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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  • Last night in Sicily

    The first time I went to Italy was, I think, when I was about 18 or 19 years old. My friend and I took the train down to Milan from Zug, Switzerland (where his father lives), and we got out of the train station without any idea as to where we were going or where we were going to stay. We were young and brazen and clearly not very prepared. I was probably also wearing Diesel jeans and holding a Sony Ericsson T68 in my hand. Sadly, neither of these things were all that helpful as travel aids.

    Today it’s impossible to imagine traveling without our smartphones and apps like Google Maps, Google Translate, Airbnb, Uber, and many others. I know that Uber has received its share of criticism over the years, but if you want to fully appreciate what Uber brought to the world, go to a place that you don’t know, that is generally unsafe, and where you don’t speak the language. It becomes invaluable. (This was Rio de Janeiro for me.) But even without all three of these things, it’s an incredibly powerful tool.

    In situations where there is zero overlap in languages, I have also used Google Translate to have entire conversations. When push comes to shove, I prefer this approach over trying to impose English (or French) on someone. After all, I am the visitor. I should be the one bending as much as possible. You can also use the app to photograph a restaurant menu and have the entire thing translated in realtime. This to me — realtime reading — feels like a powerful use case for when augmented reality arrives.

    I also like to use to Google Maps to fastidiously track where I want to go and where I have been. I love logging my travels, and that is much easier to do today compared to the Diesel jean days. I also try and remember to pre-download whatever maps I need so that I’m less reliant on roaming. Here is what Marseille and Sicily look like right now following our trip:

    (If any of you are looking for recommendations, CRABE-TORO was our absolute favorite restaurant in Marseille and Càssaro was our favorite place for a drink in Noto, Sicily. We, unfortunately, never tried the food at the latter, but I’m sure it’s terrific.)

    Technological change has always elicited criticism, negative externalities, and some people wishing that things would just remain as they are. And there is, of course, something liberating about getting off a train in a foreign city and figuring out things as you go. In Milan, we simply walked into various hotels, asked them what their rates were, and then probably got taken advantage of as two young Canadians.

    At the end of the day, though, I am a firm believer that the world is a better place because of technological progress. From the Gutenberg printing press to Google Maps, technology empowers us as humans. And I have little doubt that 10 years from now we’ll all be traveling with some sort of augmented reality device and romanticizing the good old days of pins on a Google Map.

    For the Canadian readers out there, I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving weekend. I am back in Toronto and regularly scheduled programming will now resume on the blog. I hope you enjoyed some of the post diversions over the last 10 days.

    Photo taken at La chiave in Catania, Sicily

  • AusterityTO

    I don’t know who is behind the guerrilla art project AusterityTO, but it is exceedingly clever. Whoever it is, they are going around Toronto and tagging various objects and moments with museum labels — all of which cite mayor John Tory as the artist. Here is one called “Urinal.”

    And here is the installation description from the website:

    A clever subversion of the seminal work “Fountain” by Marcel Duchamp. Water does not flow from this fountain due to neglected maintenance and lack of attention. It is a sculpture which asks the viewer to imagine what it could be, and to ponder why it isn’t. However, the artist’s title also challenges the viewer, much as Toronto challenges the citizen to find ways to make the most out of what we have: the washrooms are frequently locked, and perhaps this fountain can be repurposed for something else.

    There is growing frustration in Toronto around the quality of our public services and spaces. I can’t open Twitter these days without coming across at least one photo of a busted and/or overflowing garbage bin. And now these sorts of posts are all being tagged with #AusterityTO.

    Images: AusterityTO

  • Some Sicilian inspiration for #KioskTO

    I have written before about how Lisbon’s kiosks both anchor and beautify the city’s public spaces. I have also written about how Toronto should have something similar — #KioskTO anyone?

    Some of you might remember an expanded street food program that the city piloted many years ago. It was a complete and utter failure. In my opinion (and from what I can remember), it was too heavily regulated. The food ended up being far too expensive and, frankly, none of it was very good.

    That’s not how this should work. The entire point of things like food trucks and street kiosks is that they are cheaper alternatives to a conventional physical location. You can also more easily place them in locations where demand is being underserved.

    The one pictured here is in Catania, Sicily. I carried my beer over from a panini shop down the street and then we ordered three espressos for a total of 2€. I tried to sit on a crate they had lying on the ground but I ended up breaking it. Sorry, guys. So we stood instead. It was all rather civilized.

    Let entrepreneurs figure out what to sell and where. It will be a boon for both small business and for our public spaces.

    P.S. I tweeted this photo out earlier today and it elicited a good discussion on Twitter. Toronto wants this.

  • The even narrower streets of Noto, Sicily

    So it turns out that the narrow streets in Le Panier (in Marseille) are actually far too wide at nearly 13 feet. What were the planners even thinking back in 600? Here’s a street I found in Noto, Sicily at just over 4 feet. I’m not sure if this is considered some sort of tertiary lane or not, but it had a street sign, addresses, and businesses in a courtyard at the end of it. So I’m going to assume it’s a bona fide street. It’s hard to imagine getting much tighter than this. I wonder if Jeff Bezos delivers here.

  • Miami is the top US city for foreign businesses

    The Financial Times and Nikkei have just published their inaugural Investing in America report, which looks at the best US cities for foreign multinationals to invest in and do business in.

    To come up with this, they used about three dozen different metrics — everything from openness to quality of life. From what I can tell though, it doesn’t appear that climate risk factored much into this ranking. It should.

    There’s a lot of Florida on this list and Miami comes out on top, largely because, last year, it had the most foreign direct investment per capita of any US city. It also has a well-connected airport, two of the largest shipping ports in the US, and an international population.

    Lots of people and companies are going long Miami right now.

  • Placemaking art

    Back in 2017, when Superkul (architects) first started coming up with concept designs for Junction House, we all decided that it would be nice if we could do something to mark the important view terminus that exists with our site.

    We explored a few different ideas and then ultimately landed on a rooftop neon (or neon-like) sign that would read “Junction House.” The idea was to pay homage to the old signage that used to be present in the Junction and to some of the iconic rooftop signs that still exist around the world.

    Of course, the goal was never advertising. There is no economic imperative for us here. We just wanted to do something fun that at the same time could mark the entrance to the Junction neighborhood.

    After proposing this idea, we quickly learned that these are next to impossible to get approved. But to their credit, the City of Toronto fully got it. We heard things such as, “look, we can’t call this art, but we like the idea and we like what you’re trying to do.” Thank you for that.

    The compromise we ultimately struck was to remove the “House” part, leaving just “Junction.” This way it no longer referenced our project and instead referenced a place. By doing this, it became “placemaking.” And that is what is now baked in our site plan approval.

    Fast forward to 2022, and we are now getting ready to test our first 1:1 mockup of the sign. I can’t wait to see how this looks on site.

  • Waterfront vernacular

    Marseille, France

  • The greatest photo of Venice I have ever seen

    This afternoon we went to the Mucem (Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean) here in Marseille. By far, my favorite exhibition was one that dealt with the urbanization of five cities surrounding the Mediterranean — namely Marseille, Venice, Istanbul, Cairo, and Alger. At one point, this was the center of the commercial world. Great empires were forged and great fortunes were made here. But things have changed a little since then. And in some cases, what we are now left with are scenes like the one you see above (photograph by Martin Parr). This is easily the greatest photo of Venice I have ever seen. Venice is a tiny city, but it receives tens of millions of tourists each year. This photo does an extraordinary job of capturing what that might feel like.

  • Flash Invaders

    I love seeing these little Invaders all over Marseille. They are everywhere — and usually in a place where you’d be looking even if it wasn’t there (see above). I just learned that there’s also a game you can play with them called Flash Invaders. The way it works is that you earn points every time you come across one and snap a photo. I haven’t been playing. But even without that, they are a lot of fun to discover. I see them as 100% public art and I wish we had something similar in Toronto.

  • 3 things about Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse

    I have written about Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille many times before on the blog. It is one of the most influential multi-unit buildings of the 20th century. For better and for worse, it inspired a generation of architects. But up until this afternoon, I had yet to actually see it in person. Now that I have, here are 3 takeaways.

    The corridors throughout the building were thought of as “streets” in a vertical village. Because of this, each street had a mailbox and each front door came equipped with an elaborate delivery system. The large curvy thing pictured above was for general deliveries (mostly food I’m guessing). And the smaller door below was for ice block deliveries (i.e. refrigeration). In both cases, these doors could be accessed from inside the kitchen.

    The two “streets” in the middle of the building were dedicated to commercial uses. And by being in the middle of the building, they were equidistant from residents living either above or below. I was told that when the building first opened in the 1950s, these streets were actually quite successful — filled with everything from bakeries to grocery stores. So you can imagine people running deliveries up and down to the other streets. But that quickly fell off as the retailing landscape developed in Marseille and in France. Today, this portion of the building houses mostly offices, art galleries, and specialty boutiques. Though there remains a widely-used 21-room hotel (pictured above).

    To fully appreciate what the Cité Radieuse meant for housing in France, you kind of have to imagine what the rest of its stock was like at that time. The introduction of duplex and dual aspect units with modern kitchens and bathrooms and with views of the sea, represented meaningful progress at the time. But it is interesting to see how much ceiling heights have changed over the years. They’re really low here — well under 8 feet. And that is probably its greatest Achilles’ heel today.

    If ever you happen to find yourself in Marseille, I would encourage a visit to the Cité Radieuse. Many of the things we do today started in this building. And there are some other ideas here that might also be worth bringing back.