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.

Subscribe

  • Centralized taxi branding vs. decentralized ride fulfillment

    Back in 2013, when this blog was in its infancy, I argued that Toronto needs a consistent taxi brand. Since nobody was reading the blog at the time, I am sure that most of you have never read this post. I even forgot about it, until last night when I posted this photo of Hong Kong to Instagram:

    It reminded me of the role that taxis play in city branding. This photo is clearly of Hong Kong. But take away the taxis in the foreground and I would really have to think in order to identity it. I would then be searching for street signs and looking to see what side of the road the cars are driving on.

    Now, a few things have changed since 2013. Back then I didn’t have the same appreciation for decentralized ride hailing (Uber and Lyft), though I did have the same distaste for the taxi cartel. And I recognize that there is a tension between centralized taxi branding and a decentralized approach to ride fulfillment. 

    I’m not exactly sure how to solve this problem, but maybe it gets easier with autonomous vehicles and probable changes to the way consumers own, or don’t own cars. I believe it’s important for places and cities to have specificity. If you have any thoughts, please leave a comment below. 

    (I am trying to respond to all comments on this blog, because I’m finding it impossible to respond to all blog related emails. Sorry.)

  • What it’s like to live in darkness

    The New York Times recently asked its readers – specifically the ones who live near or above the article circle – what it is like to live in darkness for part of the year. 

    Almost 700 people responded with photos and stories, both of which can be found here. The photos are absolutely spectacular. Make sure you watch the video.

    I love snow and I love being in the mountains, but I can only imagine what it must be like to live for months with no (or minimal) light. It must do a number on your mental state.

    At the same time, there is something so sublime and beautiful about these places. I can’t say I’m ready to move, but I would like to experience it one day.

  • Multi-Unit Housing in Urban Cities: From 1800 to Present Day

    I just ordered a copy of Multi-Unit Housing in Urban Cities: From 1800 to Present Day by Katy Chey. I figured this was a book that we should have hanging around our office. I also like to support the Daniels Faculty.

    The book covers the following multi-unit housing typologies:

    • Back-to-backs in Birmingham
    • Tenements in London
    • Haussmann apartments in Paris
    • Tenements in New York
    • Tong lau in Hong Kong
    • Perimeter block, linear block and block-edge in Berlin
    • Perimeter block and solitaire in Amsterdam
    • Space-enclosing structures in Beijing
    • Kyosho jutaku in Tokyo
    • High-rises in Toronto

    In addition to each typology, the book analyzes the connection between the housing type and the city. Why did certain typologies flourish where they did and how have they helped to define their city?

    It reminds me of what I was trying to do with some of my recent posts about Hong Kong’s typical tower plan, albeit with far less rigor than what I am sure has been applied to this book.

    I am also curious to read what has been written about high-rises in Toronto. It goes to show you just how defining the current real estate cycle has been for this city. That’s our multi-unit housing typology.

    Image: Daniels Faculty. My multi-unit home made the book.

  • Why east sides are often poorer than west sides

    In a recent Spacing article, called Pollution and the fall and rise of urbanism, Dylan Reid argues that one of the reasons why urbanism declined in the 20th century was because of industrial pollution. (There are, of course, other contributing factors beyond just pollution.)

    This article is the first time I have come across a study supporting the widely held belief that pollution and prevailing windows are the reasons for why the east sides of many former industrial cities are poorer than the west sides. Here is more on that from the article:

    People recognized and understood that pollution had an impact on them, and they tried to avoid it if they could afford to do so. Have you noticed, for example, how in so many cities (Toronto included), the east side is poorer than the west side? It’s because the prevailing winds in Europe and North America are west to east, and they blow pollution to the east side. A fascinating study by economists Stephan Heblich, Alex Trew and Yanos Zylbergerg quantified this effect, identifying how 19th century pollution was dispersed eastwards and showing that the most polluted areas were also the poorest. 

    What the authors discovered is that not only did pollution cause a geographic sorting based on wealth, but that there’s also a certain degree of persistence to it. This makes sense if you think about it. Pollution in our cities has waned significantly and yet here we are still remarking and talking about east vs. west.

    It goes to show you just how long lasting the impacts of our city building decisions can be.

  • How should mid-sized cities really compete?

    Jennifer Keesmaat – the former chief planner of Toronto – recently published an article in Maclean’s called: Toronto’s unaffordable. Why can’t Halifax or Saskatoon take advantage? Her argument: 

    “The hard truth is that many mid-sized cities won’t win the future because they are stuck on a suburban growth model. If the future is green and walkable, they will be left behind.”

    The model city that is held up is Portland – a terrific mid-sized city of only 640,000 people that has used progressive land use policies to build a livable and dense urban center. (In all fairness, the Portland MSA has over 2.4 million people.)

    Now, if you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I have a penchant for dense urban centers. I live and I work downtown. And I would happily trade square footage for a more sensible commute and lower transportation costs.

    But after I read the article, I couldn’t help but think that progressive land use policies, alone, aren’t enough. Cities, like social networks, experience network effects. That’s why there’s so much talk these days of winner-take-all urbanism.

    All of this is not to say that progressive urban policies are a bad thing. Quite the opposite. I just think there are many other factors at play if we’re talking about taming the hegemony of our global cities.

  • Amazon’s cashier-less grocery store finally opens

    This morning the first Amazon Go store opened to the public in downtown Seattle. It’s more convenience store than grocery store, but the big deal is that there are no cashiers and no lines.

    You enter the store through a gate and with your phone and Amazon’s app. As you walk around the store and pick up items they get automatically added to your online cart on Amazon.

    So everything goes right into the offline bag you’ll be leaving the store with. Place an item back on the shelf and it is instantly removed from your “cart.” Walk out of the store and you’re automatically charged.

    It’s not yet clear how exactly the technology works, but Amazon says that all of this is accomplished through sophisticated computer vision (cameras), machine learning, and lots of sensors. 

    What’s really remarkable is that it doesn’t rely on every product having a special chip or sensor attached to it. I would think that was one of the biggest hurdles to overcome in order to remove the pain point of grocery store lines.

    Now that this is up and running, I can only imagine the customer behavior data that they must be collecting. Heat maps of every shelf showing conversion rates for every imaginable customer segment. (Are tall people more likely to buy products displayed higher up?) Correlating people’s food purchases to their broader Amazon shopping habits. And the list, I’m sure, goes on. 

    There is even speculation that Amazon will begin licensing this technology to other retailers, similar to what it does with Amazon Web Services. That seems like a reasonable assumption given the data play we just talked about. Assuming the tech works, it’ll get copied. So they may as well embed themselves.

    In case you were wondering, the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the number of cashiers in the US at about 3,555,500 (2016 number).

    And this number is projected to remain more or less flat until 2026.

    That doesn’t feel right to me.

  • The scale of Apple’s iOS economy

    This is an interesting post on the size of “the iOS economy.” 

    About 70% of customer spending on Apple’s App Store goes to developers. The remaining ~30% is kept by Apple. 

    In 2017, iOS developers earned $26.5 billion. This is up about 33% from the year prior and is higher than McDonald’s revenue in 2016. Cumulatively, Apple has paid out about $86.5 billion to developers.

    And this past new year’s day, a new record was set with $300 million in App Store purchases. According to Horace Dediu, this year should average closer to $100 million per day.

    Also, this year’s App Store revenue is expected to surpass the film industry in terms of global box office sales. And we’re only talking about Apple. This does not include Android revenues.

    Click here to check out the full post.

    Photo by Ben Kolde on Unsplash

  • Why are apartment rents in Seattle dropping?

    This week I saw it reported that in this decade alone, the Seattle area is set to deliver more new rental apartments than it did in the prior 50 years combined. 

    And as a result, the sentiment is that new housing supply is finally starting to keep pace with demand and put downward pressure on rents. 

    Do you remember who was the crane capital of the US a year ago? They may still have that title.

    In some of the most desirable neighborhoods of Seattle – where much of the new supply is coming online – rents dropped 6% compared to the prior quarter. At the county level, this last quarter was by far the biggest drop of the decade according to the Seattle Times.

    Funny how that works.

    It’s also worth noting that the US as a whole is building far more rental apartments than condominiums. Here is a post I wrote in August 2015 which pegged condos as a percentage of overall multifamily construction at around 5.5%. That’s a tiny percentage.

  • Class action litigation filed against GoPro

    Snowboarding season is starting late for me this year. But that doesn’t mean it will be any less epic. So far this season Jackson Hole has had 221″ of snow.

    This year I’m introducing a GoPro gimbal stabilizer into the mix. Here is a good example video of the difference a stabilizer makes – buttery smooth video footage. I am a big nerd when it comes to gear and tech, and I guess many other things as well.

    But judging by GoPro’s stock right now and the cliff it fell off of at the beginning of this month, I may be in the minority when it comes to worrying about buttery smooth snowboarding videos.

    Sales over the holiday season were disappointing and they recently announced that they’re discontinuing the Karma drone. GoPro is now said to be shopping for a buyer.

    Part of the problem may be their narrow action sports use case. When I’m on a mountain, I love my GoPro gear. But when I’m not snowboarding, I struggle to find consistent value in it. We all just use our phones to capture photo and video.

    To make matters worse, class action litigation was recently filed against GoPro, and the company’s CEO and CFO. Investors are claiming that they failed to disclose, among other things, that demand for the GoPro brand had declined dramatically.

    Who do you think would be a good buyer for GoPro?

  • My even shorter Amazon HQ2 shortlist

    Amazon released its shortlist of HQ2 cities this morning. Below are the 20 metropolitan areas. They were selected from 238 bids, so this shortlist represents 8.4% of the original pool.

    • Atlanta, GA
    • Austin, TX
    • Boston, MA
    • Chicago, IL
    • Columbus, OH
    • Dallas, TX
    • Denver, CO
    • Indianapolis, IN
    • Los Angeles, CA
    • Miami, FL
    • Montgomery County, MD
    • Nashville, TN
    • Newark, NJ
    • New York City, NY
    • Northern Virginia, VA
    • Philadelphia, PA
    • Pittsburgh, PA
    • Raleigh, NC
    • Toronto, ON
    • Washington D.C.

    I saw some people on Twitter say that they were surprised to see Toronto and Miami on this list. I was not. If you remember, I publicly predicted on this blog that Toronto would be selected for Amazon HQ2.

    That said, I thought it would be fun to guess at an even shorter list from Amazon’s shortlist. I have no knowledge of Amazon’s actual selections process, but if I had to guess, here is who I would cross off the list:

    • Atlanta, GA
    • Austin, TX
    • Boston, MA
    • Chicago, IL
    • Columbus, OH
    • Dallas, TX
    • Denver, CO
    • Indianapolis, IN
    • Los Angeles, CA
    • Miami, FL
    • Montgomery County, MD
    • Nashville, TN
    • Newark, NJ
    • New York City, NY
    • Northern Virginia, VA
    • Philadelphia, PA
    • Pittsburgh, PA
    • Raleigh, NC
    • Toronto, ON
    • Washington D.C.

    That leaves us with a list that looks like this:

    1. Boston, MA
    2. Miami, FL
    3. Montgomery County, MD
    4. Newark, NJ
    5. Northern Virginia, VA
    6. Toronto, ON
    7. Washington D.C.

    So why this list? I’m probably wrong, but my reasons are as follows:

    – I think Amazon will opt for a metro area on eastern time.

    – There seems to be a predilection for areas around Washington D.C., so I left Montgomery County and Northern Virginia. 

    – As wonderful as it is, New York City feels too center ice for Amazon – at least in my view. But maybe Newark places them in the catchment area.

    – The area needs to be of a certain scale so Amazon doesn’t overpower it and they have enough human capital to draw from.

    – Miami is my sleeper bet. Most people think of it simply as a resort town, but there’s a huge percentage of foreign born residents and powerful arts/design scene.

    – Talent is number one, which is why I left Boston and Toronto and why I continue to believe in Toronto. Toronto is more dynamic than Boston.

    If I had to pick just three from the above shortlist, my bets would be, in alphabetical order: Boston, Toronto, and Washington D.C. What are yours?