Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.

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Canada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...

The bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
The story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...

Canada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...

The bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
The story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
Earlier this week a good friend of mine from Rotman, Frank Luengo, launched his own blog called Frank’s Vault.
Given that he has used the same theme as I have here, I like to think it was inspired by ATC :) But whatever the case may be, his mission is: “…to simplify the complicated, and to bring Bay Street and Main Street a little closer together.” In other words, it’s a finance blog. And I’m really enjoying it so far.
Last summer Frank told me that he was thinking about starting this and so I’m thrilled that he finally decided to do it. I’ve talked many times before about the benefits of personal blogging, and so I won’t repeat them here. But I did want to mention one other thing. When Frank told me he launched, one of the first things I did was congratulate him on claiming frankluengo.com.
And I did that because I’m a big proponent of owning your firstnamelastname.com. I look at internet domains as virtual real estate and I, therefore, look at firstnamelastname.com as your own piece of branded real estate on the internet. If you don’t buy it up, somebody else will. That’s obviously why I own brandondonnelly.com and why I host ATC on it.
But since I’m such a believer in real estate – both the offline and online varietals – I actually own many others. I also own brandondonnelly.co, brandondonnelly.ca, and brandondonnelly.me. The latter one links to my tumblog, and the first 2 just redirect to this site. I don’t derive much utility from having all these URLs, but I just want them so that nobody else can get them.
So if you haven’t yet thought about it, I would encourage you to think about claiming your own piece of real estate on the internet. I use Namecheap.com to buy my domains, but there are many others out there.
Earlier this week a good friend of mine from Rotman, Frank Luengo, launched his own blog called Frank’s Vault.
Given that he has used the same theme as I have here, I like to think it was inspired by ATC :) But whatever the case may be, his mission is: “…to simplify the complicated, and to bring Bay Street and Main Street a little closer together.” In other words, it’s a finance blog. And I’m really enjoying it so far.
Last summer Frank told me that he was thinking about starting this and so I’m thrilled that he finally decided to do it. I’ve talked many times before about the benefits of personal blogging, and so I won’t repeat them here. But I did want to mention one other thing. When Frank told me he launched, one of the first things I did was congratulate him on claiming frankluengo.com.
And I did that because I’m a big proponent of owning your firstnamelastname.com. I look at internet domains as virtual real estate and I, therefore, look at firstnamelastname.com as your own piece of branded real estate on the internet. If you don’t buy it up, somebody else will. That’s obviously why I own brandondonnelly.com and why I host ATC on it.
But since I’m such a believer in real estate – both the offline and online varietals – I actually own many others. I also own brandondonnelly.co, brandondonnelly.ca, and brandondonnelly.me. The latter one links to my tumblog, and the first 2 just redirect to this site. I don’t derive much utility from having all these URLs, but I just want them so that nobody else can get them.
So if you haven’t yet thought about it, I would encourage you to think about claiming your own piece of real estate on the internet. I use Namecheap.com to buy my domains, but there are many others out there.
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