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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  • Is Toronto’s tech ecosystem too US-centric?

    The Wall Street Journal’s recent piece about “Silicon Valley invading Toronto” is, in my view, describing a generally positive outcome.

    We are one of the largest cities in North America (the exact ranking depends on where you draw the urban boundaries).

    We have more enlightened views around foreign and high-skilled workers (I was given a short window in which to leave the US after I finished my first graduate degree there).

    And we have a large and highly educated pool of tech talent (the salary differential discussed in the article looks to be, at least partially, a result of the weaker Canadian dollar).

    US companies are gobbling up office space in Toronto. And presumably, this is one of the reasons why 139 new flights were added between Toronto and Francisco over the last two years. (Source: WSJ)

    However, I do agree with the remarks from people like Jim Balsillie (Blackberry) and Harley Finkelstein (Shopify) that a better outcome would be the creation of more massively successful Canadian tech companies.

    As Finkelstein points out, there’s a big difference between 100,000 square feet of space for the HQ of a new and growing Canadian tech company and 100,000 square feet for a new branch or satellite office.

    The stats we read in the papers about the number of tech jobs being created in Toronto generally don’t speak to composition. Where in the value chain do these people sit? Where is the value accruing?

    The intellectual capital is here. And we should be doing everything we can to foster and finance new homegrown ideas and businesses.

    Image: WSJ

  • WordPress buys Tumblr for (only) $3 million

    Last week it was announced that brandondonnelly.com/ (which is what I use for this blog) had purchased Tumblr for around $3 million. This is, of course, after Yahoo had purchased it for $1.1 billion in 2013 and later wrote it down, having never figured out how to monetize it. Yahoo lost its shirt on the investment. I am sure you’ve probably seen some of the headlines and searing commentary online:

    https://twitter.com/profgalloway/status/1161744881137725443?s=20

    I used Tumblr every day for more than 5 years. I started this daily blog on it because I had already been using it to share and collect photos. At one point Tumblr had more active users than Instagram and Pinterest combined. But eventually it lost its way. Yahoo (and later Verizon by way of its acquisition of Yahoo in 2017) didn’t know what to do with it.

    And so at the beginning of this year I said goodbye to Tumblr and switched this daily blog over to WordPress. A big part of that decision had to do with the fact that Tumblr was never really designed for long-form blogs like this one and its mobile support was even more appalling for this use case. It was impossible to write on an iPad. Switching was the right decision. I should have done it sooner.

    But now Tumblr is owned by brandondonnelly.com/. At $3 million, it feels like they're almost starting again from scratch. Maybe they'll figure Tumblr out. Or maybe they won't.

  • The Knight Frank Global Affordability Monitor 2019

    Here’s a chart from Knight Frank’s 2019 Global Affordability Monitor that I think you’ll find interesting:

    It compares real home price growth and real household income growth (after tax) over the last 5 years for 32 world cities. The bolded percentages represent the former and the non-bolded percentages represent the latter.

    Consider the variations here.

    Amsterdam saw a real home price change of 63.6%, but a household income change of only 4.4% (although the circle looks to be in the wrong spot if this number is correct).

    Moscow, on the other hand, saw flat home prices (0.1%) and a 22.7% increase in household income.

    Though San Francisco is the star in terms of income growth.

    Sao Paulo, unfortunately, saw a dramatic decline in both home prices and incomes. It’s in the bottom left corner.

    When I look at this chart, I don’t see a strong correlation between household incomes and home prices. And the proportions of the chart tell you that the y-axis is moving more than the x-axis.

    But if the top number exceeds the bottom number, then you could come to the conclusion that housing affordability has gotten worse over the last 5 years.

  • Equatorial Brutalism

    Generally speaking, architects are the only people I know who like Brutalist architecture. In fact, architect, professor and author Witold Rybczynski once proposed the following litmus test to determine whether a building is indeed an example of Brutalism: “If people don’t hate it, it can’t be Brutalist.”

    But as I have argued before, sometimes architectural styles take a bit of time to settle in and become fully appreciated. Consider how improbable it would seem to demolish a beautiful old Victorian home today. And yet Toronto, and countless other cities, did this on many occasions. Regent Park, Toronto was once Cabbagetown South.

    Brutalism also took on different sensibilities around the world.

    I love this recent piece in T (NY Times Style Magazine) by Michael Snyder called, “The Unexpectedly Tropical History of Brutalism.” In it he uses the term “Equatorial Brutalism” (a new one for me) and discusses the “surprising apotheosis” of Brutalism in equatorial countries (and in particular Brazil). It is a good follow-up to my recent post on Oscar Niemeyer’s work.

    So here’s an excerpt from Michael’s article. If you don’t already like Brutalism, maybe it’ll get you a little bit closer.

    What these buildings shared, beyond an aesthetic — though they shared that, too, with their radical porousness, their blunt geometric forms and their extensive use of raw concrete — was a commitment to architecture as an instigator of progress. But in the tropics, Brutalism reached an unexpected apotheosis: Infiltrated by lush plants and softened by humidity, buildings that looked cold and imposing against London’s constant drizzle or Boston’s icy slush were transformed into fecund, vital spaces. Concrete surfaces bloomed green with moss. The panels of glass necessary for sealing rooms against the northern chill either disappeared or receded from view, encouraging cross-ventilation while also protecting interior spaces from direct sun. The openness and transparency that the Smithsons had pronounced became a practical reality in these humid environments, both theoretically and literally: Built from inexpensive, readily available materials, equatorial Brutalism was as accessible and functional as it was symbolically potent, resulting in buildings that would define new societies growing around them like vines. Here, Brutalism wasn’t only an architecture that shaped the future or confronted the past — it was an architecture of freedom.

    Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

  • The reversion of European cities

    This recent Economist article makes the argument that, despite the recent (and sometimes annoying) proliferation of electric scooters across Europe, we probably shouldn’t be that grouchy about them. And that’s, “because the rise of the electric scooter is part of a broader and welcome phenomenon: the gradual retreat of the car from the European city.” By way of one example, by next year, Paris will have grown its bike lane network by 50% in five years.

    The article ends with the point that, while this may seem like a “revolution,” it’s actually a “reversion.” European cities such as Paris and Antwerp (examples from the article) were both built before the advent of the car and were never really designed for it, although Haussmann’s wide avenues certainly helped. All of this gets back to a point I tried to make over the weekend with this post about driving and parking, and the relevance of urban form.

    Reversion is a lot easier than a revolution. And for most North American cities, a revolution is what’s needed if we are in fact serious about a post-car future.

    Photo by Z Klein on Unsplash

  • Guts and generosity

    Today’s Seth Godin post on innovation, guts, and generosity is Seth Godin at his best. One of the reasons why I like it is that I keep thinking that “innovative” has become too much of a buzzword. It’s similar to walking around and telling everybody you’re a cool person. If you have to explain it to everyone, then you’re probably not cool. At the same time, I also find his generosity angle to be a clever one. Here is Seth’s post in its entirety (short and sweet, as usual):

    Innovation is guts plus generosity

    Guts, because it might not work.

    And generosity, because guts without seeking to make things better is merely hustle.

    The innovator shows up with something she knows might not work (pause for a second, and contrast that with everyone else, who has been trained to show up with a proven, verified, approved, deniable answer that will get them an A on the test).

    If failure is not an option, then, most of the time, neither is success.

    It’s pretty common for someone to claim that they’re innovative when actually, all they are is popular, profitable or successful. Nothing wrong with that. But it’s not innovative.

    Allow generosity to take the lead and you’ll probably discover that it’s easier to find the guts.

  • Nelson, BC is running a laneway house design competition

    The City of Nelson, BC — which happens to be the launching pad for some of the best snowboarding in the world — is currently conducting a laneway house design competition. The objective is to come up with a set of “pre-reviewed” design options that homeowners can then purchase and build themselves. Here’s more about what they’re trying to achieve:

    The objective is to provide easy access to high-quality designs and code-compliant plans that strike the right balance between affordable construction and ecologically-sound design. They will be plans designed for Nelson, offering exceptional value-for-money for homeowners and making it easier for them to build a laneway house on their property. The contest evaluation criteria emphasise (sic) adaptability to various lots and topographies.

    Three designs will be selected, as well as a “people’s choice award.” Payment for a winning design will come in the form of a monetary prize and a $1,000 royalty each time the design is purchased by a homeowner. I’m not sure how many houses there are in Nelson, but I would imagine there are enough to make this a worthwhile exercise.

    I also think this is a good approach to making laneway housing more accessible to homeowners. The simpler they are to build, the more housing we will see. Nelson clearly understands that. If you’d like to submit, you have until September 2, 2019. More details, here. Apologies for the short notice.

    Thank you to Mason Studio for sharing this competition with me.

  • Thoughts on driving and parking

    Adrian Cook’s recent blog post about parking got me thinking about a few driving-related issues. Adrian points out that most condo buildings only allow owners to rent out their parking spots to people who already live in the building. But oftentimes, that’s not the customer. The people in the market for a downtown spot are the ones who commute into the city. And so what we are seeing in many downtowns is an oversupply of parking. Municipalities need to adjust their requirements.

    What I have found is that most, but not all, cities are now fairly flexible when it comes to urban parking requirements. They recognize the hypocrisy in trying to encourage alternative forms of mobility while at the same time mandating a certain number of parking spots. And so the driver is more typically the market. Empty nesters and families who buy larger suites — at least here in Toronto — still almost always want parking. And it’s a deal breaker for them. Sometimes they want 2 spots.

    Of course, there are also many instances where the location and unit mix of a project can support building absolutely no parking. There are lots of examples of the market excepting this, and so my view on parking is that there needs to be flexibility. Parking is typically a loss leader. The incentives are in place to build a hell of a lot less of it. But developers build it because they have to.

    Lastly, I find that discussions around car dependency tend to ignore that we have designed vast swaths of our cities to be positively inhospitable to people who aren’t driving. Adrian is right in that if you look at the modal splits for people who live in downtown Vancouver and downtown Toronto, you will find a lot less drivers. And that’s because the environment is much better suited to other forms of mobility. The solution starts with urban form.

    Photo by Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash

  • A video tour of the Niemeyer apartment building

    In the 1940’s, Juscelino Kubitschek invited Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer to design a new planned suburb north of Belo Horizonte called Pampulha. Kubitschek was mayor at the time and Niemeyer was a young modernist architect in his 30’s. This was the start of an important relationship.

    The “Pampulha architectural complex” was completed in 1943 and was widely praised by the international design community. It was included in a 1943 exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York called “Brazil Builds.”

    This was an important exhibition for Brazilian architecture and for modernism in general because it demonstrated that the European principles of modernism were traveling (Brazil was one of the first to adopt), and they were evolving. Brazilian architects, such as Niemeyer and Lúcio Costa, had begun to regionalize it and make it their own.

    A Brazilian style of modernism was emerging.

    By 1956, Niemeyer had become a key figure in the world of modern architecture. At the same time, Juscelino Kubitschek had just become the 21st president of Brazil. Shortly after assuming the position, he would ask Niemeyer to help build a new capital city for the country. This was the birth of Brasilia. Niemeyer designed the buildings. And Costa planned its streets.

    A few years before this, Niemeyer would also return to Belo Horizonte to design the “Niemeyer apartment building” at the Praça da Liberdade in the center of the city (and pictured above). It is quintessentially Niemeyer: curved & feminine. Niemeyer despised right angles. He found them harsh and manmade. Everything that is beautiful in nature — from the mountains of Brazil to the curves of a woman — was, in his view, sinuous.

    But the other thing I really appreciate about it is how its “brise soleils” play with your perception of the building. The building is only 10 storeys. But the sun shades, which some of you may read as balconies, make it look much taller (albeit with some minuscule floor-to-floor heights). The reality is that each floor is made up of 3 breaks. And the overall effect is magical (again, see above photo).

    Here is a great video tour of the building by Maíra Lemos, which includes a walkthrough of two of the apartments (note the antechamber in the first). This entire post was to get you ready to watch it. Click here if you can’t see it below. (Also, if I made videos, I would want them to be like this one.)

    Image: Screen grab from the video

  • Median household income vs. health insurance costs

    I just came across this chart from Axios, which relies on data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the Kaiser Family Foundation. It compares median household income against the average cost of employer health insurance (in the United States).

    What it is saying is that, after adjusting for inflation, the median household income has only increased by 2% from 1999 to 2017, whereas employer health insurance costs have increased by some 121% over this same time period.

    The takeaway: Rising healthcare costs are believed to be eating away at take-home pay in the US. As of 2017, health insurance costs were estimated to represent about 30% of the average household income. That feels like a big number to me.