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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  • Blurring the line between grade and below

    January 10, 2026 · View original

    I’m writing this post from the concourse level of Place Ville Marie Esplanade in Montréal (also known as Galerie PVM) while I wait for my next meeting. Like the PATH in Toronto, the space I’m in is part of an underground network of restaurants, shops, and circulation spaces that runs through downtown Montréal.

    But what makes the space I’m in right now particularly noteworthy is that I’m sitting beneath an enormous glass roof supported by 18 glass beams measuring 15 meters long and 0.9 meters tall. So, while I am below grade, I have a clear view of The Ring, Mont-Royal, and the street life happening above me.

    Underground “malls” like Toronto’s PATH and Montréal’s RÉSO were a somewhat obvious urban solution to inclement weather. But they are often criticized for sucking life underground and making the streets at grade feel dead.

    When I’ve toured my American friends through Toronto’s CBD in the past, I’ve heard comments like, “How come you have no retail downtown? It feels dead.” And then I have to cheekily say, “Oh, well, we actually have tons of it, we just decided to hide it all underground so it’s harder to find and confusing to navigate.”

    The way you start to counteract these negatives — lack of street life and challenging wayfinding — is to do what Sid Lee Architecture did masterfully here at Place Ville Marie. To the extent possible, you make grade and below grade feel like one space.

  • Toronto to Montréal by train

    January 9, 2026 · View original

    Yesterday morning, I took the train from Toronto to Montréal. I’m here for one night for a few meetings. I love trains. You can show up right before departure, the seats are more spacious, and they go downtown to downtown. Plus, there’s something romantic to me about whizzing through the landscape. But currently, this trip takes just over 5 hours once you factor in the above stops (see cover photo). That’s too long in this day and age, so Canada is, as I understand it, working on a new high-speed rail solution called Alto.

    The first phase will connect Ottawa to Montréal (construction is expected to start in 2029), and a subsequent phase will connect Ottawa to Toronto. The top speed will be around 300 km/h, which I’m guessing will result in an effective speed closer to 200 km/h when you factor in stops and any speed limits required near urban centers. With this, the goal is to bring the journey from Toronto to Montréal down to around 3 hours.

    One thing to keep in mind is that Ottawa does not lie on the fastest route between Toronto and Montréal; it adds about 70 km. But it’s of course necessary. In theory, an express route with no stops running TGV or Shinkansen-like trains could bring the journey time down closer to 2 hours. But that’s not what is being planned from what I have read. Regardless, 3 hours is still a big deal and a meaningful improvement. It makes the trip faster than flying, and certainly faster than driving.

    Could current drive times ultimately change with autonomous vehicles? Maybe, but it’s unlikely to be by this much. I hate long road trips and the same would be true even if a robot were driving me. So I look forward to one day — in my 50s? — doing this journey in 3 hours. If we could get it down to 2 hours and change, that much better. That’s a trip worth taking for a night out or just to stock up on bagels.

  • The 4 Toronto projects the Globe and Mail is watching in 2026

    January 8, 2026 · View original

    Dave Leblanc (“The Architourist”) just published this article in the Globe and Mail talking about the four Toronto building projects that he’ll be watching in 2026. And number one on his list is none other than One Delisle (though maybe it’s intended to be in no particular order):

    > Announced back in 2017, this 16-sided, 47-storey, circular tower was penned by Jeanne Gang, an award-winning Chicago-based architect and educator. Interestingly, while Ms. Gang holds the record of “tallest building in the world designed by a woman,” the 101-floor/363 metres-high St. Regis Chicago (hotel and residences), she is better known as a socially responsible designer sensitive to the pedestrian realm and for her love of biophilic design, which connects end-users to nature. > > When I interviewed Ms. Gang back in 2021, I asked if One Delisle had been inspired by a pine cone or an artichoke. “Both an artichoke and a pine cone – and a sunflower for that matter – there’s a spiralling organization of the seeds, the petals,” she said. “It’s nature solving a packing problem.” > > With the people-packing (occupancy) set for this year or next, I visited the site last week. And, unlike some projects, it holds true to Ms. Gang’s original sketch. And the way the base is organized to project west onto Delisle Avenue means Janet Rosenberg & Studio’s landscaping will make a real impact.

    Dave is right to point out the lag between sales and shovels. All four of the projects on his list were (zoning) approved, designed, sold, and financed during a very different real estate market. And so it is that market that is right now bestowing this level of architecture on Toronto.

    2026 is going to be an exciting year for One Delisle. The tower will be topped out shortly, with the curtain wall cladding following closely behind. And drywall is already going up in the suites on the lower floors. This is the year where things really come together. I can’t wait.

  • Now you can bet on real estate without actually buying it

    January 7, 2026 · View original

    Prediction markets have become a big deal, presumably because a lot of people like betting. But functionally and economically, prediction markets are also supposed to be about information discovery. If you get enough people researching, analyzing, and thinking about something, eventually the “wisdom of the crowds” should prevail and something resembling the truth should, in theory, emerge. The stereotypical use for a prediction market (also referred to as an event market) is a binary bet. Will this happen? Yes or no.

    But now, you can also bet on real estate prices:

    > Parcl, the real-time housing data and onchain real estate platform, and Polymarket, the world’s largest prediction market, today announced a partnership to bring Parcl’s daily housing price indices to a new suite of real estate prediction markets on Polymarket. > > The partnership will introduce housing-focused markets that settle against Parcl’s published price indices, giving traders and analysts an objective, data-driven reference point for forecasting where home prices are headed. Polymarket will list and operate the markets; Parcl will provide independent index data and settlement reference values designed for transparent verification. > > Housing is the largest asset class in the world, but it’s still hard to express a clean view on price direction without taking on property-level complexity, leverage, or long timelines. By combining Parcl’s daily indices with Polymarket’s event-market structure, the partnership offers a simpler way to trade housing outcomes, with clear settlement rules and public, auditable resolution data.

    Here’s a specific example: What will the median home value in Miami be on February 1?

    Right now, the market seems to believe it will be greater than $1.1 million. This is fascinating. Among many other things, it gives us a clear and real-time sense of market sentiment. But as Matt Levine wrote in Money Stuff, it also gives homeowners the ability to hedge and diversify their housing market risk. If you live in a cold, high-tax place and you’re super envious of everyone moving to Miami, you could, of course, just sell your house and move there too. But if you don’t want to do that and you still want to participate in its growth, now you can just bet on its home prices using this derivatives market.

    Cover photo by Cody Board on Unsplash

  • Sometimes architecture is irrelevant

    January 6, 2026 · View original

    Tokyo is a city of contrasts. It is both hyper-modern and steeped in tradition. It is known for art, architecture, design, and fashion, yet it’s also a city that — through its built form — makes the argument that architecture is irrelevant.

    While the city certainly has countless examples of remarkable architecture, the vast majority of its buildings are arguably just that — buildings. They are a nondescript part of the urban fabric that give back through their siting, scale, rhythm, and mix of uses rather than their raw architectural qualities. Sometimes you may not even be able to see the building past all the signage.

    If you were looking for a city to support the argument that urbanism matters more than architecture, I think Tokyo would be a good place to start.

    What Tokyo does so successfully is ground-up urbanism (as opposed to top-down master planning). Flexible permissions, mixed-use zones by default, and an orientation around rail have allowed Tokyo to organically evolve into one of the most livable global cities on the planet.

    In fact, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find any city of this magnitude that is simultaneously this livable. Which makes me wonder: Are we spending too much time worrying about architecture?

    It is common for big cities to have design review processes. These typically consist of a panel of experts who evaluate new development proposals based on their architectural and urban design qualities. The comments that come back might suggest that a long facade be visually “broken up,” or that additional stepbacks be introduced in order to mitigate the impact on the street and improve sky views. It’s a process that can be lengthy.

    But what Tokyo tells us is that, while architecture matters a great deal, it may not be the most important thing to focus on from a city-building standpoint. What matters more is the space and relationship between these buildings, the uses and permissions granted to their occupants, and the overall relationship to transit infrastructure. Here, urbanism is more critical than architecture.

    If you buy this argument, then design review panels aren’t actually our most pressing priority. Instead, what we should have is a kind of urbanism review panel. But rather than react to new developments, its job would be to go out and proactively identify and fix bad urbanism: this street is too narrow, this street is too wide, OMG what were we thinking here, and so on.

    Then, when a new development proposal comes along, this panel would get out of the way and let the market decide what it wants to be. It would trust that it had done its job and laid the right preconditions for good urbanism to emerge.

    Sounds weird and unsettling, doesn’t it? Except, we might be pleasantly surprised by what it would lead to.

    Cover photo by Fred Nassar on Unsplash

  • How 300,000 commuters built a retail destination

    Why retail at Toronto’s Union Station was inevitable

    January 5, 2026 · View original

    Good morning, and welcome back to work and school.

    I remember a moment very early on in my development career when I was sitting in a boardroom with dozens of “gray hairs” and the topic of Toronto’s Union Station revitalization came up. Specifically, the proposed plan to dig out a new basement and add significant retail throughout the station. This was before construction had started in 2010 and it was considered a rather novel move.

    At the time, Union Station was essentially a transit hub with a few ancillary retail offerings like Jugo Juice and Cinnabon (for the good smells). My comment was along the lines of “Finally, more retail, what a great idea,” but everyone looked at me like I had three heads. The consensus in the room was, “It’ll never work, Brandon.” And what was implied was that I just didn’t have enough real estate experience to get that.

    But what I didn’t understand was their reaction. Union Station is the busiest mobility hub in the country. Hundreds of thousands of people pass through it each day. Today, I think the number is somewhere around 300,000 people. This is like the entire population of Markham or Vaughan passing through one building every single day. It’s hard to imagine a better anchor than rail. Surely, if you put retail in front of this foot traffic, you’ll be able to monetize it!

    Fast forward to today.

    Over the weekend, Bianca and I took the subway to a Raptors game. As we walked through the concourse, the first thing I said to her was, “I really love what they have done here. Union finally feels like a station fit for a global city like Toronto.” It feels grand, there are global retailers like Uniqlo, Shake Shack, Arabica, and many others, and the wayfinding seems to only be getting better. The pathway to Scotiabank Arena felt deliberate — finally.

    I have no firsthand experience with the revitalization program or the leasing at Union Station. So I couldn’t tell you quantitatively how the stores and restaurants are performing. I also recognize that construction was massively delayed and ran over budget. But anecdotally, I can say that you do have to wait a long time for a burger from Shake Shack, even late at night. The place is always busy.

    Union Station seems well on its way to being a commercial success, and it seems to be establishing itself not only as a mixed-use rail hub, but as a destination in downtown Toronto. If any of you have firsthand experience, please drop a comment below.

    Cover photo from Toronto Union

  • Platform > sponsor

    January 4, 2026 · View original

    I don’t remember signing up for Thesis Driven’s newsletter, but I’m on it, and it does sound like something I would do. Their latest post, the first of this year by Brad Hargreaves, is called “Seven Real Estate Predictions for 2026.” And I’d like to draw your attention to the last one. Here it is verbatim:

    > The word “sponsor” has historically implied episodic activity: raise capital, do a deal, return capital, repeat. That framing made sense when real estate investing was primarily about financial engineering and asset selection. > > It makes far less sense in a world where alpha increasingly comes from operations. > > By 2026, I think the most sophisticated real estate operators will stop being thought of—and thinking of themselves—as sponsors at all. They will be platforms. And platforms are underwritten differently. > > Rather than being evaluated solely on IRRs and realized multiples, these businesses will increasingly be assessed through a private equity lens: EBITDA generation, revenue streams, margin stability, customer (tenant) retention, technology leverage, scalability of systems, and durability of management teams. Deal performance will still matter, but as proof points—not as the whole story. > > The consequences? Platform economics reward longer-term thinking, reinvestment, and organizational maturity. They also open the door to entirely different capital partners, exit paths, and valuation frameworks that look a lot more like growth equity than traditional real estate promote structures.

    This really resonates with me. Sponsor, promoter, and developer — these names have historically reflected the entrepreneurial and deal-specific nature of real estate. It’s also one of the reasons why project brands typically overshadow developer brands; the focus is on that one deal.

    A good deal is a good deal. We all get that. Sometimes a single deal is all that is needed to change your life. But as a general rule, I am much more interested in longer-term thinking, an approach that compounds over time, the opportunity to continually refine a craft, and the growth of brand equity.

    In Brad’s words, that is “platform over sponsor.”

    Cover photo by Fabio Sasso on Unsplash

  • Instagram, AI, and the crisis of authenticity

    What’s the future of Instagram in a world of endless AI-generated content?

    January 3, 2026 · View original

    Sometime last year, Instagram changed its bottom menu bar to the following:

    Bookended by the home button and the user profile button are now video reels, DMs, and the explore page. The create a new post button, which was formerly here in the center, was moved up to the top of the screen in a far less conspicuous place. These changes felt weird at first, but they were, of course, based on real user data. What people do on Instagram these days is watch reels and then share them with their friends. The era of posting beautiful square photos with nice filter edits died a long time ago.

    But even today’s world of video reels and TikTok videos is in massive flux. AI is flooding the system, and it’s impossible to know what is “real” anymore. The name of the game with social media used to be authenticity. This is how individuals gained distribution control from institutions and large brands; they were more real and authentic. But today, we are in a world where AI-generated content can be entirely indistinguishable from “real” or captured content.

    I have felt this change myself. As someone who has been a hobby photographer since undergrad some 20+ years ago, I have noticed myself grabbing my Fujifilm camera a lot less over the last year. Instead, I’ve just been using my phone and spending more time playing around with AI. And, of course, it’s not just me. I see my architect and real estate friends using AI to test concepts, create presentation renderings, and more. So, where does all of this leave a platform like Instagram that was designed around individuals creating and sharing their own content?

    A few days ago, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, published these twenty slides about how the company sees the world as we head into 2026. They’re an interesting read because they mark a shift in messaging. Previously, the narrative was all about connecting the world and empowering creators. Now it’s about labeling, mediating, and controlling this new world. In the words of Silicon Valley journalist and entrepreneur Om Malik, “deep down, Instagram is frightened.”

    But there is a path forward (excerpt also from Malik):

    > It starts by verifying who is behind an account, embedding provenance in media, and rewarding trust signals. Over time, Meta may tighten control and aim to be an identity broker for everyone. Instagrams want [sic] you to be prepared for this new era of tighter control over identity, authenticity, and content provenance.

    One of the most important slides in Mosseri’s post for me is this one here:

    I’ve been arguing for years that crypto has an important role to play in a world filled with AI. When nobody knows what is “real” anymore, there’s value in being able to say with finality that, hey, this thing over here is authentic and comes from this source. Social media (web2) showed us that people would rather tie something back to an individual instead of a large faceless brand. AI is disrupting this chain of provenance, but I think crypto will bring us back to it, somehow. Whether Instagram will be a part of it, of course, remains to be seen.

    Cover photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

  • My predictions for 2026

    From the Toronto condo turning point to the bursting of the AI bubble

    January 2, 2026 · View original

    The best part about making predictions for a year ahead is that at the end of the year you get to look back with humility on what you were thinking at the time and realize how much you missed and how different things turned out.

    So, what might happen in 2026?

    – Condominium development in Toronto: I think 2026 will be an important turning point year. If I keep saying this, at some point I’ll be right, right? 2026 is the first year where we will start to see new condominium completions from the last cycle fall off significantly. Last year (2025), we were projecting nearly 32,000 condominium home completions. This year, it’s projected to drop to ~17,487, with 2027 falling off even further as we head to almost no new supply (based on the current pipeline). What I think this means is that the first half of 2026 will still be painful as the market absorbs new inventory and the inventory from 2025 (including unsold units, units in default, and other scenarios), but that things will start to stabilize and feel better toward the end of 2026 and into 2027. New supply will now be delivering below the 10-year average for the first time in many years. – Purpose-built rental development in Toronto: The story since the condominium market turned in 2022 has been the flip to rental. But not all developers and sites can make this switch and, as I have argued before, the numbers suggest that it won’t be enough to offset our dwindling new condominium supply. That said, I think rental rates will remain soft throughout 2026. The supply crunch we’re headed toward will need a bit more time to be felt by the market. In the meantime, we will see the highly-amenitized purpose-built rental model fail. The strategy of using over-the-top amenities to drive high rents will finally fall apart in the current market environment. In its place will be a flight to value: boring rental models that offer a quality housing experience at reasonable prices. – Boutique end-user projects: In markets like Toronto and Vancouver, where the development landscape remains unfavourable, we will see a continued focus on smaller projects and projects catering exclusively to end-users. This demand segment is the most resilient and this re-orientation will help the next development cycle start on more solid footing. – Foreign buyer ban: The Canadian federal government will relax the foreign buyer ban (which is set to expire on January 1, 2027) and allow foreigners to buy pre-construction homes. There are already rumblings about this so I acknowledge this isn’t that bold a prediction. But beyond just relaxing the ban, I think government will start actively courting foreign capital to help solve our housing needs. – AI bubble: 2026 will be the year that the AI bubble bursts. Not because AI isn’t powerful tech that will continue to change the world, but because we are, in the words of investor Howard Marks, in an “inflection bubble.” This is different from a fake bubble like Tulip Mania where there was ultimately no underlying reason for tulips to be valued so highly. An inflection bubble is where we get the direction right (AI is a big deal), but the magnitude wrong (shit, we overspent on CapEx). Not every AI company can and will survive. There will only be a select few once the dust settles. And since AI seems to be what’s driving the market these days, I think the market will close the end of this year down (measured as the performance of the S&P 500). – Continued AI adoption: That said, AI will continue to change the way we all live and work. While this is going to put some people out of a job, my bias is an optimistic one in that new technologies tend to create new opportunities and generally grow the overall economy. However, I think that at least two enormous internet-type shifts are underway. One, AI is creating a massive productivity leverage for the people and firms that know how to harness it and, two, the backend of the global financial market is moving “onchain.” These are profound shifts that I, unfortunately, think will lead to even more social and political division in the short term. A government somewhere in the world will respond with a universal basic income. – AI bubble impact on real estate: An AI bubble bursting will generally help the real estate market as investors look for returns somewhere else, with the exception of the data center market. It will also create downward pressure on interest rates (which, in the US, remain the highest they have been since the Great Recession in 2008). As we know, lower rates help boost the values of highly-levered assets like real estate. – AR/VR/AI for design and construction coordination: I was blown away the first time I tried Apple Vision Pro. It’s a magical experience. But it has failed as a consumer product and who knows what Apple will launch next. Regardless, this year we will see clear use cases emerge for AR, VR, and smart glasses. I’d like to see the problems of design and construction coordination get immediately solved because they’re massive and costly and they have yet to be solved. – Mainstream tokenization: In yesterday’s post, I spoke about the lack of a breakout consumer-facing web3 app in 2025 (with honourable mention going to the Base app). But perhaps one of the big stories of last year was stablecoins entering the mainstream. Most people now agree they have achieved product-market fit. This is crypto solving real problems (cheap/fast cross-border remittances, payments, etc) with users not needing to think or care about the underlying blockchain technology. In 2026, we will see a noteworthy office building or apartment building get tokenized on the Ethereum blockchain. – Autonomous vehicles: Last year, I predicted that autonomous vehicles were going to have a year, and it certainly felt that way. This year will be the first year that I ride in one. I came close on a layover in San Francisco in December. I considered leaving the airport and taking one to Apple Park. But I would have been cutting it too close. In 2026, we will see an insurer refuse to cover a human driver for the first time, marking a clear global shift toward autonomy. Already, none of us should be driving cars anymore looking at current safety data. – Polycentric world: Some have argued that 2025 marked the end of globalization. I’m not sure that is accurate. I think it marked the end of the US-led post-war world order and the acceleration of a more polycentric world order. It was the start of greater US insularity. In 2026, Canada will start to see the benefits of this shift. What it is doing is shaking us out of complacency and forcing us to look east to Europe and west to Asia, as opposed to just south to the US.

    What are your predictions for the year ahead?

  • Happy New Year

    A review of my 2025 predictions

    January 1, 2026 · View original

    Happy New Year! And welcome to another year of this daily blog. (In August of this year, we’ll enter the 14th year of this daily practice.)

    Exactly a year ago, I published a post talking about what might happen in 2025. It was last year’s prediction post. Today, let’s see how I did.

    – Real estate development: I admitted that I had been overly optimistic in terms of how soon the market would reset (specifically Toronto). But I did still argue that 2025 would be an important turning point in terms of people capitulating and more legacy assets/deals getting reset. I think we did start to see this. We looked at a number of receivership sites and came across many instances where a landowner would take 40-50% of what they paid. The problem is that the market still hasn’t fully reset and we’re still in the midst of absorbing our current housing supply pipeline. So while it sounds nice to buy something for $0.40 on the dollar, what do you then do with it? – Return-to-office: I said that we would see the average weekly occupancy index in downtown Toronto reach 90% by the end of 2025 (it was 73% when I wrote the post a year ago). As of November 2025, it was 82%. Not quite. – Autonomous vehicles: I reversed my position (relative to the prior year) and said that autonomous vehicles are way further along than most people thought, at least at the time. And boy, was 2025 a great year for Waymo. It feels like they’re now in scaling mode. – EU carbon permits: A year ago, they were priced at €71.98 per tonne of carbon dioxide, compared to an all-time high of €105.73 in February of 2023. I guessed that they’d be between €90 and €100 by the end of 2025. Right now they’re at €87.28. – Crypto: I thought that 2025 would be a good year for crypto given the MAGA movement’s support for it. For a while, it seemed like that would be the case. But if I look at the price of Ethereum, it’s down 15.21% year-to-date. So not what I predicted. But I continued to dollar-cost average. – Web3: I went on to predict that we would see a breakout web3 consumer app in 2025. I also mentioned that I was impressed by NFT marketplaces like Rodeo. Well, Rodeo has gone on to mostly die and I’m not sure it would be fair to say that there was anything that crossed over into the mainstream. I’m going to give myself a zero for this one. But if I had to pick something, I would say that Coinbase’s “Base App” represents meaningful progress. Base continues to dominate the Ethereum Layer 2 market. It’s fast and cheap.

    I wish you all a healthy, prosperous, and fulfilling 2026.

    Cover photo by Jamie Fenn on Unsplash