non-residential uses outside of their designated areas. Old habits die hard.

    But take a walk, cycle, or drive across one of our non-Avenue-designated arterial roads (which I did yesterday), and it’s hard not to imagine something much better. My mind immediately goes to an improved streetscape with (1) less on-street parking, (2) a lot more homes (as-of-right), and (3) flexible ground floor permissions that allow for crazy things like a “shop space”.

    And then, what kind of city might we have if we had fewer barriers in the way of infill housing and if we allowed for low-cost spaces that could flex up and down based on the needs of small entrepreneurs? I’m pretty sure it would be a better one. And of course, it’s been done before.

    Photo by Akira Deng on Unsplash

  • The effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market

    Here is an interesting working paper that assesses the effect of new market-rate housing construction on the low-income housing market:

    Increasing supply is frequently proposed as a solution to rising housing costs. However, there is little evidence on how new market-rate construction—which is typically expensive—affects the market for lower quality housing in the short run. I begin by using address history data to identify 52,000 residents of new multifamily buildings in large cities, their previous address, the current residents of those addresses, and so on. This sequence quickly adds lower-income neighborhoods, suggesting that strong migratory connections link the low-income market to new construction. Next, I combine the address histories with a simulation model to estimate that building 100 new market-rate units leads 45-70 and 17-39 people to move out of below-median and bottom-quintile income tracts, respectively, with almost all of the effect occurring within five years. This suggests that new construction reduces demand and loosens the housing market in low and middle-income areas, even in the short run.

    This paper is not suggesting that everything will be fine so long as you build lots of new and expensive market-rate housing. But it is suggesting that a “filtering” of housing downward does oftentimes take place.

    When you build new supply, you tend to free up some existing supply, and that generally has the opposite effect of what we recently spoke about here, which is an instance of housing filtering upward.

  • Are multi-way boulevards at least part of the answer?

    This short video by City Beautiful makes the case for multi-way boulevards. The way to generally think about a multi-way boulevard is that it is a really big street that has been subdivided into areas that move cars relatively quickly and into areas that are a bit more conducive to calmer traffic and doing things like cycling and walking. More specifically, they are streets that have local access lanes on either side.

    And in this video, it is proposed as a possible fix for two kinds of situations: (1) as a solution for what to do when you take down an elevated highway and (2) as a solution for retrofitting suburban arterial roads. I thought this would be a good video to share given that I can think of an elevated highway that should come down and because I have written before about how challenging it can be to change streets after they’ve been built. They tend to be pretty sticky.

    But beyond this, it’s also a good primer on how suburban transportation approaches are highly effective at making cities that you can’t walk around in.