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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  • The un-hotel

    According to Condé Nast, the coolest hotel trend for 2018 is the “un-hotel.” Here’s what they mean by that: “Instead of many rooms under one roof, these new un-hotels have different rooms in various locations, united only in character and concept.”

    I wrote about one of these un-hotels, the Vipp Shelter, back in the spring. I was interested both in how the company was using their hotel as a kind of shop and how they had adopted this decentralized approach to hospitality.

    Different rooms in different locations has got to create some diseconomies. But the appeal is clear. We are all craving new experiences.

    To me, it feels like a hybrid between an Airbnb and a boutique hotel. You get to “travel like a local”, but you’re still staying with a brand and there’s likely some sort of unifying concept across the portfolio.

    Check out the SWEETS hotel in Amsterdam.

    Image: SWEETS hotel

  • Leading female architects

    Reed Kroloff has a noteworthy piece in the New York Times talking about how architecture is no longer just a ‘gentleman’s profession’. Though less than a third of AIA (American Institute of Architects) members are females, “offices led or owned by women are creating an ever-wider range of public buildings that address architecture and urbanism in new and invigorating ways”, says Kroloff.

    I am thrilled, but not surprised, to see Jeanne Gang of Studio Gang on the list (pictured above). Her firm is the design architect behind our One Delisle proposal. And I was also happy to see Magui Peredo of Estudio Macias Peredo on the list. She is based in Guadalajara and, if you aren’t familiar with her work, I recommend you check it out. I love the materiality of it.

    Image: New York Times

  • Any decision over no decision

    The Hard Thing About Hard Things is a book that I read a number of years ago (Amazon just told me that I purchased it on March 12, 2014), but that I frequently come back to in my mind. 

    One of my favorite themes in the book can be summed up with this quote: “Often any decision, even the wrong decision, is better than no decision.”

    Decisions can be scary. What if I make the wrong decision and things go horribly wrong? Then things are on me.

    In some organizations, indecision may feel like the safest decision. Let’s do one more study just to make sure that we’ve got this right. 

    But in a startup (which is what Ben Horowitz’s book is about) and in organizations that would actually like to grow, innovate, and accomplish things, indecision can mean death. Without decisions, organizations lock up.

    None of this is to say that bad decisions are okay. Executives must make high quality decisions as fast as possible, and as a rule of thumb you probably want to make more good decisions than bad decisions. 

    But speed, momentum, and organizational clarity also matter a great deal. 

    One of the reasons why I mentally come back to this book is because oftentimes I find that things can get hung up on relatively inconsequential decisions. So I like to remind myself that go is better than stop.

    As Ben points out in his book: “The only mistake you cannot make is running out of cash.” And time has a funny way of burning through cash.

  • Housing supply and displacement in San Francisco

    Joe Cortright recently wrote about a study by Kate Pennington (UC Berkeley), which looked at the impact of housing production on legal eviction in San Francisco. The goal was to figure out if new housing supply actually causes displacement.

    To do this, Pennington went block-by-block and looked at new housing projects, as well as over a decades’ worth of eviction notices. 

    The relationship between the two was found to be “statistically indistinguishable from zero.” In other words, the “monthly probability of an eviction notice” does not change when new housing supply is completed nearby.

    Some have been critical of her findings and some have questioned whether legal eviction notices are, in fact, the right proxy for displacement.

    But I agree with Joe Cortright in that this still feels like a meaningful relationship to understand, especially when we’re talking about a tight housing market like San Francisco’s.

    Photo by Matthew Cabret on Unsplash

  • Uber to invest $200 million in Toronto

    Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi was in Toronto today, where he announced that the company plans to invest more than $200 million over the next five years to expand the autonomous vehicle research lab that it already has here in the city. 

    The Toronto outpost of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG) – which is its only international outpost – is led by renowned University of Toronto professor, Raquel Urtasun. She is also the cofounder of the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence and splits her time between Uber and UofT.

    With this investment, Uber also expects to open its first engineering facility in Canada and grow its local headcount to 500, up from the 200 or so it has today. Some of these hires will be local. Some will be international. And some will be transplants from Uber’s other offices.

    Also notable about the announcement is that Khosrowshahi mentioned that he thinks fully autonomous vehicles roaming the streets of our cities is a good 10 years away. But I wonder if that isn’t political PR speak intended not to spook its drivers. So are we closer to the mid-2020′s?

    Either way, as a proud Torontonian and UofT alumnus, I was happy to see this announcement. I think it’s far more exciting than the Apple event that took place earlier this week.

  • Invisible walls

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    This is an interesting working paper by a team of researchers at NYU’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. The paper examines the relationship between urban density and organized violence, first in Colombia and then within a sample of 200 global cities.

    The finding is that organized violence actually increases the population density of the surrounding areas within a city because it creates a kind of “invisible wall” – effectively a no-go zone.

    This makes perfect intuitive sense, but it’s not something I ever considered. Geography and other natural constraints typically drive density. Think about the island of Manhattan. But so too can invisible walls.

    For the full working paper, click here.

    Photo by Joel Duncan on Unsplash

  • Microsoft Canada moving to CIBC Square

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    Today, Microsoft announced that it will be moving its Canadian headquarters from Mississauga to the new CIBC Square development that is currently under construction in downtown Toronto (and rendered above). 

    According to RENX, Microsoft will occupy 132,000 square feet across 4 floors in the first tower. Occupancy is scheduled for September 2020.

    I love this project. The design architect is WilkinsonEyre. And there’s going to be an elevated one-acre park spanning the rail corridor between the project’s two towers.

    But it’s also noteworthy because it is an example of a major suburban tenant deciding to relocate to a transit-oriented urban environment. (I have a post on this somewhere.) 

    Image: WilkinsonEyre

  • How we make the decisions that matter most

    I’m listening to the below podcast right now with Sonal Chokshi, Chris Dixon, and Steven Johnson. Steven recently published a new book called, Farsighted: How We Make the Decisions That Matter Most. If you can’t see the embedded podcast below, click here.

    [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/497128947″ params=”color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”300″ iframe=”true” /]

    It is about the big and meaningful decisions that we make as individuals – such as where to live or who to marry – as well as the big and meaningful decisions that we make as a collective – such as how to plan a city or fight climate change. But most importantly, it is about how we can get better at them.

    Supposedly, part of the science (and art) behind deliberative decision making is using tricks to get our minds to see problems and their complexities differently. That could involve scenario planning and even considering the weirdest possible outcomes. In fact, Steven finds a lot of value in fictional storytelling.

    There could also be implications for city building. Tech is allowing us to collect a lot more data about the ways in which our cities operate today. But as we get better at running complex simulations, we should also get a lot better at understanding the long-term implications of our decisions.

    I may just have to get Steven’s new book.

  • Tridel unveils smart condominium in South Core

    A few weeks ago, Canadian developer Tridel unveiled its first “smart condominium” at Ten York – a recently completed 69 storey building in the South Core neighborhood of Toronto. Above is an archive photo of the building under construction. I chose this one because its siting between the Gardiner Expressway (left) and Harbour Street (right) is also noteworthy.

    Smart anything is one of those tech buzzwords that is, I know, starting to feel vapid. But Tridel has done some interesting things here with their Tridel Connect platform (a collaboration with SmartONE Solutions). And if you happen to also be in the business of designing and constructing multi-family buildings, I think you’ll find it to be a useful case study.

    At Ten York, you can now use your phone as a key fob. People buzzing up are shown to you on your wall pad so you can confirm identity. The suite entry doors use digital locks, which means you use an access code instead of a key. Additional codes can be created for family and friends or for service providers like dog walkers and cleaners. You’re also given a log of who has come and gone. And of course there’s an automated parcel delivery system.

    If you’d like to see all of the features in the live, I suggest you take a look at the “b-roll video” that was included as part of their press release. Tridel is excellent at implementing new technologies and I know that they frequently reserve test suites in their projects to try some of them out. This is a great thing for the industry and for consumers.

    Image: Tridel

  • Unzipped wall on King Street West

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    Last night I checked out the Unzipped Toronto exhibition, which is the relocated Serpentine Pavilion (pictured above) that was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group in 2016. 

    It was initially housed in Hyde Park London, but it’s now on King Street West Toronto. Westbank purchased the “unzipped wall” after it was installed in London and supposedly it will eventually find a permanent home in Vancouver.

    The official opening of Unzipped Toronto is September 15th, 2018. It will be free and open to the public. If you’d like to get a complimentary ticket, you can do that here. 

    The timing of all this lines up with condo sales for Bjarke Ingels’ first project in Toronto. I believe that will be starting this fall. And I am sure they will end up setting some new records for the King West submarket.