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.
“So much of what we do is collaborative,” Rosenthal said. “[Software is] like writing a book together where all the plots have to connect and make sense and there are thousands of authors. It’s really hard to do if you’re not co-located in the same space and it’s important to even be able to see each other in the same space.”
Building a building is done in much the same way. Except I would take it even further and say that it’s like writing individual sentences together. One person starts the sentence (usually the architect), but then the rest of the team enters (engineers and so on) and informs the architect that the words actually need to be changed around.
After a bunch of back and forth, the sentence is finally complete (for the most part). This is just in time for the editors (construction team) to tell you that the sentences you’ve assembled in fact don’t work at all and that they will cost far too much to print in their current form. So team goes back and, once again, readjusts.
As you might imagine, this is a lot easier to do when you’re not fiddling with a mute button and fighting against screaming kids in the background.
Dixie Outlet Mall in Mississauga has just launched a drive-in movie theater that will run for three Saturdays starting on September 12, 2020. Tickets are available for $5 and you have to purchase in advance. It’s first come, first park. And there only 100 parking spots available.
All of the proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to the New Haven Learning Centre, which is a group that works to positively change the lives of people with autism, and other related disorders. For more information about the Dixie Drive-In, click here.
And for those of you who are curious, the answer is yes, a minor variance application was required in order to allow this “pop-up.”
This has been a summer of cycling, playing tennis (poorly) on Toronto’s public courts, and eating and drinking on sidewalks — sometimes with, get this, no fencing. But winter will arrive in this part of the world at some point and that will mean having to rethink our patios. I’m certain that we’ll be doing everything we can to extend the season this year because we are already seeing that take place in other cities.
Last month, the City of Chicago launched, in partnership with IDEO, BMO Harris Bank, and the Illinois Restaurant Association, a competition called the Winter Dining Challenge. The goal is exactly what I just described. It’s to solicit creative ideas for how Chicago can make outdoor dining feasible all throughout the winter. (Chicago and Toronto have similar winters.)
Domes, pods, and heaters are likely to feature in the submissions, which makes me wonder at what point are you basically now considered to be “inside” as opposed to “outside.” Presumably fresh air needs to factor. But I should really reserve judgement until the top ideas are selected. If you’d like to submit an “idea, concept, or startup,” you have until September 7, 2020 at 11:30 PM PT. Here’s the link.
I have been trying (albeit not very hard) to come up with the best way to describe the stinky hand sanitizer that is going around these days. Then today somebody in the office described it as bad tequila and I immediately thought, “yup, that’s exactly it. It’s bad tequila.” See above tweet.
Turns out, there’s some science behind this stink. Here is an article by Gregory Han from the New York Times that was shared in response to my tweet. And here is the excerpt that explains where this stink comes from:
“That off-putting smell—sometimes described as rotten garbage or tequila-like—is the natural byproduct of ethanol being made from corn, sugar cane, beets, and other organic sources,” explained Zlotnik. “[Ethyl alcohol] production is highly regulated. It stinks because these new brands—many made by distillers who’ve pivoted from producing drinking alcohol to meet public demand for hand sanitizer—are making and using denatured ethanol. This ethanol costs significantly less than ethanol filtered using activated carbon filtration, which would typically remove almost all contaminants and the malodor with it.”
Those organic contaminants aren’t the only reason unfiltered and denatured ethanol smells downright foul. According to Zlotnik, denatured ethanol is also intentionally tainted with an unpalatable cocktail of chemicals (denaturants) such as methanol, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, and denatonium to make it undrinkable. In other words: The base material is intentionally stinky.
So now you can judge accordingly after you’ve cleansed your hands with rotten garbage tequila.
On a somewhat related note, Jill Lepore has an interesting piece in this week’s New Yorker about the great indoors, and how quarantine has forced us to spend even more of our time indoors. (Though, that hasn’t been the case for me this summer.) Here’s a snippet:
The Great Confinement varies by place and by wealth, and, historically, it’s new. “Over several millennia, humans have evolved from an outdoor species into an indoor one,” Allen and Macomber write. Citing E. O. Wilson, they explain, “We evolved in the African savannah’s wide-open expanses, intimate with nature and seeking protection under tree canopies,” and so “our genetic hardwiring, built over millennia, still craves that connection to nature.” To satisfy this craving, photographs of redwoods adorn hospital waiting rooms; you can pop into the Grand Canyon via Zoom. I used to think these dodges were better than nothing, but I’ve changed my mind. Zoom is usually not better than nothing.
I have a friend who is a big fan of Tesla. And judging by what’s going on with the company’s stock these days, he is not alone. This morning he sent me this article talking about how Tesla has introduced an entirely new business model for the automotive industry. The two key takeaways are as follows. One, Tesla is in many ways a software company. The hardware and software onboard each vehicle are continually getting better and oftentimes these improvements are delivered to their customers for free via over-the-air updates. This is not how the incumbent car companies work. And two, fully electric vehicles are going to crush after-sales revenue by virtue of the fact that electric vehicles simply don’t require the same amount of service. So now you’re in a position where the cars last longer (and apparently depreciate a lot less). This might seem bad for business, but if you can build an ecosystem of energy products and services around said car, then maybe you’ve got a big ass Tesla moat. Maybe. I have no idea what the company should be valued at today, but all of this is interesting to me and I’m fairly certain that the car I have right now will be the last combustion engine vehicle I ever own. Depending on when autonomy arrives, it may also be the last car I ever own.
My super scientific Twitter balcony survey has revealed that most people seem to like balconies and terraces. Out of the 257 people that voted (not a huge number), 77.4% said that if they were in the market to buy or rent a new place, they would probably want a balcony or terrace. I realize now that my wording could have been more precise. Either way, the results seem to suggest a clear preference.
But there are all sorts of reasons for why you might want to avoid building balconies: energy performance, upfront costs, long-term maintenance, usability at high elevations, overall aesthetics, and so on. In fact, I once had an architect turn down a job because they don’t typically work on residential buildings and, when they do, they refuse to work on ones that have balconies. He told me that they don’t want the liability.
But then what inevitably happens is that the sales and marketing team joins the design meeting and says, “yeah, we hear what you’re saying, but people like outdoor spaces.” And then the great debate starts. Okay, so what percentage of the suites should have an outdoor space? What about a sliding glass well? I think so-and-so is doing it on their project. Yeah, but they’re real expensive and they leak air.
The reality is that there are many buildings without private outdoor spaces and there are many cities where it is common not to build them. Moreover, my Twitter survey doesn’t really tell you exactly how people might behave when they’re about to make a purchasing decision. What you really want are data points and things like A/B tests.
Let’s take for example two typical/identical 600 square foot suites, with the only difference being that one has a balcony and the other doesn’t. Now let’s say that the one with a balcony is selling for $1,400 psf or $840,000 and the one without a balcony is selling for $1,350 psf or $810,000. Will some of the 77.4% that voted balcony/terrace possibly buy the $810,000 suite? Of course. Because it’s less expensive.
So how does one go about making the right decision when it comes to designing for outdoor spaces? Well, in some cases, you won’t have a choice. We have had instances where the City has asked us (okay, forced us) to remove all of the balconies on a particular elevation because they didn’t fit with the urban design aesthetic that they wanted for the streetscape. That always pisses me off.
That aside, my view — and this is just my opinion — is that you can’t generalize when trying to make this decision. You need to carefully consider who your customer is or will be. I’ve written before about the divide between investor demand and end-user demand in residential buildings. It impacts design, and outdoor spaces are no different.
If you take for example Junction House, it is a predominately end-user building. That’s who we thought would be buying and that is who bought. When the team was designing the two-storey House Collection, the intent was to create a kind of substitute for low-rise housing. And so these homes had to have outdoor spaces (they have terraces). This was never a question or a debate.
Similarly, one of the reasons why One Delisle looks the way that it does is because the team set out to create unique terraces, as well as varying outdoor spaces, all throughout the tower. The thinking was, “people like terraces in mid-rise buildings, like Junction House, so let’s figure out how to do that in a high-rise building typology.”
At the same time, we have suites with Juliet balconies at Junction House and it is certainly true that the above recipes may not be suitable for every project. Again, there are lots of buildings without private outdoor spaces, including ones that have sold during this pandemic. One of the things that I have also discovered is that common area outdoor spaces and nearby green spaces can have an impact on whether or not people feel they need private outdoor space.
All of this to say that one size does not fit all. Which is probably why this topic remains such a great debate.
Note: I am making a distinction between balconies and terraces. Balconies typically cantilever out from a building and are not insulated. Terraces, on the other hand, are typically a roof condition in that they sit above a conditioned space. This usually means that the concrete slab will need to get “built up” with insulation and paving. A drainage system will also be required.
This has become a frequently reported topic, but here’s a recent article from Wired talking about tech workers living out the American Dream — in Canada. The story is pretty simple. Immigrants are smart and work hard. Canada has a system in place that privileges newcomers who are young and smart. And this has become a boon for our largest city and for the country. Here are two excerpts from the article:
But there’s a new global winner: Canada, and particularly Toronto. Since 2013, the tech scene there has grown faster than in any other North American city. In 2017, Toronto added more tech jobs than Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington, DC, combined; in 2018 (the most recent year for which numbers are available), the city was second only to the Bay Area in new tech jobs. Toronto is so crammed with immigrants that nearly 50 percent of all residents were born outside the country.
Canada’s immigration policy is hardly warm and fuzzy. On the contrary, it’s icily calculating. The government loves educated, elite newcomers, because they help propel the economy, says immigration lawyer Peter Rekai, but it wants them young, so they won’t drain the public health care system. Their parents are much less welcome.
In the first quarter of this year, international migration accounted for 82.3% of Canada’s population growth. And at the beginning of this year, Ottawa was planning for up to 370,000 new permanent residents. It is highly unlikely that we hit that number given our current health crisis, but I have no doubts in my mind that we will hit it in the very near term. And when we do, it will be a good thing for Toronto.
One, the home you live in was likely built by a person or company that was trying to make a profit.
Two, when your home was being developed and built, it probably upset a bunch of people. Both because something new was coming and because construction can be annoying.
Three, your home was built using materials and construction techniques that were readily available at the time. Some of those materials and techniques may no longer be practical.
Four, when your home was complete, somebody probably thought, “boy, they don’t build them like they used to.”
Five, the need for new housing doesn’t stop just because you now have a home.
In the world of planning and community building there is a hierarchy of places that is often referred to as first, second, and third places. As many of you probably know, first place is your home. Second place is where you work. And third places are where you commonly spend your time outside of the first two places. This could be a coffee shop, gym, barber shop, bar, or some other social anchor that serves to connect you with other people. In fact, you probably have multiple third places.
Some have argued that online communities have started to fill the role of third place. And it is true that social networks have used what works offline in order to build and grow their communities online. So in some ways, the internet has brought third places into our first place. Similarly, lockdown has brought our second place into our first place. And now everyone is debating to what extent we even needed these other places. Aren’t Zoom and TikTok enough?
Nope.
For those who don’t have a second place — such as, for example, freelancers — it is common to rely more heavily on third places, which then become pseudo second places. Why is that? Isn’t a first place enough? Because it’s an opportunity to get out and be around other humans. Cities are built around these other places. It’s where, in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, we “coagulate together.” And I just don’t see that changing. Do you?
MAD Architects recently completed its first project in the United States at 8600 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills. It’s interesting (and beautiful) in that it was designed to resemble a village of gabled residences sitting on top of a green hillside.
The green hillside is actually a three-storey concrete podium that is covered in what is said to be the largest living walls in the country. The gabled houses on top are wood-frame construction and were assembled to create an open-air courtyard in the middle of the site. Eighteen residences in total. Prices starting from USD 3.7 million (as of May 2019).
At five storeys, I suppose you would call this a mid-rise building. The site area is about 25,700 square feet and the building area is not even 48,000 square feet, according to ArchDaily. So the overall density on the site is actually remarkably low. At least compared to what we’re accustomed to building in Toronto. It might be dense for Beverly Hills.
I would love to see the development math for a site like this. After I got over the architecture, the first thing I thought was, “you could never build a mid-rise building like this in Toronto.” I suspect it’s also not obvious in Los Angeles. And you probably need “starting from 3.7 million” in order for it to pencil.
