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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  • And the award for the tallest building of the year goes to…

    The Guardian recently published an article on vanity height in skyscrapers. What this is referring to is the unoccupied portions of tall buildings which are built purely for vanity reasons – that is, to increase the face height of the building and claim some superlative title.

    Example: 

    The tallest building in the world is currently the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. It’s 828m tall. To put that into perspective, the CN Tower in Toronto is 553m. But according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, 29% of the Burj Khalifa’s height is actually unoccupied or “vanity space.” In other buildings, such as the Burj al Arab (also in Dubai), the amount of unusable space is as high as 39%. 

    For the purists out there, this of course raises the question of what should should be counted when assessing building height. Should it only be spaces where humans typically inhabit? The CN Tower has a lot of unoccupied space, which is why it is frequently excluded from these sorts of ego rankings. 

    But semantics aside, this is obviously not a new phenomenon and it’s interesting to think about this race to the sky as a proxy for what’s going on in the world. Below is a chart showing which regions have been able to lay claim to the “tallest building of the year” since 1900. 

    Since 1990, it has been all about Asia and Oceania and China and Taiwan…

  • Designing for families in high-rises

    The City of Toronto Planning Division is working on an initiative called, Growing Up: Planning for Children in New Vertical Communities. 

    The objective is to better understand how new multi-unit housing can better accommodate families within the city. Supposedly as of 2011, 32% of families within Toronto lived in mid and high-rise buildings. At first I thought this number seemed high, but then I rationalized it to myself by thinking of all the post-war apartment buildings we built.

    As part of their study, the city published a number of case studies from Toronto and from around the world. These are projects that have successfully planned for families. For some of the projects they have floor plan and sections showing how the individual suites were designed and positioned within the building. One feature that they consider desirable is to cluster the family suites on the lower floors of the building.

    But perhaps even more interesting is the section called CondoHacks. Here, the study team interviewed 9 families already living in vertical communities to learn about how they have “hacked” their spaces to meets their needs. It’s valuable to see how end-users actually live in specific floor plans. Lots of shared bedrooms and spaces. Here (pictured below) is an example of 2 parents and 2 children living in a 650 square foot one 1 bedroom plus den.

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    This a topic that I’m personally very interested in. I’m thinking a lot about how some of the projects I’m working on could better accommodate families. So it’s great to see this initiative underway. If you’d like to receive email updates from the city about this study, sign up here on the bottom right of the page. I did that this morning.

  • Form follows parking

    “Form follows function” is a famous axiom of 20th century Modern architecture. It is based on the rational notion that architecture and its associated shapes, geometries, and spaces should be a direct result of their function. 

    It was a way of trying to eliminate the arbitrary ornament that had adorned previous architectural movements. In this case, if it had no function, then it should be stripped away.

    There have been many bastardizations of this pithy statement over time, but one of my favorites is: “form follows parking.” Obviously derogatory, it is this idea that much of the built environment is a result of parking requirements, rather than of more human factors.

    We see this in suburban building typologies (large surface parking lots), but also in urban infill projects where the below grade parking begins to dictate the structural grid and layout of the upper floors. It is, of course, necessary in many cases, but there’s also something subversive about parking having such a lasting impact on the spaces we occupy.

    That said, we know where the trend line is headed when it comes to parking. Streetblogs recently posted an article about the scarcity of parking in Manhattan and cited number of interesting stats.

    Because of the city’s bike-share program (introduced in 2013) and because of all of the bike lanes that have been added in recent years, the city has (rightly) removed approximately 2,330 on-street parking spaces in Manhattan south of 125th Street.

    Here’s another set of stats: 

    In 1998, New York City had about 810 parking lots and garages south of 60th street. Together, they accounted for approximately 112,826 parking spaces. As of last year (2016), the number of lots and garages had dropped to about 643 and the number of parking spaces to approximately 95,000. That’s a decline of about 16%, during a period of when the population of Manhattan grew by more than 100,000 people.

    I would also imagine that these pressures are increasing. So it is quite possible that “form follows parking” could be on its way toward obsolescence. I certainly feel it waning.

  • Snowboarding day

    Today was a snowboarding day. It was also the first day that I used my new (totally obnoxious) 40″ selfie stick. Note: It wasn’t fully extended for the above photo.

    Internet access and time has been pretty scarce, so there won’t be much of a post today, which actually seems appropriate given yesterday’s post about being so busy. 

    See you all tomorrow.

  • I’m so busy

    “How are you?”

    “Busy!”

    How many of you say this? I say this all the time, even though I am trying to resist and come up with more creative responses.

    I recently tweeted this idea out and then my friend Brad sent me this article from HBR: Why Americans Are So Impressed by Busyness. It’s a fascinating topic because, historically, not being busy was a sign of status. It meant you had enough money to not have to do anything. 

    But things have changed – at least in this part of the world. (Italy doesn’t seem to feel the same way based on some studies.) Here’s a snippet from the article:

    “What has changed so dramatically in one century? We think that the shift from leisure-as-status to busyness-as-status may be linked to the development of knowledge-intensive economies. In such economies, individuals who possess the human capital characteristics that employers or clients value (e.g., competence and ambition) are expected to be in high demand and short supply on the job market. Thus, by telling others that we are busy and working all the time, we are implicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which enhances our perceived status.”

    So the reality is that there’s actually a good reason for always talking about how busy we are. But as Silvia Bellezza points out in her article, there are also physiological consequences to always being: “busy!” 

    On that note, I think I’ll go snowboarding.

    “How are you?”

    “Just living the dream.”

  • Harry Macklowe, 80

    For those of you interested in real estate development (and architecture), the New York Times recently published an article about New York developer Harry Macklowe. 

    At 80 years old, he has been in the business for almost 60 years and he has what some might describe as the typical developer story. He has seen ups. And he has seen downs. As a result of the 2008 economic crisis, he was forced to give up seven landmark properties in New York.

    The article doesn’t paint a particularly nice picture about developers. It talks about how he demolished several single room occupancy hotels in midtown Manhattan (hours before a new moratorium was set to go into effect) and how he recently filed a lawsuit against his son, William Macklowe. After their relationship went south, William went off and started his own real estate company and presumably that is causing some problems.

    There’a also mention of a book called The Liar’s Ball, which I am pretty sure would be a good read:

    Real estate “is not an industry full of camaraderie and good will,” said Vicky Ward, the author of “The Liar’s Ball” (Wiley, 2014), a book about Mr. Macklowe and the G.M. building. Developers “are set up to dislike each other, yet occasionally they do come together to partner.”

    If the real estate business has anything, it has characters. Click here for “Harry Macklowe on New York Real Estate.”

  • Driving in the HOT lane

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    Joe Cortright of City Observatory recently published an interesting post on HOT lanes (high-occupancy toll lanes) and cited a research paper by Austin Gross (University of Washington) and Daniel Brent (Louisiana State University). The paper looked at the behavioral response of drivers to dynamic HOT lane pricing. 

    They way HOT lanes work is simple: when traffic is light, the price dynamically decreases; when traffic is heavy, the price dynamically increases to ensure a minimum level of service. That is, the price increases until enough cars leave the lane and driving speeds increase to some minimum threshold. In this case, it’s 45 mph.

    The key takeaway from the report is that “value of reliability” appears significantly more important to drivers than “value of time”. Put differently: it’s less about the time I’m wasting in traffic and more about the uncertainty of not knowing when I’m going to arrive at my destination.

    It’s for this reason that HOT lanes are used more frequently in the morning (when you’re running late for that meeting) than in evening (when you’re just on your way home from work). 

    Gross and Brent estimate that the spread is about 7.5x. The typical driver values saving time at about $3 per hour and reliability improvements at about $23 per hour! This is fascinating because we tend to focus a lot on time. But arguably what people really want to buy is greater certainty.

    I can tell you that it’s definitely one of the things that I love about walking to work, or for that matter cycling somewhere. I always know how long it’s going to take.

  • This is not right

    I have largely avoided commenting on politics and Trump on this blog, but at this stage it is almost impossible to do that.

    Donations are starting to pile up for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as the tech community, and many others, begin to respond to Friday’s executive orders. Lyft announced a $1 million contribution to the non-profit group.

    Today, venture capitalist Fred Wilson wrote: Make America Hate Again. And yesterday, his business partner Albert Wenger wrote: Misleading the World on Immigration.

    At 6 AM this morning, Richard Florida started a tweet storm where he argued that “Trump’s immigration insanity” will fundamentally threaten the core of America’s innovation hegemony. 

    (He also argued that Canada, and more specifically Toronto, serve to “gain substantially”, as there will no doubt be a doubling down on tolerance to attract the best talent from around the world.)

    The Canadian tech community penned an open letter to reinforce the message that, here in Canada, diversity is our strength. This echoes similar messages from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mayor John Tory.

    Mass protests have broken out at US airports (links to photos) spanning San Francisco to New York. 

    And I am seeing folks from Toronto offer up their homes (publicly on Twitter) to anyone who might be stranded at Pearson International Airport as a result of the orders. Many have even tweeted out their phone numbers.

    Everywhere I look this weekend I am seeing these sorts of messages. So while I could remain quiet, that doesn’t feel right. And that’s because what is happening is not right.

  • Province rejects Toronto’s proposed road toll plan

    Earlier this week I was in an Uber heading up to Charles Street and the driver made a comment to me. He said that since he moved to Toronto in the 90′s, traffic has gotten progressively worse every single year. He continued on to say: and yet we continue to build, build, build.

    My response won’t surprise anyone who reads this blog. I said that Toronto has become a far more exciting city since the 90′s because of intensification (though 1992 and 1993 were pretty awesome) and that the problem is our mental model. We haven’t moved beyond the car as the perceived solution to urban mobility.

    A perfect example of this is what just happened with the province vetoing Toronto’s proposed road toll plan. 

    Firstly, I fully agree with Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail that this is both an act of cowardice (the province gave every indication that they initially supported the plan) and an act of arrogance (we are talking about roads owned by the city, not the province).

    I also find it incredibly frustrating that Toronto cannot control its own destiny. This is a mistake and it needs to change if we – and the rest of the cities in this great country – are to continue competing at a high level in this urban century.

    But to my initial point, the problem with this move is that it signals a status quo mental model. It is a clear reluctance to make any sort of bold moves to move Toronto in a new direction. I guess we are happy with the current trend line. More traffic.

    We shouldn’t be.

  • Where the cranes are

    Earlier this week the Seattle Times published the following graphic showing the US cities with the most (construction) cranes up in the air at the end of 2016:

    At the top of the list is Seattle with 62. And in second place is Chicago with 56. 

    You really need to see these numbers over time to get a better sense of activity. But supposedly, Seattle has been holding pretty steady. Also, these numbers only include cranes within each city proper. The suburbs don’t seem to be counted.

    To put these numbers into perspective, here’s a snippet from the article:

    “Seattle remains behind Toronto, which has 81 cranes, for the North American lead. In Australia, the Middle East, and elsewhere, there are cities where more than 100 cranes are at work.”

    I wonder which city has the global lead. Any guesses?