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.
The MIRA Tower in San Francisco is one of my favorite buildings by Studio Gang and probably my favorite tall building under construction right now. Here’s a video and a few photos from the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic, John King:
Now that the MIRA Tower is well underway, I have to say that it looks even better than it did pinned to the walls of their Chicago studio. I can’t wait to see it in person once it’s complete.
I finally did it. Over the weekend I ported this blog over from Tumblr to WordPress. I had been thinking about doing this for a while, but kept putting it off (1) because of the work involved and (2) because I was worried about my permalinks changing. About 35-40% of the visits to this blog come from organic search. I’m on the first page when you Google “real estate developer.”
I had been using Tumblr since I first started writing this daily blog back in August 2013. But it started feeling increasingly limited. It isn’t great for longish-form blogs like this one and it is terrible at handling photos and other embedded content. (I plan to post more of my photography now.) The last straw for me was the inability to blog from a mobile device. I tried that over the weekend and it was bad.
I was also starting to feel like the product was on the decline. Yahoo acquired Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion. Tumblr hadn’t yet figured out how to effectively monetize its platform and Yahoo needed a cool social product in their portfolio. But that deal doesn’t seem to have gone as planned, at least not for Yahoo.
So here I am on WordPress. I’m still working out some of the kinks, but I think we’re almost there. If you’re reading this post in your inbox, it should be business as usual. If you’re reading this post on the web, you’ll notice a few differences (I’m still fine tuning the design).
Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow now that we’re just about setup.
This Planetizen article (2014) by Brent Toderian surfaced over the weekend. It is about tall buildings and why we should be focused more on how they are designed, as opposed to just how tall they are. Brent talks about this in terms of “density done well.”
One of the things that is often misunderstood when it comes to tall buildings is the relationship between height and density. It is often assumed that the two are perfectly correlated; but they’re not, which is why I like this quote from the above article:
“Height and density have a relationship, one that can be over-simplified or mischaracterized, but they aren’t the same thing – you can have density without height, and yes, you can have height without density.” -Brent Toderian
Part of the challenge is that density is a more nuanced metric. Height, on the other hand, is a lot easier to understand. How tall is this building? Oh, it is x storeys tall. But that’s only one piece of the puzzle.
I went snowboarding today. As always it was a lot of fun. If only Toronto had mountains.
Here is a Canadian video about snowboarding from 1985 that, I think, does an excellent job demonstrating how resistant to change we humans can sometimes be.
The video sure sounds silly today, but it probably didn’t in 1985. It aired on the CBC.
I am writing this post on my iPad and there doesn’t appear to be a way to embed the video. The Tumblr app isn’t great. So all you’re getting today is a link.
The general media will pick up these numbers and tell you that there’s been a precipitous decline in the number of new condominium sales. But the reality is that 20,028 units were sold in 2018, which is actually in-line with 10-year averages for this region. 2017 was a particularly frenetic, and unsustainable, year.
The average pre-construction sold price for a new condominium in the former City of Toronto (the core) was $1,117 psf last year, and $921 psf across the broader region. These numbers represent significant double digit increases from the year prior. But again, what I don’t think many people appreciate is that the cost environment has also changed dramatically over the last few years.
Construction costs are way up, as are development charges and a myriad of other pro forma line items. The above numbers are simply a result of cost-plus pricing. Here’s where costs are at and here’s where we need to be to make the project feasible. Margins haven’t increased; in fact, they’ve probably been squeezed for many developers.
I think this is an important topic that deserves more transparency and visibility. So I’m hoping to work with a developer friend of mine and publish something more substantial in the coming months.
Below is a breathtaking video of Rio de Janeiro by Beautiful Destinations. If you haven’t heard of them before, they run a great YouTube channel profiling places and experiences from around the world. I think they also post a new video every week. If you can’t see the video of Rio below, click here.
I’m working on integrating an iPad (back) into my workflow as a developer.
I used an iPad 2 (c. 2011) while I was completing my MBA. I mainly used it for taking notes and saving money on hard copy textbooks. But after it got old and painfully slow, I stopped using it. It was a nice to have, but I never felt the need to replace it with a newer model.
Lately, however, I have been hearing from a number of developer friends that an iPad – along with an Apple Pencil – is simply invaluable for people, like me, who are constantly reviewing, signing and marking up documents and drawings. So I have decided to reevaluate how I work.
I am still getting set up, but I can already see how it is going to dramatically streamline some of my workflows (for one, there will be much less scanning).
I am currently on the hunt for apps that can help with floor plan designs – something that will work like trace paper but with dimensions. We spend a lot time working to make these perfect. It’s the core product, after all. So far I’ve found TracePro by morpholio. Maybe you all know of something better.
Outside of the office, I also think I’ll be able to replace my laptop when it comes to writing this blog and editing photos on the road. There’s Lightroom for iPad and all you need is an SD card reader to download all of your photos to it. (Too bad it isn’t possible to connect my Fujifilm directly.)
I’ll let you know how all of this goes. But if any of you have already gone paperless, please feel free to leave your tips in the comment section below.
The Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in New York City recently commissioned this report on the city’s nightlife economy. The study was completed by Econsult Solutions, the North Highland Company, and Urbane Development. (Full disclosure: I was a teaching assistant for the President of Econsult while at Penn.)
Here’s what they found:
The total economic impact of this industry is the sum of its direct, indirect, and induced economic impacts, as well as the ancillary spending impacts that are adjacent to nightlife activity. In 2016 (the most recent year where standardized datasets were available), the nightlife industry supported 299,000 jobs with $13.1 billion in employee compensation and $35.1 billion in economic output. This economic impact also yielded $697 million in tax revenue for New York City.
They also found that, between 2011 and 2016, the nightlife industry has outpaced the city’s overall economy. Nightlife establishments grew by a 2% annual growth rate. Jobs in the nightlife industry grew by a 5% annual growth rate. And nightlife wages have been rising by 8% annually – about double the average for the city.
I am a firm believer in the value of the nighttime economy. So I’m happy to see more people paying attention to it as of late. For the full report, click here.
Over the weekend I received an Amazon Echo as a gift. I set it up in my kitchen on Sunday morning and had it playing music and telling me the weather in no time. I also setup a couple of “routines” so that when I say things, such as “good morning”, it cycles through the weather, the news, and some other things that I might find valuable at the start of my day. It is pretty neat.
The truth is that I have actually been avoiding voice assistants since they were first launched. As much as I consider myself an early adopter, I have been generally uncomfortable with the idea that my voice commands, and perhaps other things, are being stored by Amazon. There are ways to delete that history, but I am not yet sure if that’s enough for me. Am I going to be served an ad because of something I mention in my own home?
Now that I’ve been trying it out for a few days, I will say that it is incredibly useful. I immediately see the value. I use it to control some of my lights. I ask it things when I’m cooking and my hands are dirty: “Alexa, how badly are the Raptors going to beat the Bucks this Thursday?” And I use it to play music. But is all of this a fair exchange for the creepy feeling that they create?
I’m not sure. But it certainly feels like the future.
Since then, Harry and his firm have been in Time Magazine, have had a solo show at Design Miami, and have been named to the Architectural Digest 100, among many other things.
There has obviously been a lot of talk over the last few years about the impact that Instagram is having on physical spaces and design #IRL (in real life).
Some, or perhaps many, worry that it is having a “homogenizing effect on design.” Everyone is following a kind of global minimalism that looks good on social, but is maybe getting a bit monotonous.
There’s no question that online is having an impact on how we design offline. But I am far less fussed about it than most.
Architecture, design, and art have always reflected the cultural milieu at the time, and it just so happens that we are living through a period where the internet is transforming so much of what we know.
It is always important to question what is going on. But I think Crosby Studios is doing some really great work.
