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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  • Toward greater coarseness

    March 24, 2026 · View original

    One of the benefits of older cities and neighbourhoods is that their scale and rhythm of development often allow for walkability and a wide variety of experiences in a short period of time (here’s a related post). The typical characteristics include small lot sizes, diverse ownership, short city blocks, a mix of uses, and visual variety. And in planning speak, this is typically referred to as fine-grained urbanism.

    Here’s a random block example from Toronto that I’m choosing simply because I had a wonderful sourdough sandwich on this street over the weekend:

    The longest lots in the middle of this block are over 45 metres deep and under 5 metres wide. The result is some very long and narrow buildings, but at the same time, a lot of storefront variety when you’re walking along Dupont Street. It has the bones for a great retail street. The only problem is that, for the most part, we don’t build our cities like this anymore. We do the opposite. We build bigger, which is conversely referred to as coarse-grained urbanism.

    But since we know that fine-grained urbanism makes for better street experiences, it is common to try to impose it on new developments. Cities will say, “Hey, I know that you have a big, wide, shallow retail space on the ground floor of your building, but can you chop it up into smaller, fine-grained spaces such that they all become totally unleasable?” (I half kid. See here for some context.)

    The result:

    To be clear, I am in no way picking on this development. As a rule, I don’t do that sort of thing on this blog. Development is hard. I also like it. I just think it’s perhaps the clearest example of what all urban-minded planners and developers are trying in earnest to do, and that is to create coarse-grained urbanism masquerading as fine-grained urbanism. The architectural rhythm of the storefronts matches the existing context, but the scale of the retailers may not.

    And that’s okay. This is the reality of the world today, and modern retailers want what they want. I’m also a believer in the power of free markets. But to this same end, I want to point out something that is exceedingly obvious: the best way to create fine-grained urbanism is to simply encourage small-scale development!

    Every hurdle we erect only increases the incentive for developers to build bigger and coarser. It becomes the only way to underwrite profitable projects. The solution is to lower the barriers to development and, in turn, make small more feasible. Because if we do that, we already know it’ll make our cities better. I think we’ll also find that the market will respond with a different category of tenants and entrepreneurs.

    Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the specific ways in which Toronto and other cities could execute on this better.

    Cover photo by Finn on Unsplash

  • The Coffee opens at Junction House

    March 23, 2026 · View original

    This past weekend, the Brazilian-Japanese coffee house, The Coffee, soft-opened at the base of Junction House (right at the corner of Dundas St W and Watkinson Ave). And it was busy! I’ve been eagerly awaiting this opening since it was first announced last year.

    But not for any direct economic reasons — unless, of course, it reminds you that you should buy a new home at Junction House! As I mentioned before, we (the developers) no longer own this retail space. This is not our tenant.

    I’m mostly excited as a proud resident of the Junction, and because I think it’s a perfect fit for the building and the neighourhood. So, I would encourage you to check it out at 2720 Dundas St W. Starting today, any coffee meetings I take in the Junction will be held here.

  • Why Canada’s shrinking population is actually part of the plan

    March 22, 2026 · View original

    This week, Statistics Canada reported that, for the first time in over 70 years, the country’s population declined. Current estimates indicate a decline of around 102,000 people last year, leaving a total of 41,472,081 people in the country as of January 1, 2026.

    Opinions on this are mixed. On the one hand, a declining population can help improve things like housing affordability and increase GDP per capita (total wealth becomes divided by fewer people). It can also help improve productivity by forcing a country to innovate in lieu of relying on physical labor.

    But at the same time, there are consequences to a declining population. It can result in economic stagnation and it can topple the equilibrium of pension plans. Not enough young people paying into the system. Fewer savers. Fewer spenders. Fewer innovators.

    It can also reduce the soft and hard powers of a country. According to the IMF: “…some historians attribute France’s 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War to the low fertility and slow rate of population growth that stemmed from early and widespread use of contraception among married couples in France.”

    My own simplistic view is that growth is good. We want Canadians having babies and we want the absolute best and brightest and most ambitious from around the world clamouring to come here to innovate, start companies, and grow the total economy.

    The good news is this continues to be our plan.

    The leading factor in Canada’s current population decline is fewer non-permanent residents. That is, temporary foreign workers, a great number of whom are/were international students. As many of you know, this policy is in response to a demographic shock that the country experienced between 2022 and 2024 that, among other things, lowered productivity levels.

    Going forward, the federal plan is as follows:

    – Dramatically reduce the number of temporary residents (international students and low-skill temporary workers). Again, this specific policy is largely responsible for the current population correction. – Stabilize permanent immigration to 380,000 people per year from 2026 to 2028 (under 1% of the population). – Admit most permanent immigrants under the “economic” classification. The target is 64% of all permanent residents by 2027. This is a class of applicants who are scored based on age (younger is better), education (smarter is better), language proficiency, and relevant work experience, with the goal of having them immediately contribute to the Canadian economy. – Target 12% Francophone permanent resident admissions outside of Quebec by 2029. (As a self-proclaimed Francophile/Quebecophile and proponent of bilingualism, I laud this effort.)

    What all of this should mean is that by the end of 2026, we are expected to “burn off” the wave of temporary residents leaving the country and, by 2027, we should return to steady and manageable population growth. This is one of the reasons why I believe that 2026-2027 will be a turning point for many of our housing markets, and hopefully the start of our next economic cycle.

    Cover by Robbie Palmer on Unsplash

    Chart from the Globe and Mail

  • How immigration actually boosts local economies for everyone

    March 21, 2026 · View original

    The Brookings Institution recently published something called Metro Monitor 2026. It’s an interactive dashboard that provides decision-makers with data on how the largest metro areas in the US performed between 2014 and 2024. You can check it out here.

    As part of this analysis, they looked at the relationship between immigration and regional economic performance. More specifically, they examined how regional economies with growing immigrant populations have performed over the last decade, and how that growth has been shared across immigrant and native-born households.

    To answer these questions, they looked at the change in the foreign-born share of the working-age population in the 196 largest metro areas, and then compared it to a variety of different economic markers. And what they found, not surprisingly, was that more immigrants tend to be better than fewer immigrants:

    > Metro areas with larger increases in the foreign-born share of their working-age population saw stronger growth in gross metropolitan product (GMP) and employment between 2014 and 2024, as well as in key prosperity metrics such as productivity and wage growth.

    It increased employment rates for both native-born and foreign-born workers:

    > Between 2014 and 2024, employment rates in metro areas with the largest increases in their foreign-born workforce share were nearly 3 percentage points higher for both native-born and foreign-born workers than in metro areas with the smallest foreign-born workforce share increases. Put simply, metro areas with larger increases in the foreign-born share of their workforce tended to deliver stronger employment outcomes for both immigrant and native-born workers.

    And it also increased median earnings, again for both native-born and foreign-born workers:

    > We find a similar pattern when examining changes in regional median earnings. Metropolitan economies with larger increases in the foreign-born share of their working-age population consistently recorded higher median earnings for both native-born and foreign-born workers.

    Once again, we’re reminded that, when managed properly, immigration isn’t a zero-sum game. There is a common narrative that foreign-born workers depress wages and/or take opportunities away from native-born citizens. But the data suggests that the opposite is true.

    Next up (or soon up): Let’s talk about Canada’s now-declining population.

    Cover photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

  • The fragility of the Dubai model

    March 20, 2026 · View original

    My friend Alex Feldman just shared this New York Times opinion piece with me. Along with it, he said, “Thought you’d appreciate this.” And he was right, because he knows me. He and I have a long history of geeking out about cities, hosteling around Europe together, and booking irresponsible flights at odd times in odd locations.

    The article is by Richard Florida, and it’s called “Dubai Was Not Built For War.” It follows one of the themes that we recently spoke about, here. People come to cities in search of opportunity. Cities are labour markets. But Dubai is perhaps an extreme example of this. You could say it’s a city designed almost exclusively for opportunists. From Florida:

    > Nearly nine in 10 Dubai residents are nonnationals — by far the highest percentage of any major city in the world. Across the Emirates as a whole, about 10 million of 11.4 million residents are foreign nationals. Many are from Britain or the United States, but many more are guest workers who do the service jobs on which the city depends and typically come from South Asia, Southeast Asia and the wider Middle East. Even a traffic violation can trigger deportation. Citizenship is based almost entirely on descent; it’s been intentionally made very difficult for even long-term foreign residents or their children to become Emirati, even after decades of living and working there. The system is designed to rely on migrants while keeping them permanently temporary. That makes it extremely hard to be rooted, to belong, to be attached.

    The result is a new urban model (“Dubai-ification”) compared to how we used to think about cities:

    > This new kind of city is a sharp break with the past. For most of human history, people lived and worked in the same place, and cities grew up around that basic fact. They transform, rebuild after fires and disasters and become richer and sometimes poorer, but they draw their resilience from their rootedness, the fact that people feel they belong there. To say “I am a New Yorker” or a Londoner or “I am from Pittsburgh” or Detroit or Rome or Barcelona — that is not just a map. It conveys a deep sense of history, belonging and meaning, a personal identity, not just a transaction. Those identities are messy and unequal, but they are substantial. They are one of the primary ways people answer the basic questions of who they are and where they belong. And they are part of what brings people back to hang on and rebuild, no matter what.

    At the time of writing this post, Polymarket shows a less than 50% chance of a ceasefire with Iran by the end of May, and a 71% chance of one by the end of December. That’s not 100%. So, we’ll see. Maybe it becomes even more protracted. Hopefully not. Regardless, the question everyone is asking is: How many of the “permanently temporary” will actually stick around if they no longer feel safe?

    My view is not many.

    Cover photo by Christoph Schulz on Unsplash

  • The Red Queen hypothesis

    March 19, 2026 · View original

    Entrepreneurship is a critical component of city-building. You want people taking risks, starting new companies, and creating jobs to grow the overall economy. And to accomplish this, you roughly need a bunch of smart people, access to money, and a culture that accepts failure and risk-taking. Then, maybe, you might get some successful startups.

    The key word, however, is maybe.

    Here’s an interesting essay by Jerry Neumann — a retired venture investor — called “We Have Learned Nothing.” In it, he argues that there is no science of entrepreneurship:

    > Of course, no science of entrepreneurship can be a science in the sense most people think of the term. There are no fixed and universal recipes, no ultimate truth. This may be unsatisfying to the aspiring founder, but any science that guaranteed success would bring us right back to the perpetual money machine. The best we can hope for is a science that makes startups meaningfully more likely to succeed and that is honest about the limits of its own prescriptions. And then, when those prescriptions harden into orthodoxy, we try something different. A true science of entrepreneurship embraces the Red Queen dynamic so completely that it rejects any attempt to permanently systematize it.

    The “Red Queen hypothesis” is an evolutionary biology concept that states that one has to constantly adapt and evolve just to survive and maintain a position, never mind make any progress. It follows that as soon as you stop innovating as a company, you don’t just stay where you are; you fall behind. And that’s because the entire landscape is constantly shifting around you. Neumann argues that this is a better mental model for startups and that it’s a fool’s errand to try to permanently codify what it takes to create a successful one.

    I’m going to take this even further and say that the same is true for cities. It’s not enough to just follow “best practices” and copy what has been successful in other places. There is no set formula for urban leadership. Cities are rewarded most for being different, and for doing that different thing first. This is particularly true in a world of increasing global sameness. Creating a replica of the London Eye or New York’s High Line will not magically turn you into a comparable global city. It is a recipe for mediocrity.

    Cover photo by Laine Cooper on Unsplash

  • Bank balances over built form

    March 18, 2026 · View original

    Now that the results from Paris’ first round of municipal elections are in, I thought I would do a follow-up to my post from a few days ago (which was mostly about bicycles). The second and final round happens this weekend, but here’s what we’ve learned so far:

    Emmanuel Grégoire (Union of the Left) is in the lead with 37.98% of the vote:

    And Rachida Dati (Union of the Right) is in second with 25.46% of the vote:

    What is not unexpected, but super interesting nonetheless, is the clear divide between the west and east within Paris proper. The west voted right, and the east voted left.

    Here in Toronto, our voting maps typically exhibit a semi-clear divide between “Old Toronto” and the inner suburbs. For example, these are the results from our 2023 mayoral by-election:

    Conveniently, it is a divide that loosely tracks the city’s built form. If you live in the oldest parts of the city, where transit usage is higher and there’s rail in the middle of the street, there’s a higher probability that you voted for Chow. The inner suburbs, on the other hand, tended to vote for Bailão.

    In the case of Paris, there isn’t the same built form contrast. This is not an urban-suburban divide; it’s a socio-economic divide. The western arrondissements have historically been the wealthiest areas of Paris (for a variety of reasons), and that continually appears in the voting patterns.

    It also shows up in the modal splits. The western arrondissements tend to have higher car ownership rates compared to the east. These basic facts are interesting because Paris represents more of a controlled urban experiment, in contrast to Toronto’s dense downtown and otherwise generally low-rise built form.

    But in the end, I’m not sure the political mappings of Paris and Toronto are all that different. If you look closely at Toronto’s 2023 by-election map, you’ll see that the wealthiest pockets of the city voted exactly as you would expect. Turns out, bank balances may matter more than built form.

    Cover photo by Maximilian Zahn on Unsplash

  • How road deaths are counted and why the math matters

    March 17, 2026 · View original

    Every time you get into a car, there is a non-zero chance that you might get injured, or worse, die. The probability of this happening depends largely on where you’re driving and, of course, how much you drive. However, there are a few different ways to measure this statistical risk. A recent Bloomberg article by David Zipper highlights one ongoing debate.

    The three most common methods are:

    – Road deaths per capita – Road deaths per registered vehicle – Road deaths per distance traveled

    In my opinion, options 1 and 3 seem the most relevant. Option 1 is useful because it measures a citizen’s overall risk and allows driving risk to be easily compared to other causes of death (which tend to be measured on a per capita basis). The limitation is that it is harder to compare a country where everybody drives to a country where few people drive.

    That’s where option 3 comes in. In theory, it provides the best indicator of road risk by accounting for distance traveled, which is the primary argument for why it’s commonly used in the US where the car is king. But it does “dilute” the fatality count the more people drive, and it hides overall car dependency. In his article, Zipper likens this approach to measuring cancer deaths per cigarette smoked.

    In any event, here is how both methods appear in the International Transport Forum’s 2025 Annual Road Safety Report (which is cited in the article):

    On a per vehicle-kilometre basis, the data appears much more gradual. But on a per capita basis, the countries with the highest road fatalities appear much more as outliers. Here, you can more easily see that, broadly speaking, a person in Colombia is nearly ten times more likely to die in a road-related incident than a person in Norway (pretty much the gold standard when it comes to road safety).

    Perhaps the answer is to just look at both figures to make sure you’re not lying to yourself.

    Cover photo by Tom Barrett on Unsplash

    Charts from Road Safety Annual Report 2025

  • The $1.3 billion fund that wants unsold condominiums

    March 16, 2026 · View original

    High Art Capital recently announced the launch of a new fund called the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) Rental and Affordable Housing Initiative. It has been anchored by a $300 million mezzanine debt commitment (and a “nominal equity investment”) from the Building Ontario Fund (BOF) and is expected to be capitalized in total with a minimum of $1.3 billion.

    The objective is to acquire approximately 2,200 rental homes in blocks within newly completed, unsold condominiums across the GTA and convert them into long-term rental housing. Included within this will be approximately 550 affordable rental homes that are expected to be title-protected at rents set at the lower of 25% below local market rent or 30% of median gross household income.

    This is interesting, but it’s certainly not the first example of investors buying, or wanting to buy, excess condominium inventory. However, it may become the largest in Toronto and, as far as I know, it’s the only one to partner with the public sector (BOF is a provincial Crown agency).

    The way it is intended to work is as follows:

    Condominium developers are sitting on unsold inventory and maybe on inventory they took back after purchasers defaulted (and which may be subject to legal action). What High Art will do is say to developers, “Hey, if you give me a really awesome deal, I’ll take 50 of those condominium units off your hands.” And if the developer is desperate enough, they will say, “Sure, that sounds good. Let’s do a deal and then go for a nice closing dinner.”

    But at what price?

    As we’ve talked about many times before on the blog, developer pricing is typically based on a cost-plus model. We take our costs, add a margin, and there’s the final sticker price. The reason prices haven’t fallen as much as one might expect on unsold units is because they’re hitting the “cost floor”; developers don’t want to lose money, unless they are given no other option.

    But for this rental fund model to work at reasonable costs of debt, I suspect that, in many/most cases, deals will need to be struck below a developer’s cost basis. So, it’ll be very interesting to watch how this fund deploys capital and who the winners and losers are in this market.

    Regardless, I think it is good that we are seeing this sort of activity. The faster we deal with the pain, the faster we’ll get to the other side.

    Cover photo by Patrick Boucher on Unsplash

  • In Paris, the bike beat the car

    March 15, 2026 · View original

    Within a week, Paris will know, with near certainty, who its next mayor will be. (The first round of results will be announced this evening.) The two frontrunners are Emmanuel Grégoire (on the left) and Rachida Dati (on the right). Grégoire is the status quo vote, and Dati is the “I want change” vote.

    From a city-building standpoint, one of the ways that this is being presented is as a battle between bikes and cars. Not surprisingly, the current mobility approach has been criticized for creating a divide between wealthier residents in transit-rich central Paris (where only about a quarter of households own a car) and residents in the more car-oriented suburbs.

    Because after 12 years under Mayor Anne Hidalgo it’s pretty clear that “the bike beat the car in Paris.” From 2002 to 2023, car traffic fell by more than half, dedicated cycle lanes expanded sixfold, and today, bike trips outnumber car trips by more than 2 to 1 in the city.

    As an outsider to the city, I can only read about what’s going on, but what I find interesting is that this particular mobility issue doesn’t appear to be as political as the headlines might suggest.

    In fact:

    > Dati has softened her initial criticism of popular cycle lanes and instead focused on concerns over dirty streets. > > “We’re not fighting an ideological battle on [transportation] issues,” Dati told news agency Reuters while greeting shoppers in northern Paris. “We just want things to be organised.”

    And:

    > She [Dati] has promised not to reverse the left’s flagship policy of transforming a once traffic-clogged dual carriageway into a car-free pedestrian walkway along the banks of the Seine, but will renovate those pedestrian spaces.

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but what this tells me is that Parisians actually like the city’s transition away from the car. I’m reminded of last summer in Paris when I was in an Uber and the driver surprised me by saying that these mobility changes needed to be done — bikes are a more efficient form of urban transport and they have greatly reduced pollution within the city.

    General public sentiment also seems to reflect my anecdotal evidence. A recent Keolis-IFOP survey found that more than one in two French people (~56%) would like to see cars play a smaller role in the cities of tomorrow. Importantly, this response also seems to transcend geography and socio-economic divides. The same sentiment is found in Paris and in rural areas.

    This month’s mayoral election will certainly tell us something about Parisian preferences for the status quo versus change. But I’m always encouraged when issues can become less about ideology and more about whether we are accomplishing productive objectives based on, you know, facts and information.

    Cover photo by Irina Nakonechnaya on Unsplash