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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  • Waterfront ReConnect Design Competition announces six shortlisted teams

    This past summer, the Bentway (in collaboration with the City of Toronto, the Waterfront BIA, and the Toronto Downtown West BIA) issued a call for expressions of interest to re-imagine two key intersections under downtown Toronto’s elevated Gardiner Expressway. The York Street intersection and the Simcoe Street intersection.

    That process has run its course and the following six teams have now been shortlisted:

    York Street

    • Sans Façon + Zeidler (Calgary/Toronto)
    • LeuWebb Projects + DIALOG + Mulvey & Banani Lighting (Toronto)
    • 5468796 Architecture Inc. (Winnipeg)

    Simcoe Street

    • O2 Planning & Design Inc. + Mulvey & Banani Lighting + ENTUITIVE (Calgary/Toronto)
    • Daily Tous Les Jours + SvN Architects + Planners + Latéral (Montreal/Toronto)
    • SOCA + Tiffany Shaw-Collinge + SHEEEP (Toronto/Edmonton)

    The next step in this process is a nine-week design exercise where the above teams will go away and prepare their design concepts. We work with a number of the companies on this shortlist and I am sure that there will be some fantastic ideas that are put forward. After selecting the two winners, the plan is to then start construction in 2022.

    The Bentway is doing some fantastic work in reimagining the underside of our downtown highway. This is yet another example of that. For more information about the competition, click here.

    Photo by Brian Jones on Unsplash

  • Offline and online

    https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1449087312009256966?s=20

    I was out for dinner this week with a group of real estate developers. And as you might expect, we spent the majority of the time talking about real estate and complaining about how long things take. But a good chunk of time was also spent pontificating about the world of crypto. That’s what happens these days. In fact, one of my friends joked that my/this blog used to be a real estate and cities blog, but now it’s a crypto blog. It’s a joke, but I guess it’s becoming partially true.

    For as long as I can remember, I have always been interested in what’s new and what’s next. And I think this is next. So I’m reading, playing, thinking, and writing about it. And the more I do these things, the more my conviction grows. But what really did it for me was the hands-on playing around part. I’m not interested in owning a crypto ETF (the US is about to get its first bitcoin ETF based on futures contracts). I want to own the cryptocurrencies directly so I can see what they can do and how everything works. (Though I will say that this space is still not very user friendly.)

    One of the things that comes to mind as I continue to play is the future interrelationship between our offline and online worlds. Because already we are living in a world where people now buy and collect rent on virtual real estate in places like Decentraland (REITs are even starting to emerge). Where parties happen online instead of offline (but still attract big name DJs). Where people buy digital fashion instead of physical fashion, and pay just as much for it and sometimes even more. And where augmented reality is changing how we experience our cities in real life. A few weeks ago, I came across a park in Paris that had partnered with Snapchat to deliver an AR experience, to give just one example.

    These are meaningful shifts that are gaining traction (and this post is by no means an exhaustive list). And while I remain steadfast in my belief that cities are profoundly resilient and real-world experiences are irreplaceable, I do believe that our emerging digital worlds are going to have an impact on how we design and build our cities going forward. From art murals of NFTs to entire new virtual worlds, this is an exciting time for cities and technology.

    Enjoy the weekend.

  • Down payment assistance through co-ownership

    A close friend of mine is part of a company here in Toronto called Ourboro. They are a home financing company that offer up to $250,000 toward down payments on homes. In exchange for this, they take a stake in the home and their pro-rata share of any future appreciation. So they are really co-owners. And they make their money on the gains. The maximum hold period is 10 years, but the principal owner is free to buy out Ourboro and stay in the home if they want.

    It’s an interesting model (and I have written about analogous ones before on the blog). Because in expensive housing markets like Toronto, saving up enough of a down payment is usually the biggest barrier to homeownership. But the question that I continually ask my friend is this: Does a model like this actually end up hurting overall affordability by increasing people’s buying power? Similar to what happens when interest rates go down. People can now afford more home.

    Perhaps. But Ourboro’s roots are in social enterprise and their focus is on helping people who might not otherwise be able to buy a place. They also see their approach as addressing the “fundamental imbalance of housing supply and demand in Canada.” We know that more supply would help with affordability, but so does this I guess. And it’s easier to implement.

    I suppose another way to look at this model is that it’s allowing individual homeowners to bring on co-investors, which is, of course, normal practice in the world of commercial real estate and development. Most developers don’t have all the equity needed to finance their own projects. They raise it from outside investors (and prosper through the magic of carried interest). Now end-users can do that too (but sorry, no carried interest per se).

    So if you’re in the market for a new home in the Greater Toronto Area and are looking for a little help with the down payment, Ourboro might be an option for you to consider.

  • Stable low-rise residential neighborhoods are the be-all and end-all

    Toronto city council has decided to defer its decision on legalizing rooming houses across the city one more time. Some of you may remember that this item went to council in the summer and was deferred to this fall. So now a new report is going to be drafted and the item will then make its way back to council sometime in the new year. Perhaps a decision will be made at that point. We will see.

    This is an interesting debate for many reasons, one of which is its divisiveness. Shawn Micallef wrote a searing piece in the Toronto Star over the weekend talking about how city council is showing its contempt for renters in this city and how council’s inaction is both “insulting and cowardly.” Article, here (paywall).

    At the same time, we know that many/most councillors don’t want this to happen. Which is why you get comments like this (taken from Micallef’s article): “…fundamentally what we need to talk about is what we don’t talk about enough at this council … homeowners’ rights. People who invest in this city and who live in stable residential neighbourhoods, the people that pay the taxes in this city.”

    I have already shared my views on this topic in past posts, but these are annoying comments. I live in a multi-family building. I build multi-family buildings as my job. And my next home is already planned to be in a multi-family building. Does that make me a second class citizen because I don’t live in a “stable residential neighborhood?” Am I not adequately investing this city?

  • The unit economics of food-delivery apps

    Here is another article/report thing from McKinsey talking about the “fast-growing food-delivery ecosystem.” In the US, the top food-delivery players are DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub (in this order).

    What is clear is that these platforms are growing very quickly and that COVID-19 was of course great for the business of eating at home. The demand is there.

    But what is also clear is that food-delivery is a low-margin business that depends on scale. Last-mile and single-point delivery is tough. This is despite the fact that consumers have shown to be willing to pay a fairly significant premium in exchange for the conveniences of on-demand meals.

    Here’s a chart from McKinsey that looks at the unit economics of delivery apps:

    It is a race to capture “stomach share.”

    But surely this evolves and gets further optimized with the continued rise of things like “ghost kitchens” and maybe autonomous delivery robots.

    I remember driving home one night during the thick of the pandemic and placing an order on Uber Eats for pickup. When I arrived, I found a small food truck and one lonely guy in the middle of an empty (and wintery) parking lot on Lake Shore East. He handed me my poke bowls and I was on my way.

    This is what is happening behind our apps and it’s changing the way we eat.

  • [Film] CROSSROADS: Life in the Resilient City

    Five cities. Five stories.

    Here is a short film by Nils Clauss and Neil Dowling, which recently premiered at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. (If you can’t see the embedded video above, click here.) The film is named after this year’s Seoul Biennale (which is going on right now until the end of October) and focuses on five crossroads of city life that were put forward by French architect Dominique Perrault: above/below, heritage/modern, craft/digital, natural/artificial, and safe/risk.

    To illustrate these urban crossroads, the filmmakers visit New York, Seoul, Mumbai, Paris, and Nairobi. But instead of interviewing so-called “experts”, these crossroads are examined from the perspective of people just living through them. The documentary is very well done. And having just come back from Paris, I can say that I think they chose the right city to tackle the heritage/modern crossroad.

    To close things out, I would like to share one screenshot from the film. Here you can see an ingenious little urban table that slips over a street bollard. It’s just perfect. There is so much that can be done to better activate our streets and public spaces.

  • The new mobility landscape

    McKinsey published a report last month on the future of electric vehicles and what that will mean for the industry. Many countries, cities, and companies have set some sort of electrification target for 2030. The US is targeting 50% EVs by 2030. Several countries have announced a flat-out end to ICE sales by 2030. And a number of OEMs have committed to the same.

    But there are already cities, such as Oslo, which have reached EV majority. In July of this year, its passenger EV adoption figure was 66%, making Norway a global leader. What is clear is that the electrification of personal transport is well underway. Anecdotally, we are seeing that play out with the number of people now inquiring about electric charging infrastructure in our buildings (here in Toronto).

    This move to electric will have many repercussions, including a major shift in the entire supply chain (which McKinsey outlines in their report). While ICE vehicles and EVs still both have things like tires, EVs require a whole slew of new and now growing components:

    It is also going to force new public infrastructure:

    But in parallel to the electrification of personal vehicles, we are also seeing a number of other trends and shifts. The electrification of public transport (Shenzhen has already electrified its entire bus and taxi fleets). The rise of micro-mobility (things like e-scooters). The ongoing push to discourage driving in urban centers. And the continuing goal of autonomous vehicles.

    What all of this suggests to me is that the electrification of personal vehicles is only part of the story. The entire mobility landscape in our cities is changing and it will probably look a lot different by 2030.

  • Affordable housing for all?

    Bloomberg CityLab has a new video out talking about how Vienna has seemingly solved the housing unaffordability problem that is impacting most global cities around the world. Each year Vienna builds about 14,000 new housing units and about half of this is supply is “affordable.” Already over 60% of Viennese live in an affordable home. The title of the video suggests that their approach is radical, but is that really the case?

    What was clear to me when I watched the video is that there are perhaps two key differences in terms of how Vienna approaches this problem. One, they quite simply care about delivering high-quality affordable housing to the middle class. They think it’s culturally important and they believe that architecture and design matters. Two, they are willing to invest in it, both up front and over time (maintenance).

    In the video, the former Vice Mayor of Vienna talks about how the City will go out and buy land (or use already owned land) and then make it available (sale or lease) at discounted rates so that it makes economic sense for non-profit housing developers. If the math still doesn’t work for the private sector, then there are other subsidies available.

    I’m certainly not an expert on Vienna’s approach to housing delivery. And I’m not suggesting it’s perfect. My knowledge base comes largely from one 13 minute episode by CityLab. But I think it’s notable that I didn’t pickup anything in the video about inclusionary zoning leading the way (which I have argued before tends to shift the burden to the remaining market rate housing units). Instead, they value it and they invest in it. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

    Image: CityLab

  • Pigovian transport pricing in Switzerland

    A Pigovian tax is a tax on market activities that produce some kind of negative externality for society. The basic idea behind the tax is to try and use it to correct something that is happening, but that isn’t all that desirable. Examples of negative externalities might include things like pollution and traffic congestion.

    Traffic congestion is a bad thing, which is why I have long been a supporter of road pricing. We know how to do this. It has been proven to work in countless cities, including Singapore, London, Stockholm, as well as many others. But in most cases, there isn’t the political will. That has certainly been the case here in Toronto.

    Maybe this post will help.

    A recent study by ETH Zurich, the University of Basel, and ZHAW has looked at the effects of Pigovian pricing on mobility within Switzerland. The study included 3,700 participants and spanned both French and German-speaking parts of the country.

    The way the study works is pretty simple. They took thousands of people, gave them a transportation allowance (in Swiss francs), and then assigned costs to the various mobility options. These costs were intended to be commensurate with their amount of negative societal impact.

    Driving, for example, came at a cost of 0.1 Swiss francs per kilometer. Whereas participants actually earned money for walking, since you could fairly easily argue that walking produces a net benefit to society. At the end of the four-week experiment, participants were allowed to pocket whatever money was left in their transportation wallet. So in theory there was an incentive to spend less.

    What the researchers were trying to do was simulate Pigovian transport pricing and give people a more direct understanding of the societal costs associated with how they move around. And based on their results, it looks to have worked.

    What the results show is that when you start pricing transport in this way, all mobility declines slightly (the “all modes” line). But that the biggest hit is, not surprisingly, driving. Car use declined by almost 5%, whereas walking, biking, and using public transit all increased. (The price elasticity of demand for car travel was found to be similar to when the cost of gas increases — people drive a bit less.)

    The authors go on to argue that longer-term Pigovian pricing is likely to produce an even greater impact on mobility, as people would likely adjust and start making bigger decisions about where and how they live. That seems plausible to me.

    For a full copy of the study, click here.

  • AI-generated poems at Expo 2020

    Expo 2020 is currently being hosted by Dubai until March 31, 2022. The dates are all misaligned because this year’s World Expo was originally scheduled for last year.

    As is typical of World Expos, countries from around the world participate by building a physical pavilion. Below is a photo of the UK Pavilion, which I thought was really interesting. It was designed by Es Devlin.

    The pavilion is a cross-laminated timber structure with no actual exhibits inside. The structure itself is the exhibit.

    As you can see, on one elevation of the pavilion there are a series of displays. These displays are used to show AI-generated poems that appear in both English and Arabic.

    Part of the point is to celebrate the diversity of the UK. But the other point is to bring our attention to the growing involvement of algorithms in today’s world.

    Photo by Ry Galloway and Alin Consstantin, courtesy of Es Devlin and via Dezeen