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.

Subscribe

  • Interview with the mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema

    Back in 2014, Amsterdam became the first city to have what is called a “night mayor.” The role of a night mayor is what the name suggests. They are intended to be the chief executive officer of a city’s nighttime economy. And so it was and it continues to be recognition that the night can be an important economic development tool.

    This seemed to work out well for Amsterdam, which is why many other cities quickly followed suit with their own night mayor elections. During this time, a number of us here in Toronto also started advocating for our own nighttime CEO. (FYI, here is a link to the current night mayor of Amsterdam.)

    But fast forward to today and the tone seems to have changed in Amsterdam. The city’s daytime mayor, Femke Halsema, is now actively concerned about over-tourism and, in particular, the way that some tourists behave when they check-in to Amsterdam.

    Here’s an excerpt from a recent interview that she did with Bloomberg:

    We have to tackle two problems. The first problem is what I’d call the London problem: Our city is becoming too expensive. That is also part of being an international city and having many expats living here. But it has consequences for the middle classes. It’s very difficult to find a house in Amsterdam except for the highest incomes, so our middle class — teachers, police officers, people working in health care — are leaving the city. We’re very alert about it. For a city to survive in the long run you need social stability and people from middle or lower classes to also feel at home.

    Our second problem is the Venice problem: The people who live here become estranged especially in the city center, because it’s no longer part of their city. We have to find a new balance, in being a home for people from Amsterdam and at the same time welcoming international visitors and tourists.

    More specifically, the Venice problem seems to be a problem of behavior:

    It’s not a form of tourism we welcome or don’t welcome — it’s a form of behavior. What we do not welcome is people who come here on a vacation from morals. They express a form of behavior they would not express at home. People coming here to lose their morals is a problem for us.

    It is for this reason that the city is hoping to relocate its red light district to outside of the city center. The intention is not to get rid of it, or for the city to turn its back on its long history of tolerance, but it does want to move it somewhere else in the hopes that Amsterdam will become more associated with culture than hedonism.

    But does moving it actually change any behaviors? If one were to develop a purpose-built “erotic center” from the ground up, is it even possible to make it more integrated with the broader city (minimize the Venice problem) and, to use the mayor’s words, make it more chic than what currently exists?

    These are all exceedingly tough city building questions that can’t really be untangled from questions of morality.

    For the full Bloomberg interview with mayor Halsema, click here.

    Photo by Azhar J on Unsplash

  • The fall of manufactured housing

    In 1973, 580,000 mobile homes (or manufactured home as they are now called) shipped in the United States. This represented about 50% of the number of single-family housing starts that year, and about 22% of total housing starts. So they represented a significant chunk of the overall housing supply.

    But following the collapse of the US housing market in 1974, an interesting thing happened. Manufactured homes never managed to reclaim their position in the stack. See above chart. Brian Potter, author of Construction Physics, puts forward a number of possible explanations for this, over here.

    Some have speculated that it was the result of new code changes that ended up increasing costs. Some have speculated that it was because of a new requirement to include a steel chassis on the bottom of every home, which also increased costs, but more importantly stigmatized manufactured homes. It made them seem transient, whereas previously they were installed on permanent foundations.

    There are also some theories that manufactured home production was harder hit during the economic downturn given that they had more fixed plant costs (compared to site-built homes with their variable labor costs).

    But Brian’s current working theory is that it comes down to capital flows. Manufactured homes tend to cater to lower-income buyers and so supply, as the argument goes, has largely depended on “lax lending” practices being made available to them.

    I’m not so sure that this is the only reason though. For one thing, multi-family housing starts have followed a somewhat similar trajectory to manufactured homes. We’ve certainly seen an increase in supply over the last decade, but we’ve never gotten back to that early 1970’s peak.

    And so I wonder: How much of this is actually just the result of the single-family home hegemony? This is arguably what the market has historically wanted (look at the split pre-1973 in the above chart), and so perhaps we simply refocused our attention there and worked to make this housing type as accessible as possible to the masses.

    Chart via Brian Potter

  • [Book] Emergent Tokyo — Designing the Spontaneous City

    I just ordered a copy of this book. So I haven’t read it yet. But I did just read this Q&A with the authors (and it clearly piqued interested). The central idea is that Tokyo — which is a massive city that is famous for somehow being both massive and exceedingly livable — is the product of something that the authors refer to as emergent urbanism.

    What they mean by this is that Tokyo’s order, functionality, and livability is actually largely the result of emergent bottom-up actions, rather than top-down central planning. This isn’t to say that some top-down planning isn’t required for things like parks and transit. You still need some of that. But this is to say that Tokyo’s approach to urbanism is very different from what you’ll find in cities likes Paris and many others.

    Here’s an example of what I’m talking about (taken from the above Q&A):

    This is going to sound wild to anyone who lives in the US, but for any two-story rowhouse in Tokyo, the owner can by right operate a bar, a restaurant, a boutique, a small workshop on the ground floor — even in the most residential zoned sections of the city. That means you have an incredible supply of potential microspaces. Any elderly homeowner could decide to rent out the bottom floor of their place to some young kid who wants to start a coffee shop, for example. When you look at what we call yokocho alleyways — charming, dingy alleyways that grew out of the black markets post-World War II, which are some of the the most iconic and beloved sections of the city now — it’s all of these tiny little bars and restaurants just crammed into every available space.

    What’s fascinating about all of this is that we’re talking about a kind of self-organizing urbanism. One that goes against everything that traditional city planning stands for. Using the above example, instead of saying that retail should go here, bars should go here, and residences should go only over here, Tokyo is basically saying you can do whatever you’d like.

    If you’d like to open a tiny 4-seater bar that only serves Long Island iced teas to people wearing cosplay outfits on neon pink plastic chairs, you are free to do that. Oh, and by the way, we’re also going to make it a lot easier and cheaper for you to get a liquor license. This might sound chaotic, but it works for Tokyo. And it’s evidence that maybe a lot of our cities would be better off if only we let them be what they want to be.

  • A headquarters in the cloud

    Venture firm a16z just announced that it will be “moving its headquarters to the cloud.” At the same time, it announced 3 new offices in Miami Beach, New York, and Santa Monica. These will be in addition to their existing offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco.

    Part of their argument is that hybrid work is weakening the network effects and agglomeration economies associated with being right in Silicon Valley. So they’ve deiced to be virtual, but still have offices where they can “materialize physically” when needed.

    They acknowledge that physical presence is important for developing a company’s culture, building relationships, and helping entrepreneurs (their core business).

    What’s interesting about all of this is that it’s further validation for Miami (Beach). Here is one of the most important venture firms out there saying that when they quickly materialize in real life, they want to be able to do that in Miami Beach.

    It also raises some interesting questions. Because even if the network effects of Silicon Valley are weakening when it comes to tech, this announcement still speaks to the importance of agglomeration economies. These three new office locations were chosen for a reason.

  • Paris vs. New York bike lanes

    It’s one thing to have bike lanes. And it’s another thing to have really generous bike lanes. The above video by Streetfilms does a good job of comparing Paris to New York City, and showing just how far Paris has come in terms of cycling infrastructure. Some of you might remember that in the fall of last year, Paris announced plans to become a “100% cycling city.” This was a follow-on to their plan vélo 2015-2020, which saw a doubling of the city’s bike lanes. The current plan, which covers 2021-2026, includes 130 km of new bike lanes and 52 km of pandemic lanes that have been (or will be) made permanent. But again, it’s one thing to have a lot of bike lanes. And it’s another thing to have a lot of wide bike lanes that look like the ones in this video.

  • A cactus-inspired building in Arizona

    I was on a panel last month with Jamie Miller, director of biomimicry at B+H Architects, and he remined me just how much I am fascinated by the use of biomimicry in architecture and engineering. Nature is pretty impressive and I think there’s a lot that we can learn from her.

    Here is a recently completed example of what I’m talking about.

    The project is the new Pinal County Attorney’s Office in Florence, Arizona (designed by DLR Group). What the team did here was try and emulate the skin of the saguaro cactus. That ultimately translated into vertical self-shading fins on the envelope of the building.

    Here’s what that looks like (via DLR Group):

    Here is some evidence suggesting that the fins are truly helping performance (via Urbanland):

    And here is the explanation for why it works and why nature does this (also via Urbanland):

    Sit in front of a saguaro cactus for an hour and you will see the way it protects itself and thrives in the intense desert heat. Its vertical fins provide continuous self-shading and redistribution of heat. This ability to self-shade breaks sunlight up into smaller areas that shift continually, preventing any one area of the cactus skin from overheating. This adaptation not only makes the saguaro viable, but also gives it a beautiful and distinct character. Creating a 3-D computer-generated model of a saguaro cactus and using a daylighting simulation model confirmed that no part of the plant received more than 15 to 20 minutes of direct sun at any one time, avoiding the possibility of sunburn.

    How cool.

  • The Germania Bank Building at 190 Bowery

    I recently mentioned that it would be nice to be able to buy a five-storey building in Soho (New York) for $70,000. Yes, that was in 1968 dollars. But even in today’s dollars, we’re talking less than $600,000. I would gladly buy a cast-iron five-storey building in Soho for that price today if it were somehow possible.

    In response to this post, a reader sent me this (thank you), which is another great example of an artist buying an old buying in New York for what is clearly an absurdly low price. The artist is photographer Jay Maisel, and the building is The Germania Bank Building at 190 Bowery.

    Jay bought the six-storey building in 1966 for $102,000. He then used it as his residence, a studio, and as a place to collect a hell of a lot of things. Though at one point he also rented out some of the other floors to artists like Roy Lichtenstein.

    It is alleged that most people thought the building was abandoned. But this was obviously not the case. Jay sold the building to RFR Holdings in 2014 for $55 million. And in 2019, streetwear brand Supreme opened up in the bottom.

    Today, I understand that Web3 things are also happening in the building. And who knows, it might be the case that we’ll be reading about some of them, in a similar kind of way, fifty years from now.

  • Mississauga is the only major city in Canada that lost people in the last census

    The Globe and Mail published an interesting article this weekend talking about how Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, is the only major city in Canada to have lost people in the last census. Here are the population changes for the top 10 largest municipalities in the country:

    There is a simple explanation for this and it is one we have talked about a number of times before on the blog. Many/most of our low-rise single-family neighborhoods are actually losing people. Empty nesters are becoming over-housed and young people aren’t backfilling in quite the same way.

    Mississauga has a lot of these neighborhoods and is heavily geared towards this kind of built form. But they are certainly not alone. The same phenomenon is happening in places like Toronto; there is just enough other growth to offset these negatives so that the headline number still remains positive.

    However, this is slowly changing. Toronto is working to “expand housing options” in its low-rise neighborhoods; it is considering how to better intensify its major streets; and it is re-introducing small–scale retail uses so that people living in a house can easily walk to a corner store for milk.

    It is a shift in mindset. But I believe that this trend will only continue, and eventually it will make its way to the suburbs.

    Images: The Globe and Mail

  • Toronto-Montréal should be a 2 hour high-speed train ride

    The Quebec City-Windsor corridor is the most densely populated region in Canada. The last time I checked Wikipedia, it was reported to house about 18 million people, or about half of Canada’s entire population.

    So it is not surprising that there have been numerous high-speed rail studies for this corridor over the decades, as well as studies for other important links in Alberta (Edmonton-Calgary) and other parts of the country.

    And yet, Canada remains the only G7 country without any high-speed rail. Though to be fair, the US doesn’t have all that much either; certainly with respect to the size of its population.

    However, there is some good news. In March of this year, the Government of Canada announced a Request for Expression of Interest related to high frequency rail service between Quebec City and Toronto. More information, over here.

    But from what I have read, it’ll be a faster upgraded service (~200 km/h), but not true high-speed rail (~250-300 km/h). I took the TGV from Marseille to Paris last summer, and this is how fast we were going:

    If we’re going to do this, let’s be the absolute best in the world and not settle for mediocrity.

  • 1970s New York, through the lens of a taxi driver

    Even if you never experienced it yourself, we have all heard the lore of 1970s New York City. It was a raw, dangerous, and unpolished city that was simultaneously teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and providing fertile ground for artists and many other forms of expression (some suspect and some not).

    Jane Jacobs is famous for saying that “new ideas often require old buildings.” And the New York of this era was exactly that kind of city. Artist Donald Judd (a favorite of mine) bought his five-storey cast-iron building in Soho (on Spring Street) around this time (1968). He paid just under $70,000.

    So it is perhaps easy to romanticize this more accessible (and equitable?) version of New York. But there were many other things going on the city at this time beyond minimalist art in Soho loft buildings.

    This photo essay by Joseph Rodriguez does a great job at telling some of those other stories in a decidedly humanistic way. Joseph was a New York cab driver from 1977 to 1985. And his final years, he had taken up photography and had started documenting the people and the city through his windows.

    His incredible photos are also available in this book called, TAXI: Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987.

    Photo: Joseph Rodriguez