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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  • La tour Montparnasse at ground level

    The Tour Montparnasse in Paris recently turned 50. We spoke about that over here. But having visited the tower last week, including its top observation deck, I can now confidently say that I understand why many/most Parisians dislike it so much.

    It is a complex that could be in any city in the world and it is clear that it has been seeing disinvestment for quite some time (presumably due to its upcoming renovation). 

    However, a lot of the discussion seems to be focused on how its built form is a towering contrast to the rest of Paris. This is, of course, correct. But the same is true of the Eiffel Tower. One big and important difference is how these two towers meet the ground.

    La Tour Eiffel sits in a beautiful landscaped park where people sit and hang out (photo by me):

    Whereas the Tour Montparnasse is disconnected from its surrounding context. It feels like that train station on the wrong side of town (photos from Google Streetview):

    So it’s no wonder that its height gets picked on. What is implicit in this treatment of the ground plane is a belief that this tower is not worthy of celebrating. It does not deserve a beautiful park. And it does not deserve to be a ceremonial view terminus like every other icon in Paris.

    Thankfully, the current design for its renovation appears to address this (rendering via Nouvelle AOM):

    And this is arguably the most important design move. Ironically, what happens at the ground level could be what makes people finally appreciate what happens up top.

  • The accents of North America

    Yesterday I watched this three-part series on the accents of English-speaking North America:

    The videos are by dialect coach Erik Singer and, I must say, his ability to fluidly move through all of North America’s accents is incredibly impressive. As I was watching the videos, I kept thinking to myself, “I don’t know what this guy actually sounds like when he’s not putting on an accent.”

    The interesting thing about accents is that they really speak to settlement and migration patterns. In other words, who came in contact with who, and who didn’t come in contact with others? Geographic isolation also leads to unique accents.

    The other ingredient is time. The reason the UK, for example, has so any regional accents is that it had the time for them to develop. On the other hand, if you look to most of the southwestern United States, there is broadly a kind of generic American accent (with the exception of some California and Utah nuances according to Erik). This is because these settlements are relatively young compared to say the northeastern US.

    For Canada, the defining feature is “Canadian raising“. It is what leads to the stereotype of us saying things like “aboot” and “hoose”. It doesn’t sound exactly like this, but there is a way in which we tend to pronounce diphthongs (two adjacent vowel sounds) with open-vowel starting points.

    Open-vowels are sounds where our tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of our mouth. If you try saying “about” to yourself out loud right now you’ll notice that this is what happens. Your tongue drops. And it is these instances that lead to “Canadian raising”.

    The other thing that I find fascinating is how quickly language convergence can happen. I lived in Philadelphia for 3 years (for grad school) and when I would come home my parents used to tell me that I sounded fully American. I guess subconsciously we feel a need to assimilate.

    If you’re also fascinated by accents, I highly recommend you check out Erik’s videos.

  • The Citadel effect

    Last year, the formerly Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel announced that it would be moving its global headquarters to Miami. (Though to be clear, the company still has an office in Chicago.) Today, the Miami housing market is feeling the effects:

    “They’ve been buying here aggressively,” said Michael Martinez, a real estate agent with Sotheby’s in Miami, who recently brokered the sale of a $5mn home in Coconut Grove, a quiet salubrious suburb, to a Citadel employee. Most of the luxury homes he has sold in recent months have been to hedge fund buyers, half of them from Griffin’s firm, he estimates. “The Citadel migration is definitely occurring.”

    But it’s not just Citadel.

    According to another agent quoted in the article, there are many other “hedge fund buyers” active in the market, and many/most of them are buying all cash. In desirable suburbs like Coral Gables and Coconut Grove, homes between $3-7mm now account for about 40% of all listings.

    I remember visiting family in Miami in and around the GFC of 2007-2008. It was at this time that I really fell in love with the place. You could see how it was using art and culture to carve its identify. It was (and still is) this really exciting and sexy place.

    But it was also reeling from the GFC. I remember seeing listings for large and newish 2-bedroom waterfront condos for ~US$150k in some areas. If I had any money, this likely would have been a smart move given how Miami has grown since then.

    So I think this story is less about the Citadel effect and more about Miami’s continued rise as a global city and global financial center. Notwithstanding the whole climate risk thing, this city region has some pretty powerful tailwinds.

    Photo by Ryan Parker on Unsplash

  • Climate-friendly apparel

    Bloomberg published an article today talking about “climate-friendly apparel startups.” One of the companies is a British one called Techniche International. Their main target market seems to be construction workers and supposedly their clothes can lower skin temperatures by as much as 8C.

    The way they work is through evaporative cooling. Workers start their day by soaking their “StayQool” suits. Once activated, the uniforms will then consistently remove heat from the body for up to 7 hours. (I am curious if it’s akin to putting on somebody else’s wet life jacket.)

    This is an obviously useful thing in a place like Qatar — the example that Bloomberg gives and where summer temperatures can hit 50C. But the overall trendline suggests this is going to be a growing market. Especially if the tech works really well, it doesn’t feel like you’re putting on a wet life jacket, and if there are demonstrable productivity improvements.

    According to Bloomberg, the company did £150,000 of revenue in 2014 and £7 million last year.

  • A few charts on working from home…

    Here’s an interesting paper from WFH Research that looks at, “the evolution of working from home.” Not surprisingly, remote work tends to vary by industry, with tech being the most likely to work from home and with hospitality & food services the least likely.

    By extension, WFH prevalence also appears to correlate with population density. This largely has to do with the kinds of jobs that center themselves in big and dense cities. This is interesting because one conventional way to think about cities is that they are places where businesses and people cluster to accumulate wealth. That clustering is still happening, but work is evolving.

    And that is always the case.

    Overall, the authors conclude that about 40% of US employees are now working at least one day a week at home, and that just over 11% are fully remote. They also argue that fully remote work lowers average productivity by about 10-20%, but that hybrid work is closer to flat. Interestingly enough, opinions on productivity differ whether you ask employees or managers.

    If you’d like to read the full paper, click here.

    Figures: WFH Research

  • Hawaii’s miracle house

    Some of you have probably come across this photo online (this particular one is via Civil Beat):

    It is a photo of what looks to be the only remaining house in Lahaina, following Hawaii’s devastating wildfires this month.

    Naturally this raises an important question: Why was this house spared?

    The likely answer is that it was a combination of things. But some believe that the single biggest factor was the non-combustible zone that the owners had inadvertently created around the perimeter of their home.

    They did it to direct water and avoid possible termite damage, but it turns out that this is what most jurisdictions recommend in order to reduce wildfire risk.

    Here in Canada, FireSmart recommends a 1.5 meter non-combustible zone.

    So while luck surely played a part, so too did design.

  • 10 years of daily blogging

    This week marks the 10 year anniversary of this daily blog. In some ways it’s hard to believe that it’s been a decade and in other ways it’s hard to imagine a time when I didn’t write/post something every day. What a habit this has become.

    A lot has changed since 2013.

    Back then, I was still trying to find my way in real estate development. Instagram was only 3 years old. TikTok hadn’t been created yet. And the idea of writing a daily blog didn’t feel as antiquated as it does today. I probably should be vlogging at this point.

    But here’s what hasn’t changed:

    – I enjoy writing, and I think it’s personally beneficial — even if I don’t derive any direct benefits (such as money)

    – I like having my own little corner of the internet that I control — instead of relying exclusively on centralized platforms like Instagram or X

    Today this corner is brandondonnelly.com, but I suspect that brandondonnelly.eth will become just as important over the next decade. The world is heading toward more decentralization. And if/when that does happen, I’ll be sure to write about it on this daily blog.

    Thanks for reading everyone. As usual, I’ll see you tomorrow.

  • The Arc de Triomphe roundabout takes some getting used to

    In case I haven’t been clear enough: I love cities. I vividly remember being a kid and being excited to come downtown. My mom has told me that my eyes used to light up — every, single, time. Even today, when I’m away from Toronto and I return home, I’m excited to see the skyline. I miss it.

    This afternoon I got that same feeling on our return to Paris, even though it is not home. We spent the last two days in Normandy, specifically Étretat and Rouen, and as beautiful and as wonderful as these places are, I was genuinely excited to come back to the capital.

    My other revelation is that driving in Paris sucks.

    I would much rather walk, cycle, or take the metro. That is what this city is designed for. Still, I’m happy that we rented a car for Normandy and that I learned — after being honked at — how to appropriately conduct myself in the infamous Arc de Triomphe roundabout.

    Unlike every other roundabout in the world, you do not yield to cars already in the circle; you yield to cars entering the circle. Once you understand that, it’s significantly easier. Though, supposedly, car accidents that happen within the circle are automatically every driver’s fault and every insurer pays.

    I guess that says something about its orderliness.

    Aren’t cities wonderful?

  • Étretat 🇫🇷

    Étretat, France. Shot on a Fujifilm X-T3 with a 23mm f/2 prime lens.

  • Silicon Valley wants to build a new city about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco

    We talk a lot about housing supply on this blog. And most of the time it is about creating more and better infill housing, In other words, housing that leverages existing infrastructure and uses previously developed land as efficiently possible.

    But I suppose there are other options. You could, for instance, form an anonymous holding company, raise hundreds of a millions of dollars from leading venture capitalists in the Bay Area, spend $800 million on cheap agricultural land, and then just build an entirely new city about 60 miles northeast of San Francisco.

    And apparently that is happening:

    In 2017, Michael Moritz, the billionaire venture capitalist, sent a note to a potential investor about what he described as an unusual opportunity: a chance to invest in the creation of a new California city. The site was in a corner of the San Francisco Bay Area where land was cheap. Mr. Moritz and others had dreams of transforming tens of thousands of acres into a bustling metropolis that, according to the pitch, could generate thousands of jobs and be as walkable as Paris or the West Village in New York.

    Here’s the area; it’s generally between Fairfield and Rio Vista in Solano County:

    The real estate opportunity is an obvious one. The majority of the land in Solano County, roughly 62% of it, is zoned for agricultural uses. So it was and is relatively cheap to acquire. In isolation, I would imagine that it would be pretty difficult, if not impossible, to rezone any of it for other uses. But if you buy enough of it and if you have the resources, then maybe you figure it out.

    And if you do, it’ll all be worth significantly more, which is why this group has been reportedly paying many multiples of market value over the last 5 years. Because here’s the thing, paying $6,000 per acre instead of $1,500 per acre is almost certainly not going to move the needle considering the broader strategy. More important is that you get enough contiguous land to execute on the vision of a new city.

    This will be an interesting one to watch. And from what I have read, it sounds like they’re just now coming out of stealth acquisition mode and preparing to engage the broader community.