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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  • Big, bold, and global

    I love the way that urban planner Joe Berridge thinks about Toronto and city building. He is constantly considering our position on the global stage and urging us to fight for a top position by executing on real and meaningful projects. 

    Here is a recent article from the Toronto Star which lists some of those projects. They include everything from a new convention center to creating a fourth university (in addition to the University of Toronto, York, and Ryerson).

    Here’s a snippet:

    We could get “lost in domesticity — very nice, but that’s not enough,” he says, drawing on his experience leading urban renewal projects around the world.

    Toronto’s social cohesion is enough to attract 125,000 new people each year to the region. But they won’t stay if we can’t employ them and provide opportunities. And that requires global thinking.

    Berridge says it is the city’s “moral obligation” to use its taxing power, its wealth, its status as Canada’s only global city and the historical advantages of public education, public health and public services to propel Toronto into super city status.

    Cities will often talk in nebulous terms about being “world class.” That isn’t all that helpful. Let’s be specific and also acknowledge that great things cost money. Are we a top tourist destination? Are we a top convention destination? Are we attracting the smartest people in the world with the best schools? Do we have the best transit and health care systems in the world?

    Toronto is a great city and so it’s perhaps easy to become complacent. But past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes. We need to think in global terms. We need to keep in mind that this is an international competition. And every day all of us step onto that field.

    Thank you Joe for constantly reminding us of that.

  • The tech ecosystem in Toronto (and New York)

    Tech Toronto recently published a new study called, How Technology Is Changing Toronto Employment. 

    They estimate that there are over 400,000 tech jobs in Toronto, out of a total of 2.7 million people employed. That number includes tech people working for non-tech companies, and tech and non-tech people working for tech companies. So tech jobs are thought to represent about 15% of the city’s employment.

    Within this 400,000 or so jobs, an estimated 93,000 people are self-employed (23% of tech jobs). And the belief is that there are around 2,500 to 4,100 active “startups.”

    Zooming out, it is also one of the fastest growing industries in the city:

    image

    To try and put this into perspective, a similar report for New York – published in 2014 – reported 291,000 tech jobs out of 4.27 million people employed. I was a bit surprised by these numbers, but the Toronto report seems to have been modeled after the New York one. So presumably they use similar methodologies.

    Of course, there’s the big question of quality over quantity. There’s a certainly a difference, in terms of impact to the economy, between a back office tech job and fast growing startup that will eventually reach the coveted $1 billion valuation number and create thousands of new jobs.

    Obviously every city is hoping for the latter.

  • 6 things about cities from Richard Florida

    Last week Richard Florida headlined an “Urban Lab” panel at the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate. It was moderated by Sam Chandan, who is dean of the Shack Institute. 

    Here are 6 takeaways from the discussion, with a few of my own thoughts attached:

    1. Suburban brain drain. This is happening. Florida states that (real estate) development is the key to rebuilding the suburbs. It will challenging to reorient the suburbs away from the car (though suburbs vary greatly), but I do agree that many suburban areas need a refresh to keep them relevant against this brain drain.

    2. Decline in home ownership. Florida believes we will see owning vs. renting drop to about 50-50. This would be a pretty big change given that US homeownership is currently hovering in the low 60s and this is already at historic lows. However, the trend is towards urban and that often means more renting.

    3. New city characteristics. Access to urban amenities, cultural capital, and transportation is critical and should drive new development. Transit and rail infrastructure can “open up” new areas and combat issue #4, below.

    4. Housing affordability. Florida reiterates “the great inversion.” Poverty moving to the suburbs; cities now housing the rich. He also isn’t sure that capitalism alone will solve this problem. Gives example of Manhattan where market is focused on high-end luxury residential.

    5. Florida argues that planning and real estate knowledge need to come together to overcome some of the information-asymmetries inherent in the development industry. I’ve written about similar ideas before. I try and apply this sort of multi-disciplinary thinking to urban issues.

    6. Micro-living is not a silver bullet for “chronic poverty.” I think it serves a segment of the housing market.

  • PHLEGM video

    This past summer I wrote about the 8 storey mural (by street artist PHLEGM) that was about to go up on the side of a Slate building at the corner of Yonge + St. Clair in midtown Toronto.

    Well, that mural is now complete. It’s been in the news a bunch over the past couple of months, both locally and internationally. designboom (they’re allergic to capital letters) wrote about it last month.

    In case you missed all that press and/or you’d like to learn more about the process, here is a video that the STEPS Initiative published last week. It’s 5 minutes. If you can’t see the video below, click here.

    [vimeo 185861345 w=640 h=360]

    The STEPS philosophy of creating public art in unlikely urban spaces is a hugely interesting one. It’s really the antithesis of the white-walled art gallery.

  • Architecture bike tour

    I am in New York right now and I spent the day riding around on a Citi Bike looking at architecture. Atop two wheels is such a fast way to get around.

    The first stop was the new transportation hub at the World Trade Center. Here’s a photo of the Oculus:

    The main station house (above) is absolutely breathtaking, but the exterior (in particular the entrances) felt a bit unresolved to me.

    Here’s a photo of 56 Leonard by Herzog & de Meuron:

    People call it the Jenga tower.

    And here’s a photo of a building on Broadway in Soho:

    Look at how the overhangs fold down and adjust the window dimensions so that it matches the building to the left. Bigger windows towards Broadway. Smaller windows as you move inward. I thought this was really neat.

    And now back to New York City. See you tomorrow.

  • Inviting behaviors

    The following paragraph is a great way to describe urban cycling and to explain how our built environment can explicitly invite certain behaviors:

    “If you want people to drive, build more automobile infrastructure. If you want people to bike, build better bike infrastructure. In San Francisco, as in most US cities, we’ve treated the idea of bike infrastructure as secondary to optimizing traffic flow, and have wound up protecting parked cars with bike lanes instead of the opposite. Because of this our bike lanes are plagued with double-parking. While enforcement is an important piece of the puzzle, we usually fail to admit how inviting a striped space between parked cars and traffic appears to an Uber driver. Our built environment invites a driving behavior that causes cyclists to spend much of their commute pushed into traffic, encouraging a culture of every-man-for-himself cycling behavior, adding to the discouraging perception that bikes are for the young and fearless only. This perception is elevated by the fact that bicycling deaths in San Francisco are hovering at least four times higher than the average rate in Copenhagen, a city with ten times as many cyclists.”

    This snippet is from a blog post written by Alex Schuknecht (urban designer with Gehl). In the posts he also contrasts the cycling cultures of San Francisco and Copenhagen – two cities of similar size and density, but with fundamental differences. It’s a good read.

    Many of us probably assume that we are agents of our own lives. We decide what we do and when we do it. We’re our own boss. That’s at least how I want to feel.

    But the built environment is distinct from the natural environment in that we design it. It is not a given. And the environments we collectively choose to fund and build will ultimately have a significant impact on the way we “choose” to live our lives. 

    This gets back to the first line of the above quote: build more of this; get more of that. It’s also related to the startup mantra: “you make what you measure.” If all we’re measuring is traffic flow, then that’s the kind of city we will make. And that’s certainly be done.

    I don’t think a lot of us think in these terms. But we should.

  • Franchise starchitecture

    Back in 2014, Witold Rybczynski (who taught at Penn while I was there) wrote an article in The New York Times Style Magazine called The Franchising of Architecture. In it, he argued against the trend of “starchitecture.” 

    Here’s an excerpt:

    “Architecture, however, is a social art, rather than a personal one, a reflection of a society and its values rather than a medium of individual expression. So it’s a problem when the prevailing trend is one of franchises, particularly those of the globe-trotters: Renzo, Rem, Zaha and Frank. It’s exciting to bring high-powered architects in from outside. It flatters a city’s sense of self-importance, and fosters the perception of a place as a creative hotbed. But in the long run it’s wiser to nurture local talent; instead of starchitects, locatects.”

    Following this, James Russell (a longtime architecture critic) wrote a searing rebuttal called The Stupid Starchitect Debate. He called Witold’s story a piece of utter laziness and urged us to stop whining about celebrity architecture.

    Here’s an excerpt:

    “Celebrity architecture is not a franchise (McDonalds is a franchise), but branding. Branding is repellently ubiquitous, and it is pure romanticism to think architecture can escape a trend that so powerfully guides spending. A friend became a museum director in part because building a new building was part of the job. I thought he would bring up an energetic young local talent, but he ended up with an international big name because, he said, only the stars would bring in the donors. That’s sad, but emblematic of an era when private wealth builds the cultural facilities the public won’t pay for. That’s why celebrity architects are brands—a title none of them sought, though all are adept at exploiting. Even wealthy, sophisticated trustees like to bask in the glow of a name that’s got cachet, rather than look hard for someone with obvious talent but who is not well known.”

    This is a fascinating debate. And I would be curious to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

    My own view is that, yes, it is wonderfully romantic to think that we can go back to a period of time when London architecture was designed only by English architects, Paris architecture designed only by French architects, and so on. But the world has changed. The genie is out of the bottle on that one.

    I also don’t think that brand needs to be a dirty word in the context of architecture. There’s value in brand equity. And everything can be construed as a brand. This blog is part of my personal brand. That’s our world.

    The problem I have with this line of thinking is when architecture gets reduced to style, to form, to a veneer. Architecture is an opportunity to solve problems and respond to real (including local) constraints. That also creates value – arguably much more value. And I don’t believe that only “locatects” have the ability to respond to that challenge.

    There’s so much more that can be said about this topic.

  • The VanMoof hack

    8 years ago the Amsterdam-based bicycle company VanMoof started shipping bicycles to its customers. And since that time, they struggled to find a quality shipping partner that wouldn’t damage the bikes in transit. 

    They tried every varietal of shipping company, but the problem persisted. And since their goal was and is to sell 90% of their bikes online by 2020, they knew that they needed to solve this problem.

    So here’s what they did. This is a great story.

    They noticed that their bicycle boxes were about the same size as a large flatscreen TV. And since flatscreen TVs seem to always arrive in perfect condition, they decided to print a TV (along with an image of their bicycle) on the box.

    Here’s what that looks like (via QZ):

    The result? They immediately saw a 70-80% drop in shipping damages. That’s all it took. I love that.

    Since I know that a lot of you are cyclists, I thought you might appreciate this little hack. Their bikes are also quite stylish and reasonably priced if you happen to be in the market. (I am waiting to hear back on whether they ship to Canada.)

  • Case Study: Lumiere London

    Last week I wrote about the value of urban lighting.

    Another case study worth looking at is Lumiere London. It was a four day light festival that took place in January, which is normally a pretty quiet and dark month. This past year in London the festival saw over 1 million visitors who spent over £22 million.

    Here’s a time lapse video of the festival in action:

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESxG9KsaeJo&w=560&h=315]

    Click here if you can’t see the embedded video.

    It’s obviously a temporary festival, but it’s a great example of how lighting can transform a city. After the event, the Guardian (which gave it 4/5 stars) talked about the city itself becoming the story. They also said that it managed to “unzip and open out the city” in a way that politicians and town planners often struggle to do.

    Sounds like fun.

  • October baseball in the city

    You can have one of the best records in the league or you can be slumping right before the post-season, and none of that matters when the month of October hits. Such is baseball. And such is life.

    What does help, though, is being bold. The Blue Jays got lucky on Sunday night with Odor’s throwing error. But Donaldson was also willing to take a chance and make a run for home plate. It paid off in a big way. His instincts were right.

    I found the above image on social media without a source. If I’m pissing anyone off by posting it here, let me know and I’ll take it down. I just love how it captures the exact moment – with the ball still in the air – when Donaldson proclaims victory.

    Baseball will always be a special sport for me. I have never been a big hockey fan and the Raptors didn’t exist until the mid-90s. So as a kid growing up in Toronto, I played baseball and watched the Jays.

    So here’s to more October baseball. The playoffs are always such a fun time in the city. It has a way of cutting through our differences and uniting us all around a common dream. That doesn’t always happen.