Brandon DonnellyCanada 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...
Brandon DonnellyThe 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...
Brandon DonnellyThe 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...
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Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
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Brandon DonnellyFun Friday: ATC subscriber map
When I was very young I went a Montessori school here in Toronto. If you’re not familiar with Montessori education, it’s basically a very open ended and independent form of learning. Students choose what they want to do.
Because of this, many have argued that a Montessori education is actually great training to be an entrepreneur. Instead of being told what to do, you as a student need to figure it out on your own. See the parallel? Both Google founders went to Montessori school.
When I was there (< grade 4), my absolute favorite thing to do was draw maps. I remember them having these large scale maps of the world where you could physically remove each country so that you could then trace it and create your own maps. I spent a lot of time doing exactly that.
To this day, I still really love maps. And I remember many of my friends in architecture school being the same way. So perhaps it comes with the territory.
In any case, I recently started playing around with a product called cartoDB. And one of the things you can easily do with it is connect it to Mailchimp (the service that manages the ATC email newsletter) and anonymously map the location of each subscriber. I couldn’t resist giving it a try.
Below is what that looks like. Not surprisingly, the highest concentrations of subscribers to this blog are in Canada and the US.
When I was very young I went a Montessori school here in Toronto. If you’re not familiar with Montessori education, it’s basically a very open ended and independent form of learning. Students choose what they want to do.
Because of this, many have argued that a Montessori education is actually great training to be an entrepreneur. Instead of being told what to do, you as a student need to figure it out on your own. See the parallel? Both Google founders went to Montessori school.
When I was there (< grade 4), my absolute favorite thing to do was draw maps. I remember them having these large scale maps of the world where you could physically remove each country so that you could then trace it and create your own maps. I spent a lot of time doing exactly that.
To this day, I still really love maps. And I remember many of my friends in architecture school being the same way. So perhaps it comes with the territory.
In any case, I recently started playing around with a product called cartoDB. And one of the things you can easily do with it is connect it to Mailchimp (the service that manages the ATC email newsletter) and anonymously map the location of each subscriber. I couldn’t resist giving it a try.
Below is what that looks like. Not surprisingly, the highest concentrations of subscribers to this blog are in Canada and the US.
Support Brandon Donnelly
Brandon DonnellyFun Friday: ATC subscriber map
Subscribe to Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
Brandon DonnellyCanada 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...
Brandon DonnellyThe 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...
Brandon DonnellyThe 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...
So here’s a zoomed in version:
I’ve been trying to branch out from talking about Toronto all the time. And that seems to be working somewhat. But I could still do a better job of creating more global content. I’ll try harder.
So here’s a zoomed in version:
I’ve been trying to branch out from talking about Toronto all the time. And that seems to be working somewhat. But I could still do a better job of creating more global content. I’ll try harder.
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