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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  • US cancels largest solar project in North America — why?

    October 14, 2025 · View original

    Data centers require electricity.

    And as we have talked about before, total electricity consumption by US data centers is forecasted to reach somewhere between 6.7 – 12% of total consumption by 2028 (figure from the US Department of Energy). Last year, Goldman Sachs also estimated that data center power demand would grow 160% by 2030.

    I kind of wonder if these numbers might be understated — given our current AI bubble — but whatever the case may be, we’re going to need a lot more electricity going forward. There’s no such thing as a wealthy, low-energy nation.

    Given all of this, I’m struggling to understand why the US would move to cancel what would have been the largest solar project in North America. Esmeralda 7, which was to be located on 62,300 acres of federal land to the north-west of Las Vegas, was expected to be a 6.2 gigawatt project — enough to power nearly 2 million homes.

    Instead, the Department of the Interior seems to be determined to accelerate fossil fuel projects, and help China maintain its clear dominance in renewables. I guess that makes sense in some world if you think renewal energy projects are a “scam.”

    Cover photo by American Public Power Association on Unsplash

  • Canada needs immigration because we don’t make enough babies

    October 13, 2025 · View original

    In the second quarter of this year, Canada saw its population grow by about 0.1% compared to the first quarter. This is not zero, but it’s close to it — the slowest second-quarter growth since 1946 (excluding the pandemic in 2020).

    Since World War II, Canada has generally been pro-immigration. It started as being explicitly Eurocentric, but later we adopted a point system which granted admission based on skills, education, and language ability rather than race or nationality. In other words, it became a meritocracy, and multiculturalism became policy.

    This approach served the country well, fueling economic prosperity and creating Canada’s only truly global city: Toronto. Immigrants are good for the economy, and Toronto is majority foreign born. They are more likely to start a business, more likely to obtain a patent, and their children tend to outperform native-born children academically.

    It is also not lost on me that I wouldn’t have been born in Toronto, and I wouldn’t have the life that I have today if it weren’t for these immigration policies.

    Of course, in recent years, public opinion on immigration shifted dramatically. There was, and is, a real sense that it was too much of a good thing. Canada wasn’t keeping up when it came to housing, healthcare, and overall public infrastructure. So the federal government responded, and now the expectation is that population growth in Canada should stay at or near zero until around 2028.

    Because remember, Canada has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. In 2024, it dropped to 1.25 children per woman, placing us firmly in the “ultra-low fertility” category, alongside Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, and others. Without immigration, we shrink. And we all know what that has meant for countries like Japan, which has had periods of prolonged economic stagnation.

    So sooner or later, Canada will need to get back into the business of competing for talent and welcoming the smartest and most ambitious people from around the world to our cities. This is where we want the world to be starting their new businesses. In the meantime, it also wouldn’t hurt if we started having more sex and making more babies.

    Looking ahead, if 2028 does end up being the year when immigration ramps back up, it will actually align with what I am predicting to be the start of a severe housing shortage — at least in cities like Toronto and Vancouver. That means we need to act now to start delivering more affordable urban housing at scale.

    All through history, the success of global cities has hinged on their ability to take in a large number of immigrants and make them economically productive. It’s what made cities like Toronto and New York what they are today. But in order for this to happen, people need a place to live.

    Cover photo by Ankush Nath Sehgal on Unsplash

  • Los Angeles is trying to go from car-first to transit-first

    October 12, 2025 · View original

    The largest urban region in the US, New York, is famously urban. Recently, we talked about how it has the highest share of zero-vehicle households and really stands on its own when it comes to US cities. But what about the country’s second-largest urban region — Los Angeles?

    It probably won’t surprise you that around 88% of households in this city own a car. Transit and other forms of non-car mobility remain deeply entrenched secondary options for most. But what you may not be aware of are all the initiatives that LA is undertaking to transform itself into more of a transit-first region.

    The city opened its first metro line in 1993. Today, it has a system that spans over 109 miles (~175 kilometers) across six lines with 107 stations. It also has wildly successful bus rapid transit (BRT) lines, with ridership levels that are 3x initial projections. The 18-mile Orange Line is viewed as one of, if not the, most successful bus lines in the US.

    In parallel, the city is doing what it needs to do on the land-use side by easing density restrictions and working to intensify around its transit stations. It also has a little extra motivation: Los Angeles has vowed to make the 2028 Summer Olympic Games a “transit-first” event. And with 15+ million visitors expected, there’s going to be no other way to do it.

    Los Angeles has long been known as a car-first city, but don’t be surprised if that changes this century.

    For more on this topic, here’s a recent article by Joseph Shortell, a Senior Analyst at Philadelphia-based Econsult Solutions.

    Cover photo by Studio Trista on Unsplash

  • An alternative explanation for America’s surge in pedestrian deaths

    October 11, 2025 · View original

    The number of pedestrians killed in the US each year has increased 78% since 2009:

    This comes after decades of steady decline, causing many to wonder: What the hell is going on?

    Brian Potter of Construction Physics recently tried to answer this question, here. Perhaps the two most common theories are that (1) bigger cars have become more popular (and bigger cars are more deadly to pedestrians), and (2) people are increasingly distracted by smartphones.

    In his view, the SUV theory is maybe supportable, but the evidence is mixed. Pedestrian deaths involving smaller cars like Honda Civics are also up substantially. So it doesn’t seem to be just that.

    As for the smartphone theory, Potter cites data showing that traffic accidents rarely report “distracted” driving. I call bullshit. I suspect it’s because drivers don’t want to admit they were scrolling through TikTok; but even then, it doesn’t appear to be the clear cause. Smartphones are global, and yet this surge in pedestrian deaths is a uniquely American problem (based on other data from Potter).

    So what is it?

    My view — and this isn’t mentioned in the article — is that built form must be a factor. Much of it comes down to how we design our cities. Intuitively, this makes sense to me. But there’s also data to support it. First, if we look at pedestrian deaths per capita, there’s a clear bias toward the South and West, both of which tend to have more car-oriented urban patterns compared to the older cities in the North.

    Second, if you drill down into specific urban environments — including those adopting strong Vision Zero policies — you’ll see that local trends don’t always match what we’re seeing nationally or even at the state level. For example, in recent years, cities like New York have become much safer for pedestrians:

    > New York City continues to defy national trends around pedestrian deaths, which are currently at a four-decade high nationwide. Traffic fatalities were down in four of the five major travel modes the DOT tracks. Compared to 2013—the last year before implementation of Vision Zero—New York City traffic deaths have dropped by 14.7%, from 299 that year. Pedestrian deaths have decreased by 35.9% compared to 2013 figures. Cyclist fatalities were also down for the third straight year (17 in 2022, down from a 20-year high of 28 in 2019), declining even as bicycle ridership has soared in recent years.

    So my simple theory is this: Human-scaled spaces that are designed around pedestrians, rather than cars, are less likely to kill pedestrians.

    At the same time, I do think we’ll see pedestrian deaths naturally come down in the US as autonomous vehicles become more widespread. AVs are already better — or at least safer — drivers than humans, and that will help. None of us should be driving cars anymore if you’re just looking at the safety data. But I don’t see that as a good reason not to create more human-scaled spaces. They offer us much more than just safety.

    Diagrams: Construction Physics

  • How Vietnam’s tube housing empowers entrepreneurship

    October 10, 2025 · View original

    Vietnam has a building typology known as tube housing.

    It is characterized by narrow building frontages, often in the range of 3 to 4 meters, and multiple skinny levels. From what I’ve read, tube housing first appeared in the 17th century in cities like Hanoi. Its ubiquity over the years, however, has been aided by a myriad of factors, including Vietnam’s transition from capitalism to socialism. This change meant that far fewer apartment buildings were being constructed, and so households had to take matters into their own hands and build what they could.

    I’ve also read that this building type may have something to do with the way properties were taxed based on their frontage rather than their site area, though I haven’t been able to find a reliable source for this. Whatever the case, the end result is exactly what we discussed in this recent post — The 9-Step Rule: Why Simple, Narrow Buildings Are Good for Cities. Except with these frontages, it wouldn’t even take nine steps if the average building width is closer to 3–4 meters.

    What is equally interesting about this housing type is that it represents a ground-up intervention (as opposed to the result of top-down urban design) and it is highly adaptable. It is not uncommon for additional floors to be added to these tube houses as needs change, and for the ground floors to serve as garages, living rooms, thriving commercial spaces, or as all three at once. It is an entirely flexible space that fuels entrepreneurship and allows households to make money.

    > Tweet: Always interesting how the bottom floor of a Vietnamese tube home can be a garage/living room or family store, sometimes a combination of all three. https://t.co/9DaDhlPCFl

    Just think about how much easier it would be to open your own shop if you already owned the space. Conversely, how many of these ground-floor businesses wouldn’t exist if only there were a single line in the zoning regulations that said: “Nah, sorry, you can’t start and operate your own business here.” That is what I often worry about when it comes to land-use policy: what human potential are we quashing as a result of our decisions?

  • Paris is not a medium-density city

    October 9, 2025 · View original

    Earlier in the week, I came across this tweet about Paris: “Haussmann cracked the code on what makes a beautiful medium-density city. Why is it then that we can’t replicate this all around the world? Genuine question.” This is a topic that is near and dear to this blog, so I thought we should discuss it.

    But before we can answer this question, I think it’s important to ask whether it’s even fair to call Paris a medium-density city. Paris is generally considered to be the densest city in Europe. Most sources peg Paris proper (inside the Boulevard Périphérique) at around 21,000 people per km². However, there are areas that reach over 50,000 people per km², which is dense enough to rival any big megalopolis. So, from my perspective, I would not classify Paris as medium density.

    It’s a high-density city.

    The primary reason why this feature is so often overlooked is likely because the buildings aren’t very tall. People see mid-rise buildings of 6–8 storeys and automatically assume that these must translate into some form of a medium-density city. But this is the height–density fallacy. The two do not necessarily correlate. Paris is an example of a high-density city with mid-rise buildings. But I also can think of many low-density cities with high-rise buildings.

    Another reason I suspect Paris’s high urban density is often missed is that it’s also a highly livable and loved city. It doesn’t feel that dense (even if living spaces are compact and expensive). The term density can also carry negative connotations for some. Paris, high density? It can’t be. But that just helps to prove the point that density is good. You can’t have urban vibrancy without it.

    All of this gets at one part of the answer to our original question. Paris is not more widely replicated because building height is only one aspect of the Parisian model. Paris is not mid-rise buildings transitioning down to single-family houses. Paris is not mid-rise buildings in only designated areas. Paris is mid-rise buildings everywhere — and at very high densities.

    Not every city is prepared to do that. But if you truly want to emulate Paris, then that’s what it will take.

  • More urban homes for young families

    October 8, 2025 · View original

    My internet friend (and fellow Penn alum), Bobby Fijan, is a strong proponent of more family-friendly housing in urban centers. And by strong proponent, I mean that he is both building more family-friendly housing as a developer and publishing thoughtful research on the topic. His most recent project is this study, which surveyed more than 10,000 people, and looked at what it will take to build more urban homes for young families.

    What he and his co-author Lyman Stone found is the following:

    – People who don’t have enough space at home are less likely to have children. – Apartments are a growing share of new housing in the US, but they are becoming increasingly less family friendly. – Americans are willing to pay more in rent per square foot for the same amount of space if there are more bedrooms. – Developers are not properly accounting for the higher vacancy and turnover associated with smaller apartments (especially in the current market environment). – Cities could increase the number of family-friendly apartments if they did things like exempt them from FAR calculations, accelerate approvals/permitting, and so on.

    This is a topic that I feel similarly about. I am an urbanist and I believe that cities are at their best when they provide for every generation and demographic segment. It’s also not a new topic for cities like Toronto.

    But I do think cities like Toronto and Vancouver are a bit unique. If you look at some of the floor plan examples in the report, you’ll find one-bedroom apartments at 750 square feet and two-bedroom apartments at 1,100 square feet. Part of the thinking is that these floor plans could accommodate additional bedrooms in order to make them more family friendly (and it would be accretive to developers based on the above finding).

    But by Toronto standards, these would be very generous apartments. At 750 sf, it is likely the apartment would already have 2 bedrooms and possibly even a den/office. The reason for this is that affordability has been strained for a long time in this city, and the market responded with shrinkflation. Every square foot has already been optimized.

    So if we truly want to encourage more family-friendly apartments, I believe that we are going to need to change the cost structure underpinning the development of these homes. In other words, we need to make them cheaper to build so that more families can afford a bit more space. The way you start to do this is by doing some of the things listed in the last point above and by reducing added taxes and levies.

  • The 9-step rule: Why simple, narrow buildings are good for cities

    October 7, 2025 · View original

    > Tweet: This is a scale and rhythm that positively contributes to cities, but that is far to difficult to develop in many places. We should change that. #globizen https://t.co/TBziySWLzw

    I tweeted this yesterday (please forgive the grammar mistake).

    What it shows is a bunch of narrow urban properties ranging, for the most part, from 5 to 7 storeys. Some of them are old buildings, and some are new. Regardless, the point I wanted to make was that this is a scale and rhythm of building that does wonders for cities. They’re dense, they have a compact footprint, and they promote urban vibrancy.

    And yet, it’s a building type that is far too difficult to develop in many cities. It is not always the case, but oftentimes the only way to underwrite these kinds of projects is to make them ultra high-end. That’s a shame. So let’s talk about this a little more, starting with what makes this urban pattern so appealing.

    One key thing that narrow lots and narrow retail frontages do is increase the number of destinations within walking distance. This promotes visual interest by always showing you something new.

    At the same time, there are numerous economic benefits to this urban pattern. Smaller shops lower the barrier to entry for small businesses and allow greater adaptability. Change is able to happen faster, and if one or two businesses happen to turnover on a street, it’s not the end of the world.

    One way I like to think of this is in terms of shops per step.

    For example, let’s assume that the average walking speed is 4 km/hour and that, as a starting point, fine-grained urbanism translates into storefronts that are around 6 m wide. This would mean the average person walking on a street would see a new shop (or retail frontage) about every 9 steps.

    If we instead assume a retail frontage of something like 30 m (which is five times our original 6 m), then the average person would need approximately 43 steps for every shop. This is a meaningful difference that fundamentally changes the character of a street. If you’ve ever walked on a great main street, you know this, even if you’ve never explicitly acknowledged it.

    But this is only the ground floor. The other benefit of these simple, straight-up infills is that they also bring homes and offices to the same compact footprint. Density is good. It is a prerequisite for urban vibrancy. And it can be achieved simply. Strip away the facade ornament from the building examples in my tweet, and these are extruded boxes with no stepbacks to speak of.

    This used to be how many (or most) cities built fabric buildings at scale, but for many reasons, we forgot how. One of the reasons is that we’ve generally made building things more onerous, and that means developers need bigger and bigger projects to justify the costs.

    But it’s clear our desire to experience human-scaled environments hasn’t changed. So I reckon it’s about time to bring back the skinny extruded boxes.

    Cover photo by Praewthida K on Unsplash

  • Architecture billings are down across the US

    October 6, 2025 · View original

    Architecture billings are typically viewed as a leading indicator for the development industry. That’s because, in order to build things, you need permits. And in order to get permits, you need architects to draw things.

    So every month, the American Institute of Architects surveys design firms as a way to determine how the industry is doing. The primary question it asks is: Have your billings increased, decreased, or stayed the same in the month that just ended? Based on the proportion of respondents choosing each option, an Architecture Billings Index (ABI) score is created.

    A score of 50 means there has been no change in billings from the previous month. A score above 50 indicates an increase. And a score below 50 indicates a decrease. Here’s this score for August 2024 to August 2025:

    Billings are down across the US. In fact, the survey notes that the value of design contracts has declined for an 18th consecutive month, marking the longest period of decline since the survey started 15 years ago. This is true across all regions, though the South has the best relative performance and the West has the worst. The commercial/industrial sector also appears to have the best relative performance, which, I’m only guessing, could be a result of things like data centers.

    I don’t have perfectly comparable data for Canada, but I know that architecture billings are way down in markets like Toronto and Vancouver. Architecture and development firms continue to lay off people, which is the strongest kind of indicator.

    One of the things I always find interesting is how globally connected we all are. Real estate may be a local business, but it does depend on global capital flows and overall sentiment. The US market is soft. The Canadian market is soft — with some markets being largely shut off, to be more precise. And when I was in Paris last month, I heard a lot of the same from architects and developers (except from those able to subsist on government work).

    Images: AIA / Detek ABI (August 2025)

  • How Canada missed out on having the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world

    October 5, 2025 · View original

    One of the most popular blog posts that I have ever written on this blog over the last 12 years is this one: Canada must become a global superpower. And in this post, I argue that Canada needs to create a sovereign wealth fund, and that we have Norway to look to as a model. This is a topic that is raised semi-frequently in Canada. Just this past week, John Ruffolo, who is the Founder and Managing Partner of Maverix Private Equity, published this opinion piece in the Globe and Mail. Here’s an excerpt:

    > Aging demographics, high taxes, deficits and unproductive wealth trapped in housing mean we simply don’t generate large capital pools for productive assets. Our pension funds, though world-class in size and governance, largely bypass Canadian innovators in favour of global opportunities. Our venture and private equity funds rely heavily on U.S. investors. Our banks, stable by design, avoid the kind of long-term risk capital required to build sovereign industries.

    > A sovereign wealth fund is not a slush fund. Done properly, it is a professionally managed pool of assets, governed independently, with two purposes: strengthen [Canada] sovereignty and generate long-term returns.

    Canada has never had a true national sovereign wealth fund similar to what Norway, Singapore and others have done. That is, we don’t have a federal-level, state-owned investment fund built from natural resource surpluses, trade surpluses, or foreign exchange reserves. What we have instead is a provincial SWF called the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund (AHSTF).

    Many Albertans will be quick to point out that the province’s non-renewable resource revenues should remain that of the province. But let’s be clear: this fund has not done what it set out to do. It has failed due to political interference and a governance structure that does not promote long-term thinking.

    Established in 1976 with an initial capital contribution of CAD 1.5 billion, the annual share of non-renewable resource revenues to be contributed was initially set at 30%. This was later reduced to 15%, and then in 1987, mandatory annual contributions were eliminated, making it more of an ad hoc thing. On top of this, over CAD 33 billion has been withdrawn from the fund over its life for various expenditures. The result is current assets under management of approximately CAD 30 billion.

    To put this AUM into perspective, if the AHSTF had instead taken its initial contribution of CAD 1.5 billion, invested it into the S&P 500 in 1976, and then sat on its ass for the next half decade doing absolutely nothing besides keeping the fund active, it would today have a value of approximately CAD 160 billion (assuming an average annual return of 10% with dividends reinvested).

    Now let’s compare it to the Norway Government Pension Fund Global (their oil fund). This fund only received its initial capital contribution of ~USD 240 billion in 1996. But unlike Alberta, 100% of oil and gas revenues are contributed, there have never been any withdrawals, and governance is not political — it’s independent and legally protected. The result is current assets under management of approximately USD 2 trillion, making it the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.

    For fun, I asked AI to come up with an assets under management estimate for a Canadian Sovereign Wealth Fund had it been established in 1976 with the same CAD 1.5 billion initial contribution; had we made annual oil & gas revenue contributions ranging from $5 to $15 billion; had we achieved an annual return of 6% (like Norway); and had we never done any withdrawals due to strong governance and political independence.

    The result is an AUM range between CAD 1.5 trillion and 4.4 trillion. In other words, Canada could, today, be sitting on the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world. But you know what the next best thing to this is? Starting one today.

    Cover photo by Hermes Rivera on Unsplash