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 double opt-in introduction rule

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    I am a fan of the double opt-in introduction. I am guilty of not doing it, but I’ve been hearing of this approach from a few people and I think it makes a lot of sense. And it is probably only going to make more sense as we all become even more connected.

    The way the double opt-in introduction works is that before you make a cold introduction, you simply ask both parties if they would like to be introduced to the other party. If one party doesn’t opt-in, then you don’t make the introduction. Simple.

    The reason this is so valuable is because, without this double opt-in framework, it can be easy to get sucked into a call or meeting that you may not want to be a part of, which in turn means that you’re not in control of and managing your own schedule. Somebody else is doing that for you.

    This may seem harsh, but as we’ve discussed before on the blog, there’s a ton of value in saying no. We all need filters, especially today. And if we don’t say no often enough, we’re all bound to run out of time for the things that really matter and that we should be focusing our attention on.

    The underlying principle behind the double opt-in introduction is that it’s a lot easier to say no to an introducer than it is to a person you have just been introduced to: “Sorry, I have no interest in talking and/or meeting you.” Now that’s not very nice.

    Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

  • Rules are meant to be broken

    Things are busy right now as we get ready to unveil Junction House this fall and so I’m a bit behind on my news and reading. 

    I just finished reading Alex Bozikovic’s Globe article on BIG’s new KING Toronto project (official name). It is an interesting piece about creating villages and a sense of community in new developments – something that Bjarke Ingels has been focused on for many years. 

    Below are a few renderings of the project. I’m excited for this one. And as I said before on the blog, I am sure it will be precedent setting in a number of ways.

    One remark from the article that stood out for me is this one here:

    Still: The design breaks a lot of rules. Which is why it took two years of difficult negotiations with city planners to reach approvals. “We wanted it to be quieter,” says Lynda MacDonald, a senior Toronto planner who was involved in overseeing the project. “It’s a very large project, and we wanted to make sure it respected the character of King Street.”

    I am often asked why we don’t see more innovation in architecture and real estate. There are a number of reasons for that. One of them is risk. Development is in many ways a game of risk mitigation. 

    But another reason is that when you try and do something unconventional that disrupts the status quo, you also call into question the typical planning criteria used to evaluate projects. And that may slow you down.

    Alex accurately points out in his article that we are used to doing things around here in one of two ways:

    The King Street project is also an ambitious experiment with urban design. There are basically two species of tower in Toronto: a midrise slab of six to 10 storeys, which steps back at the top; and a “tower-and-podium,” a model borrowed from Vancouver that combines a fat, squared-off base (or “podium”) with a tall, skinny residential tower. Both can work, but can also create the big-box blandness that many people dislike about new urban housing.

    None of this is to suggest that we should ignore the character of a particular area. It is critical and I believe that KING Toronto has been mindful of that. 

    But I also firmly believe in ambitious city building and I think there’s no question that KING Toronto is doing exactly that.

    Images: Hayes Davison via Dezeen and courtesy of Westbank

  • Building a better São Paulo

    São Paulo, and Brazil more broadly, are near the top of my list of places that I want to visit. 

    Starting in the 1930s, Brazil became an early adopter of modern architecture with projects like the Ministry of Education and Health Building. It was one of the first countries outside of Europe to push modernism.

    So I am overdue for a tour of Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa’s work.

    Here is a short 7 minute video from Monocle about some of the ways in which São Paulo is reinventing its city center.

    It is for the launch of their new book, The Monocle Guide to Building Better Cities, and it got me excited about visiting the city (and country) sometime soon.

  • Our social connectedness

    Economists at Facebook, Harvard, Princeton and NYU recently analyzed anonymous Facebook data in order to study our social connectedness. The New York Times’ Upshot wrote about it here and it is a must read.

    There are a number of interesting takeaways from the study. One of them is that geography, distance, and political boundaries actually matter a great deal when it comes to our connectedness. 

    In other words, Americans are more like to be connected to someone nearby – within county or state boundaries – than they are to someone further away who may be infinitely more similar. This may seem somewhat intuitive.

    But at the same time, having a dispersed network also suggests certain things. Here’s the relationship that they discovered:

    These networks are important in part because of other patterns that are correlated with them. Counties with more dispersed networks — where a smaller share of Facebook friends are located nearby, or among the nearest 50 million people — are on average richer, more educated and have longer life expectancies. Places that are more closely connected to one another also have more migration, trade and patent citations between them.

    Counties that are more geographically isolated in the index are more likely to have lower labor force participation and economic mobility, and they have higher rates of teenage births. Some of the most economically distressed parts of the country appear to be the most disconnected: Among the 10 U.S. counties with the highest share of friends within 50 miles, six are in Kentucky.

    Again, it is worth checking out the full article. There’s also an interactive map to play around with.

  • Less is a bore

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    Architect Robert Venturi died this week at his home in Philadelphia. He was 93. Here is his obituary from the New York Times.

    Robert Venturi was, along with his partner and wife Denise Scott Brown, a central figure in 20th century American architecture. He is often referred to as one of if not the father of postmodernism. But apparently he wasn’t too keen on that moniker.

    Venturi is famous for writing both “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture” and “Learning from Las Vegas”. But his firm also employed somewhere around 100 people at its peak.

    Venturi was critical of modernism for its hatred of ornament and for its purist belief that “less is more.” He argued that decoration had long been used in architecture to convey meaning, hence the response: “less is a bore.”

    Out of his work in Las Vegas came the notable comparison between a “duck” and the “decorated shed.” See above. The duck is modernism. The building itself becomes the symbol. No ornament is needed.

    The decorated shed, on the other hand, uses signage and other ornament to convey its symbolic qualities. The building itself can then be fairly nondescript, which also makes it flexible to a variety of different uses.

    This decorated shed approach is what guided the firm’s work and in 1991 he was awarded the Pritzker Prize in Architecture. 

    I love that he tried to have the award go equally to his partner Denise Scott Brown. The jury declined his request but he still used “we”, instead of “I”, throughout the entirety of his acceptance speech. Good.

    Thank you, Robert Venturi, for all of your contributions to architecture, as well as to the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Electric scooters in Los Angeles

    Bloomberg Businessweek just published this article summarizing the impact that Bird and its electric scooters are having on Los Angeles. Here are a couple of highlights:

    – Bird launched a year ago and is, today, valued at around $2 billion.

    – The company has around 15,000 scooters on the road in Los Angeles. We already know that this is making some/many people grouchy.

    – The cost to rent a scooter is $1 plus $0.15 a minute.

    – LA has an incentive program in place that allows Bird to expand its fleet within low-income areas. Still, their scooters tend to be concentrated in wealthier areas of the city.

    – Beverly Hills is trying to figure out how to handle/regulate these scooters and currently has a 6 month ban in place.

    – Supposedly, you can ride a Bird through West Hollywood but you’re not allowed to park it anywhere.

    The company is based in Santa Monica, so it’s not surprising that they have such a stronghold in the LA market. Still, there appears to be a lot of latent demand for this kind of mobility.

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    According the US Department of Energy, almost 60% of vehicle trips in the US last year were less than 6 miles. And around 40% were less than 2 miles. 

    So these “last mile scooters” do appear to have a lot of utility. Do any of you regularly use an electric scooter to get around?

  • 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