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 Life-Sized City

    I just discovered a new video series by TVO called, The Life-Sized City. It’s all about the “anatomy of the modern metropolis.” The first episode – which was released on Sep 13 – is on Medellin and is just under an hour long. I have a feeling that many of you will like this video series.

    Whenever I watch videos like this, it makes me think that I should be starting a city building-focused vlog. I am a big fan of this format. I follow a handful of vloggers. And I think it could be a lot of fun. But sometimes you just have to say no.

    For those of you who aren’t longtime readers, I would also like to point out that my good friend Alex Feldman wrote a guest post on this blog over 3 years ago following a trip to Medellin. It’s about what cities could learn from Medellin’s extraordinary turnaround. If you missed it, click here.

  • What are bubbles?

    Social Capital (Silicon Valley VC firm) recently published an interesting series on (economic) bubbles: what they are, how they form, when they are useful, and so on. It’s worth a read – you can start here.

    Here’s a taste:

    “Prices in markets turn out to have two roles: they tell us something about the past, and they influence our actions — and therefore, their own price — in the future. Sometimes, in a big way, this dual role makes a particular asset class — tulip bulbs, railway stock, Canadian real estate, a digital token — become attractive solely because its price is going up. George Soros characterized and mastered this phenomenon, known as Reflexivity: when our views and our actions reinforce each other. If an expensive price means that something is high quality or otherwise attractive, we will tend to buy more of it and drive the price higher, independently of whether or not the thing is any good. It’s true for sunglasses, it’s true for ICOs, and a whole lot more.”

    For obvious reasons I couldn’t resist posting this quote. Notwithstanding the shot at Canadian real estate, bubbles are a fascinating topic. They happen time and time again because we are greedy.

  • Fall event roundup

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    It’s still sunny and beautiful outside, so I don’t mean to be the one who prematurely calls fall. But I would like to get 3 Toronto events on your radar for the coming two months. 

    Full disclosure: These are all events that I support and/or my company supports in some way. 

    If you’re not based in Toronto and you don’t plan to be here this fall, you can stop reading right now and check back tomorrow. I promise to will try to be less Toronto-centric.

    1. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation and Technology, September 28 – October 8

    This is a 10-day immersive experience that will showcase how the intersection of design, technology and innovation can change the world. Think exhibits by Bruce Mau and Carlo Ratti; talks by David Suzuki and Scott Dadich (former editor-in-chief of WIRED and creator of the Netflix series The Art of Design); and projects spanning 3D-printed prosthetics to indigenous housing solutions. 70 speakers. 40 workshops. And over 150,000 sf of exhibits. Too much to write about here, but all topics and themes we frequently explore on this blog. Ticketing information here.

    2. NXT City Public Space Symposium, October 13 – 14

    This is a two day symposium about public space on a global stage. Talks. Public space tours. Round table sessions. And an epic after-party. Some of the speakers include Jeff Risom (Partner at Gehl Architects); Enrique Norten (Founder of TEN Arquitectos in Mexico City – and one of my grad school professors); and Mirik Milan (Amsterdam’s Night Mayor and someone who has gotten quite a bit of airtime on this blog). If you click here to grab your tickets, you’ll get 15% off. If for whatever reason that doesn’t work, use the code BDONN15.

    3. lost&gone: Romeo & Juliet, October 19 – 21 and October 27 – 28

    This is, I think, Toronto’s first truly immersive theater experience. For those of you who aren’t familiar, immersive theater is about turning the audience into participants of the production. It eliminates the “fourth wall” that traditionally divides audience and performers. I’ve heard great things about similar productions elsewhere in the world. The venue is a secret, so the show starts today with you having to try and figure out where it is in the core of Toronto. When you buy your tickets, you’ll also have to let them know if you’re a guest of the Capulets (Juliet’s family) or a guest of the Montagues (Romeo’s family). 

    Enjoy 🙂

    Photo by Brxxto on Unsplash

  • A generation of architects

    The New York Times just published a piece called “a generation of architects making its mark at dizzying speed.” It’s a current list, albeit not an exhaustive one, of notable architects and their projects. 

    Included on this list is One Spadina, home of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, which was designed by Nader Tehrani and the Boston practice NADAAA.

    Some of the best architecture in the city is being built on this campus.

    One thing you’ll notice about this summary of architects is the emphasis on age. Architecture is a slow process. This is true for buildings in general. So historically it has been the case that architects usually don’t hit their stride until later in their career.

    The youngest architect on the list is Bjarke Ingels at 42. An outlier for sure. He saw tremendous success in his 30s, and even in his 20s with the firm PLOT. I think great storytelling had a lot to do with this.

    Tehrani is 53. And the author rightly points out that Frank Gehry didn’t become Frank Gehry until he renovated his own house at the age of 48.

  • Transit advertising according to the numbers

    This morning I saw this tweet about Toronto streetcar advertising. The author has a “big problem” with public transit being fully wrapped in ads and so she decided to tweet her local Councillor to see if these could be somehow limited in size.

    My first thought was: I wonder how many people would accept higher fares in exchange for fewer/no advertising. Is this something people care about? Because personally, I’ll take the lower fares in exchange for someone trying to monetize my attention. I mean, every social network I use is already selling my attention off as their product.

    But then this got me thinking about what the actual numbers look like. So let’s look at some of those for not only Toronto, but also for Hong Kong, since many people view that as the gold standard as far transit authorities go.

    For the year ending December 31, 2016, the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) posted a total operating revenue of $1.204 billion. This represents about 41% of total revenue – the rest comes from subsidies.

    If you drill down into operating revenue, advertising makes up $28 million or about 2.33% of total operating revenue. So a pretty small number. If you tried to shift this number over to “passenger services” revenue (transit fares), it actually wouldn’t increase fares by that much. But presumably fares are already at some profit maximizing number.

    Switching to Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation, their numbers have to be unpacked a little differently because the group has a number of diverse business lines, including property development.

    For the year ending December 31, 2016, total revenue from Hong Kong Transport Operations was HK$17.655 billion (almost all fare revenue). Advertising falls within the Hong Kong Station Commercial Businesses group and that company posted revenues of HK$5.544 billion for the same time period.

    To try and create some sort of comparison, I’m ignoring all of the other segments within MTR.

    Within Station Commercial Businesses, advertising revenue alone makes up HK$1.09 billion or about 20% of that group’s total revenue. The rest comes from station retail rent (the biggest chunk), telecom, and some miscellaneous station income. 

    If you add up Transport Operations and Station Commercial Businesses, total revenue was HK$23,199 billion for the year ending 2016. Advertising comprises about 4.70% of this – so more than double that of Toronto.

    It’s also worth noting that MTR’s station retail rental revenue is about 3.4x that of its advertising revenue. In the case of Toronto, the TTC actually makes more money off advertising than it does from “Property Rental.” I’ve always thought this was a missed opportunity. Transit and land use go hand in hand.

    In any event, I’m far less fussed about advertising on transit. But what are your thoughts? Let me know in the comment section below.

    Photo by Tomo Nogi on Unsplash

  • Morning bagel run

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    This morning I woke up and decided that I could go for a bagel with lox and cream cheese. I figured, it’s the weekend, I’m going to treat myself. So I walked across the street to St. Urbain Bagel Bakery (see above photo).

    My Montreal friends reading this are probably thinking that this is no substitute for a Fairmount or St-Viateur bagel. But I enjoy St. Urbain. They are my go-to place for breakfast in the market.

    What I really value, though, is the ability to walk across the street and grab a bagel for breakfast. It’s a pretty simple action. Nothing complicated about it. 

    But in our world of constant traffic jams, cars that should soon drive themselves, and near-instantaneous online delivery, it can be easy to forget that there’s still something really nice about just walking down the street in the morning and saying hello to a human.

    I feel lucky that my neighborhood allows me do this. Not all do.

  • Educational attainment and urban success

    We know that educational attainment matters a great deal for the economic success of our cities. In fact, by some measures, it is the single most important factor.

    City Observatory found that 60% of the variation in per capita income across large U.S. metro areas could be explained simply by the percentage of the population with a 4-year college degree.

    So education matters a lot.

    Many of you have probably seen this entertaining TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson called: Do schools kill creativity? It has almost 47 million views at this point. 

    Well, he was recently interviewed by Ingrid Peritz of the Globe and Mail and I have to share the following quote, because I think it’s terrific (particularly the part in bold):

    “We need to recognize that children have a huge range of natural abilities and they all have them differently. Our education systems are designed to focus on a small band of those. If you have a narrow conception of ability, you end up with a very big conception of disability or inability.”

    More people with a college degree seems to be a pretty good thing. But the solution doesn’t start there. Logically, it starts much earlier – with children. 

    All of this matters not just because people with a degree should, on average, make more money and have a higher quality of life. 

    But because it’s heartbreaking to think that some young child with incredible talents might be being mislabeled as inept simply because we have a system that is, well, inept.

    I recommend you read the interview with Ken.

    Photo by Christian Fregnan on Unsplash

  • My prediction for Amazon HQ2

    “Now the trick is that we gotta look like we don’t need this shit and they give us the shit for free.“ –Mike Peters

    This is a line from one of my favorite movies, Swingers. Short video clip here. Mikey and Trent are in a Las Vegas casino trying to play it cool. They’re looking to make a scene at a table and Mikey throws out this gem of a line. He knows that people want what they can’t have and that confidence matters.

    I was reminded of this line today after Amazon announced its HQ2 Request for Proposal (full RFP document here) and every city, from Chicago and Toronto to Philadelphia and Dallas, started swooning over the prospect of housing Amazon’s second headquarters in North America. 

    But to be clear, I do not think this is a bad idea. I actually think Amazon HQ2 is an incredible city building opportunity that would generate countless positive externalities for the selected city. I’m thrilled that Mayor John Tory will be personally “leading the charge” with respect to Toronto’s response.

    Over $5 billion in construction and as many as 50,000 employees making on average over $100,000 per year. Amazon is looking for about 500,000 sf of space in phase 1 (2019) and up to 8,000,000 sf in total. Based on the RFP, they seem to be pegging their capital investment at somewhere around $600 per square foot.

    If I’m being as objective as possible, I honestly believe that Toronto is the city to beat in his competition. I think it will come down to access to talent. Human capital is the lifeblood of a company and Trump’s immigration policies simply put U.S. cities at a disadvantage in this regard.

    Of course, Toronto is also awesome. So that’s my prediction: Amazon HQ2, Toronto.

  • REM

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    “A building has at least two lives – the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward – and they are never the same.” -Rem Koolhaas

    Tonight I went with a developer friend to see the documentary REM at the Hot Docs Cinema on Bloor Street. It’s a documentary about the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, directed by his son Tomas Koolhaas. Trailer here.

    The film is essentially 75 minutes of introspection on the part of Rem. It’s him ruminating over a continuous piece by the American composer Murray Hidary. At times it was hard to hear what Rem was actually saying.

    If you’re looking to learn the specifics of his designs and process, then this movie is not for you. Though there’s lots of footage of his buildings. It also does not make clear just how much influence he has had professionally. I mean, everyone from Bjarke Ingels to Jeanne Gang once worked at his firm.

    The film is really about getting inside the mind of Rem as he travels the world. What struck me is Rem’s profound curiosity for seemingly everything. He really is obsessed with analyzing, documenting, and reporting. He refers to it as a compulsion.

    I also like the idea put forward that architecture represents a particular moment in time. If you’re precise about things, you may be right the moment the building is complete.

    But from that point onward, everything begins to change around it and you will be wrong. That’s what the quote at the top of this post is getting at.

    So I enjoyed it – but probably because I’m an architecture geek and Rem is arguably the most influential living architect today. But I’m not going to tell you that this film is a must-see.

    P.S. Who knew, Rem Koolhaas flies economy.

    Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash

  • MONAD, Vancouver

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    Earlier today, Nithya Vijayakumar, of The Pembina Institute, pointed out the above housing project to me on Twitter through this 2013 Dwell article (worth a read).

    The project is called MONAD and it’s a 4-unit, 12,600 square foot prefabricated multi-storey building in Vancouver on West 4th Avenue. 

    The site itself is 33′ x 110′, which just so happens to be the same size as a typical single family lot in the city. However, this one sits on a main street.

    Completed in 2011 and designed by Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture, the development was intended to be a pilot project and a rethink of urban living.

    There are real diseconomies when you develop at this scale, but if you make it high-end enough the math just may work. What a beauty.

    Above image from LWPAC. More photos here.