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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  • Non-Canadians can’t buy a lot of real estate

    The Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act — which came into effect in January of this year and bans foreigners from buying residential real estate in the country for two years — is weird.

    We can debate whether banning foreigners from buying residential real estate is really helpful for housing affordability and if it’s the most impactful place to focus our attention (and we have talked about this many times before), but the part that is particularly odd is this feature here:

    …the law’s definition of residential property includes land that is zoned for residential use or mixed use, which covers huge swaths of commercial land across the country. As well, an entity is deemed foreign if a non-Canadian owns a minimum of 3 per cent of the entity.

    What this means is that the following scenario is now technically a problem (not actual legal advice!):

    • You own a commercial property with zero homes
    • You have long-term commercial leases in place that also generally preclude you from building new homes in the foreseeable future
    • The zoning of your property allows for residential uses (which you like having in your back pocket)
    • And your cousin from Italy owns 3% of the entity that owns the real estate

    This is a scenario where residential homes do not exist and they are unlikely to exist any time soon. It seems clear cut, but I suppose one could argue that it’s exceedingly onerous to try and figure out which sites are soft sites and could actually be developed with new residential. And so if you have the potential to build and then own residential, you should be regulated as if you might ultimately own some of it one day.

    But even here, I don’t know why we would want to restrict the supply side of the housing equation. If you’re a developer in Canada where housing is known to be kind of expensive and you want to build more of it for Canadians, isn’t that a good thing? And isn’t it also a good thing if we can get some non-Canadians to help pay for these new homes?

  • Transit-oriented vs. single-family

    Michael Beach used to have a YouTube channel where he “looked at Google Maps a lot.” Meaning, he would pan around various cities and comment on their planning and overall built form. Technically the channel still exists, but he stopped making new videos a few years ago. Here is one where he talks about Dubai being “an absolute mess” (3.8 million views) and here is one where he looks at North York (in Toronto) and asks: “why is it here?”

    The most important point from his North York video is that it illustrates the deep divide that exists in Toronto (and other North American cities) between single-family “Neighbourhoods” (a defined planning term) and higher-density transit nodes, where things like tall buildings are allowed to go.

    In the case of North York, this contrast is perhaps at its most stark. Even the street network is designed to stop these two urban forms from commingling with each other too much. There are ring roads that surround the transit-oriented density, and separate, more suburban streets on the other side of it:

    This contrast is why there are so many people talking about the “missing middle.” And I’m sure that if you started asking random people on the street, most would agree that it would be nice if we could build more moderately-scaled housing. You know, like those buildings you see in Paris.

    The problem: Where should it go? Some people would probably suggest the left side of the above ring road. Just don’t build as tall, okay? But this kind of land is already a scarce commodity in a city like Toronto. We need these tall buildings because most of the city is codified to look like the right side of the above ring road.

    So if we have any chance of actually finding the missing middle, it is going to need to happen here, on the right side. Some progress has been made, not just in Toronto but across North America, with accessory dwellings (laneway suites). But it’s not going to be enough.

    This was simply a first step. It was us finding a solution to, “how can we add some more housing here without changing the look and feel and character of these residential streets in any way?” But even this small and incremental change has proven to be exceedingly controversial. People still react to new laneway suites like this:

    https://twitter.com/evboyce/status/1624840523516182528?s=20&t=Q9gCZfTGLz51rVyupxJDPg

    There are complex dynamics at play here.

    If you’re a homeowner that decides to create a new rental home at the rear of your property, you might be viewed as greedy. You are creating something (a home) that someone needs, and you intend to make a small margin on the transaction. It’s like making and selling bread for a small margin, except that selling delicious bread to people is typically viewed in a positive light. On the other hand, ensuring that the value of your house remains as high as possible is generally good practice here. Greed doesn’t factor in this way because, you know, single-family homes.

    There is no surprise why the missing middle is missing. It is missing because we have decided that we want it to be. But hey, $2,145 per month seems like a very reasonable price for a 2-bedroom house.

  • Walkable areas are a scarce commodity in cities

    According to this recent report by Smart Growth America, which looked at “walkable urbanism” in the largest 35 metro areas in the US, only about 1.2% of land is, on average, built out in this way. Everything else needs to be driven.

    But here’s the thing. Humans seem to really enjoy walkable urbanism, and will usually pay more for it:

    City dwellers will pay to live in a walkable location. Real estate in these areas averages a 34% price premium per square foot in for-sale housing and 41% for multifamily rental apartments.

    It also, by definition, punches above its weight:

    Walkable neighborhoods in just those 35 metro areas account for 19.1% of the total US real GDP and 6.8% of the total US population, by the researchers’ calculations.

    That’s how density works. You get to do more, with less.

    At the same time, not every place should be Midtown Manhattan (which the report labels as the highest walkable urban place with a floor area ratio of 40). There are a wide range of densities that will work, including modest ones (FARs between 1-3).

    Here in Toronto, many of our single-family home neighborhoods have densities that are zoned for a maximum FAR of 0.6, which is quite restrictive if you’re hoping to build something like a multi-unit building.

    This is, of course, the point. But imagine what all could be done here with even an incremental change.

  • No right on red, except with green arrow

    I have a road sign question for all of you today. Here is a photo (from Google) of Bloor Street West and Symington Avenue in Toronto. It is an offset intersection. And as you will see, there are signs saying no right-hand turns on red, “except with green arrow.”

    Also present at the intersection is a traffic light with the ability to communicate in four different ways: a green circle, a yellow circle, a red circle, and a green arrow pointing right. My question to all of you is this: when is it permissible to turn right?

    It is clearly not permissible to turn right when the light is red. But can you turn right with either a full green circle or a green right arrow, or can you only turn when there’s a green arrow pointing right? i.e. No right when there’s just a green circle.

    If you can, please leave a comment below. Depending on how this goes, I could be either winning a bet or losing a bet.

  • High Park vs. Central Park

    This compare-and-contrast tweet between Toronto’s High Park and New York’s Central Park was not meant to suggest that New York is a perfect comparable to appropriate (Toronto is not New York), or that foliage isn’t important in our urban environments. Instead, it was meant to highlight that:

    • The towers north of High Park (and north of Bloor Street) could almost certainly never be built in today’s planning environment. The recently built point towers exist because the slab towers were already there.
    • This condition of height/density tucked and setback off of main streets is something that you will find across Toronto, as well as in a number of other cities.
    • Sometimes it can be rightly argued that this is being done in order to preserve a fine-grained and pedestrian-scaled public realm, which is important. But in other cases, like the one above, it feels like a clear reluctance to accept big-city status and any sort of urban grandeur. Are we still trying to be a Victorian city?
    • Equally important in the design of public spaces are the edges and “walls” that frame it. And High Park’s edges need work. Why is there almost nowhere to go and hang out on the main edge of Toronto’s principal urban park? You have to go up to the Junction for that.
    • In general, the land around many of our higher-order transit stations is grossly underutilized. And this is a perfect example of that. What should happen here are some large-scale upzonings.

  • Amazon Fresh raises its threshold for free grocery delivery

    Amazon Fresh has just announced that, effective February 28, it will be raising the threshold for free grocery delivery. Orders under $50 will be charged a $9.95 fee. Orders between $50 and $100 will be charged a $6.95 fee. And orders between $100 and $150 will be charged a $3.95 fee. Orders above $150 will be free. Previously, the threshold for free delivery was $35.

    This is likely an indication of two things. It speaks to our current tech headwinds (see “The Four Horsemen of the Tech Recession“) and it speaks to the fact that grocery is unique. It requires a whole separate logistics chain, compared to all of the other things that Amazon will deliver to you. Food goes bad. It bruises. And it may require refrigeration.

    This makes online grocery delivery more challenging and more costly.

  • Yes, the most surveilled cities in the world are in China

    Toronto has a lot more CCTV cameras than I would have thought.

    According to this (2022?) data from Comparitech, there is estimated to be about 19,236 cameras installed around the Greater Toronto Area. With a population of around 6.31 million people, this translates into a per capita rate of 3.05 (CCTV cameras per 1,000 people). What this means is that there is almost surely footage of me enjoying a late-night shawarma sandwich after the bar somewhere on the streets of Toronto.

    In some ways, this is a high number of cameras. Tokyo, which is usually considered to be the largest metro area in the world with nearly 40 million people, only has 1.06 cameras per 1,000 people. Dhaka is 0.71. Sao Paulo is 1.04. Osaka is 1.57. And Montreal is 1.03. Though to be totally fair here, Rio de Janeiro is up at 3.34 (and it may be the most dangerous city mentioned in this post). Paris is 4.04. New York is 6.87. Los Angeles is 8.77. And London is 13.35.

    But where things get really exciting is in authoritarian places. Moscow is estimated to have 16.85 CCTV cameras per 1,000 people. And in China as a whole, there is estimated to be roughly 540 million cameras scattered around its cities, which works out to an average of 372.8 cameras for every 1,000 people. For a city like Shanghai, this crudely equals something like 10.6 million cameras.

    It turns out that surveillance is pretty important for things other than shawarma-eating videos:

    Vyborov wasn’t arrested that day, but the police informed him that he was under surveillance through Sfera, one of Moscow’s face recognition systems, for participating in unsanctioned rallies. Considered one of the most efficient surveillance systems, Sfera led to the detention of 141 people last year. “Facial recognition, and video cameras in general in a totalitarian state, are an absolute evil,” Vyborov says.

    Here’s the other thing. Safety is usually touted as the reason to have lots of cameras. But Comparitech’s data suggests that there’s an almost non-existent correlation between lots of cameras and lower crime. I mean, just look at Tokyo. It is basically the model megacity, and its per capita camera rate is only 1.06. The real utility, it would seem, is using cameras and face recognition software to restrict personal freedoms.

  • Two very different beans

    As far as I know, there are now at least two mercury-like and bean-like public art sculptures in the US by Anish Kapoor. The first is, of course, in Chicago’s Millennium Park (pictured above). Commonly referred to as just “The Bean”, the sculpture was dedicated in 2006 and, since then, has gained international fame as a solid place to take a selfie.

    But as of this year, there is now a second “mini-bean” in New York’s Tribeca neighborhood. Sitting literally underneath 56 Leonard (a residential tower designed by Herzog & de Meuron), this bean varietal was first announced in 2008, but has taken a few years to be completed. The building itself was completed about 5 five years ago.

    It turns out though, that all beans are not made equal. Here’s some initial feedback from Bloomberg CityLab’s Kristin Capps:

    New York’s half-bean feels half-baked: a disappointing imitation for the city and a franchise play by the artist. For New York to install the lesser version of a Chicago icon reeks of second-city status. And while the original sculpture is still a treasure, the second iteration feels like a monument from 20 years ago — because it is.

    But it’s all perception. If Chicago’s bean had never been unveiled in 2006, and this was the first shiny urban selfie bean, then I’m sure we’d all be headed to Lower Manhattan with our phones. But instead, here we are talking about how it “reeks of second-city status” and how it is the “eyesore that no one asked for“.

    It’s all very fascinating if you think about it. And it’s a perfect example of why blockchains are proving to be so valuable in the world of art. Because with art, provenance and authenticity are everything. You need to know where it came from, who made it, and that it’s scarce. And as we can see here, it can be the difference between loving a bean and hating a bean.

    Photo by Wicker Woodsong on Unsplash

  • Bad and good street networks

    Let’s add some historical context to yesterday’s post about autonomous vehicles. As the regular non-autonomous version of cars started to infiltrate our cities in the early 20th century, largely following the creation of the mass-produced Ford Model T, there was a general view that cars were dangerous and a menace to cities. Arguably, not much has changed.

    So in the 1930s, the Federal Housing Authority decided to publish a pamphlet explaining what street networks it thought were suitable for this new emerging car world and which street networks were not. The exact terms that they used were “bad” and “good”, and here’s what that looked like (taken from this CNU article):

    The “bad” ones are largely how the US liked to design its cities before the arrival of the car. Some historic settlements, like Boston and Manhattan south of 14th street were based on different street logics, but as far back as the 1680s, William Penn had already started laying out a grid iron plan for Philadelphia. And in reality, this kind of street pattern goes all the way back to ancient cities.

    However, when the car arrived, these grid iron plans were thought to offer an inadequate amount of separation between people and machine. The solution was to optimize around the car and introduce a clear hierarchy of different streets. Big streets for moving cars quickly, and smaller streets, like cul-de-sacs, for people to live on.

    These “good” examples, of course, represent the modern suburb. But we now recognize that these types of street networks are unequivocally terrible for walkability, the environment, public health, social equity, and a whole host of other things. I mean, look at this extreme example of two suburban homes in Orlando whose backyards adjoin but are technically separated by 7 miles and a 20-minute drive!

    My point with all of this is that, for many/most at the time, this was progress. Cars were the future and there was optimism about the kind of freedoms and other benefits that they would bring to people. And this optimism is perhaps not all that different from what many people feel today, myself included, when it comes to autonomous vehicles.

    So on the one hand, you could point to the car and say, “look at all the damage that this thing did to our cities. Let’s not do that again. Autonomous vehicles must be stopped.” But that’s akin to wishing the car was never invented. Another option is to point to the negative externalities associated with the car and say, “look at what we’ve done. We can do better. Let’s make our cities better.”

    Positive change, no matter how late, is always a possibility.