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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  • Nest or cave?

    I was recently introduced to the work and writing of Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto. One concept that he writes about that I really like is the idea of nest vs. cave.

    The way Fujimoto describes a cave is that it’s a naturally occurring and pre-existing condition. It is exists independent of humans. So if and when a human decides to occupy a cave, he or she must assimilate their lives to that which is already there. They have to deal with the ambiguity of the spaces because it is not clear how everything should be used.

    A nest, on the other hand, is something completely created by and for the benefit of a person or animal. It would not exist without someone creating it and so it is prescriptive and functional in a way that a cave is not.

    Fujimoto is interested in exploring architecture that is analogous to caves. Which is why he designs houses like this one (House NA) in Tokyo:

    In most countries, a house like this would not meet code and would be illegal. But in Tokyo it’s obviously allowed. And his hope is that the owners will discover new and unintended ways to interact with the unusual pairing of levels and platforms.

    However, I think about this juxtaposition differently – likely incorrectly in the mind of Fujimoto.

    I’m actually more interested in nests. Because in a way, mass produced housing is like a cave. It exists whether or not we decide to occupy it. And it is generally created to appeal to lots of people, rather than to the idiosyncratic tastes of one person. So when someone does occupy it, they invariably end up trying to shape it.

    But not to the extent of a nest. A nest is custom. It is what you would build for yourself given the opportunity to do so. And that thought is really appealing to me. Maybe it’s because I don’t like the ambiguity of a cave. That could be a possibility.

    I could also be thinking about it differently because I tend to think of Japanese homes as being quite individualistic. Since Japanese people generally don’t care about resale value, they don’t have the same fixation with marketability and future value. That means they’re more likely to just build what they want.

    I’d love to have my own nest.

    Image: Wall Street Journal

  • Coffee shops vs. fried chicken

    When it comes to a real estate market, there are always the typical metrics: sale prices, rents, vacancy and so on. But I’m always interested when somebody looks at the market in a different way and comes up with other kinds of metrics.

    That’s why I was intrigued when I stumbled upon this post by Sam Floy, where he looks at the concentration of coffee shops and friend chicken shops across London in order to determine which neighborhoods are in fact “up and coming.”

    To give you a taste, here’s his coffee shop map:

    His thinking was that if a neighborhood had a high density of coffee shops, a low density of fried chicken shops, and relatively low house prices, then it could probably be thought of as up and coming. 

    Coffee shops are often considered to be leading indicators of urban change (i.e. gentrification), and, well, friend chicken places I guess speak to a different kind of neighborhood.

    These sorts of playful studies aren’t going to tell you exactly which numbers you should be plugging into your development pro forma. But I think unconventional analyses can sometimes tell you a bit more of the story behind the numbers.

  • Sprawling, but affordable

    The Wall Street Journal recently published an interesting article that ties in nicely with two of my recent posts. My post about North American population growth and my post about the San Francisco pro-development group known as BARF.

    The WSJ article is about the growing divide between affordable and expensive cities in the US. And the argument is that expansionist, or sprawling, cities are better at suppressing home values and maintaining affordability:

    “The developed residential area in Atlanta, for example, grew by 208% from 1980 to 2010 and real home values grew by 14%. In contrast, in the San Francisco-San Jose area, developed residential land grew by just 30%, while homes values grew by 188%.”

    Now, here’s a chart saying that same thing:

    The reality is that greenfield development (suburban sprawl) generally has far fewer barriers to development than urban infill development. So I’m not surprised to see cities like Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Phoenix clustered towards the bottom right.

    At the same time though, I’m obviously not convinced that sprawl is an optimal outcome. I think there are other costs not reflected in the chart above. So what’s the best solution here, assuming we want to build inclusive mixed-income cities?

  • Gray on gray on gray

    This past weekend was gorgeous in Toronto. I always love seeing the city come to life after the winter and last weekend was the first sign of that this year.

    Being the fair-weather cyclist that I am, I had the flat fixed on my single speed bike and I was ready to go by the weekend. I managed to test out the GoPro handlebar mount that I mentioned last week but, quite honestly, the footage was so jittery and bouncy that it made me nauseous to watch it. So I need to rethink my city geek filming strategy. 

    (Sidebar: GoPro needs to make it easier to turn their raw footage into content that is actually worth sharing.)

    Still, I had a good ride over to the new Canary District on the east side of downtown. The gates just recently game down, so I was itching to take a look at it. Here are a couple of photos to give you some context for the rest of this post:

    None of the retailers have moved in, so the area currently feels like Toronto post zombie apocalypse (to use a friend’s description of the neighborhood). But all of the bones are in place for an incredible downtown neighborhood.

    Here are some of my thoughts as I was riding around:

    The opening of this neighborhood repositions the Distillery District. Initially, the Distillery District struggled as a kind of island on the edge of downtown. But thankfully they stuck to their initial vision for the community and now they get the benefit of this new mixed-use anchor to the east of it.

    Trinity Street to the north of the Distillery District proper is a fantastic opportunity to not only extend the magic of the Distillery northward, but also “plug” the area into Front Street East, which is the primary east-west spine that connects the Canary District back to the downtown core. I hope we (the city, developers, and so on) take advantage of this.

    The Front Street Promenade running through the Canary District and connecting into Corktown Common (park) is going to be an absolutely magical urban space once the restaurants, cafes, and retailers open up. I can’t wait for this to happen. Live Work Learn Play has been orchestrating the retail component.

    Finally, why are all of the buildings gray? 

    Gray brick. Gray window wall. Gray spandrel panel. It’s gray on gray on gray. We’re playing into that boring Canadian stereotype here. I hope the subsequent developments introduce some wild colors. Although some red brick to tie into the Distillery District would work well too. The best nearby architecture (just to the north) is the River City complex by Saucier + Perrotte.

    Notwithstanding the gray, I’m super excited about the Canary District and I am generally bullish on the east side of downtown. If you’ve had a chance to visit, I’d love to also hear your thoughts in the comment section below.

  • Population growth across North American cities

    The Centre for Urban Research and Land Development at Ryerson University recently published the following chart on their blog:

    It’s a look at population growth across a few North American cities, broken down according to natural increases, net internal migration from other parts of the respective country, and net immigration from outside of the respective country.

    When you sum up the pluses and minuses shown above, you get to population growth numbers that look like this:

    Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta are monsters in terms of population growth. They’re obviously smaller than New York and Los Angeles, and so on a percentage basis they are really adding a lot of people. Much of this has to do with the ease in which housing can be added in those cities and their relative affordability.

    Toronto is competitive with New York and Los Angeles in terms of an absolute number, but again our base is smaller so on a percentage basis we are growing faster. The big story with Toronto is our dependence on immigration to grow.

    The one city on this list that might surprise some of you is Chicago. Toronto and Chicago share many similarities and are often compared. But when you look at how the Chicago metropolitan area is shedding people, you see that, at least in this regard, it’s in structural decline.

  • BARF is fighting for more housing in San Francisco

    A new YIMBY activist group is starting to gain meaningful traction in San Francisco. They were recently featured in the New York Times and they have managed to secure the financial backing of people like Jeremy Stoppelman – co-founder and CEO of Yelp. 

    (All excerpts in this post were taken from the NY Times.)

    image

    The group is called SF BARF, which stands for SF Bay Area Renters’ Federation. The group, however, supports new development of all kinds. So I think the name is more driven by the fact that the founder, Sonja Trauss, wanted the acronym to be BARF. It speaks to their shit disturbing approach:

    “Her group consists of a 500-person mailing list and a few dozen hard-core members — most of them young professionals who work in the technology industry — who speak out at government meetings and protest against the protesters who fight new development. While only two years old, Ms. Trauss’s Renters’ Federation has blazed onto the political scene with youth and bombast and by employing guerrilla tactics that others are too polite to try. In January, for instance, she hired a lawyer to go around suing suburbs for not building enough.”

    The impetus for all of this, of course, is San Francisco’s lack of affordability and severe housing shortage. Housing supply is decades behind the city’s population and job growth. 

    Most people are directing the blame at the tech community for bidding up housing. But there’s clearly growing recognition that housing supply matters.

    As a real estate developer, my industry obviously benefits from fewer barriers to building. So let’s get that out there:

    “Ms. Trauss’s cause, more or less, is to make life easier for real estate developers by rolling back zoning regulations and environmental rules. Her opponents are a generally older group of progressives who worry that an influx of corporate techies is turning a city that nurtured the Beat Generation into a gilded resort for the rich.”

    But let’s also be clear that I don’t believe we should be developing roughshod over our cities. New development should respond to what’s already there and give back. 

    At the same time, housing supply matters a great deal. A big part of the reason that cities like San Francisco, New York and Vancouver are so expensive is that they’re naturally supply-constrained markets. Geographically, they are either peninsulas or islands.

    When you overlay tight land use restrictions, fierce community opposition and/or foreign investment on top of this geography, it should come as no surprise to anyone that demand is outstripping supply. 

    New supply won’t solve every problem, but I do agree that it is an important part of the solution.

  • Can starchitecture trump soul-crushing sprawl?

    Hunter Oatman-Stanford just published a longish read over on Collectors Weekly that talks about the history of suburban office complexes in America. That part alone makes it an interesting read.

    But he also makes the argument that innovative companies like Apple and Google are still stuck in a midcentury suburban mindset with their new mega headquarters:

    “I look at Apple’s Norman Foster building, and it’s 1952 all over again,” Mozingo says. “There’s nothing innovative about it. It’s a classic corporate estate from the 1950s, with a big block of parking. Meanwhile, Google is building another version of the office park with a swoopy roof and cool details—but it does nothing innovative.”

    Others have made this same argument. Back in 2013, Wired published an article talking about why Apple’s new Norman Foster spaceship could result in them losing the war for tech talent. 

    And if you read the piece in Collectors Weekly, you’ll see just how little, in some cases, the office environment has changed since the middle of the 20th century.

    Back then, we also had big name starchitects designing suburban head offices for innovative companies. Below is a photo from the GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. It was designed by Eero Saarinen and it opened in 1956.

    image

    There’s lots of research that suggests that, today, both entrepreneurs and capital are flocking to urban centers, instead of the suburbs. And I certainly don’t need to repeat that to this audience.

    But given this shift, I think we will increasingly view the suburban sprawl of places like Silicon Valley as a serious competitive disadvantage. I mean, I am sure these new buildings will be lovely, but I certainly wouldn’t want to work there. 

    Would you?

  • Building Toronto Tomorrow

    I’m going to be speaking on a panel on May 3rd, here in Toronto, called Building T.O. Tomorrow. The topic is the future of this city.

    It is being put on by the good folks at BuzzBuzzHome and it will be held in the lobby of Allied’s new Queen-Richmond Centre (134 Peter Street). If you haven’t yet been to this building, that alone makes attending worthwhile.

    Here’s the event poster:

    If you’d like to attend, make sure you RSVP to aleks@buzzbuzzhome.com.

    On a largely unrelated note, I recently picked up the handlebar bicycle mount for my GoPro and I’m looking for some fellow city geeks who would like to ride around the city and film some – potentially cool – videos.

    I find that being on a bike is one of the best ways to experience a city (at least the cities that are actually bikeable). So I’m hoping some of that magic will translate into video. If that sounds at all interesting, drop me a line.

  • New curated city building bulletin

    I have decided to spin-off the Architect This City identity into a weekly newsletter that I’m referring to as a “curated city building bulletin.” (This is as a result of the unbranding of this blog last week.)

    The inaugural issue went out this past Monday at 9am eastern with a collection of city building-related links. And that was it. This is not another blog. I’m not writing any new content for it. It’s simply going to be a collection of links to things that I think city builders would find interesting and/or valuable.

    Here’s why I decided to do this:

    It allows me to keep this new bulletin entirely focused on one thing. You’re not going to find me sneaking in a link about snowboarding, wine or something else that I’m interested in. It’s strictly about targeting city builders. (Of course, city building can be a pretty broad topic.)

    Keeping in mind what I wrote yesterday about saying no, I also chose this format because the additional workload for me will be minimal. In order for me to write a daily blog like this one, I have found that I need to keep a running list of reading material. But a lot of what’s on this list (stored in Pocket) never sees the light of day – there’s only so much I can write about. This new bulletin will be a quick way for me to share the rest of it.

    Finally, I’m also hoping it’ll be an efficient way for me to share the links, events, projects, and other things I receive from readers. In an ideal world, the bulletin will evolve into having a “links” section and a “from the community” section – which will be things that subscribers send me but today don’t get shared.

    So that’s the plan. If that sounds good to you, please subscribe at architectthiscity.com. 

    To kick things off, I’m going to be giving away 5 x free ATC t-shirts. (See photo at the top of this post.) To win one, just (1) subscribe and tweet out a link to this new city building bulletin, (2) tag @athiscity, and (3) tell everyone which city/town you live in.

    Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

  • The value of saying no

    If you’re somebody who has a lot of ideas, it can be pretty easy to get overwhelmed and/or distracted by all of the possibilities. It’s also worse when you’re an optimist and you believe it can all be done. I am definitely guilty of this. It is one of my weaknesses.

    We all have a finite amount of time to work with and so saying no to the stuff that isn’t core is critical. I believe I am getting better at this, but every now and then I find myself having to do some pruning. And once I do that, boy does it feel great.

    Seth Godin has a fantastic blog post on this topic that I love called, No is essential. Here it is in its entirety (it’s a short post):

    “If you believe that you must keep your promises, overdeliver and treat every commitment as though it’s an opportunity for a transformation, the only way you can do this is to turn down most opportunities.

    No I can’t meet with you, no I can’t sell it to you at this price, no I can’t do this job justice, no I can’t come to your party, no I can’t help you. I’m sorry, but no, I can’t. Not if I want to do the very things that people value my work for.

    No is the foundation that we can build our yes on.”

    To drive the point home even further, let’s shift gears and talk about wine. (For all of you fellow wine drinkers.)

    In viticulture, overall yield – usually measured in hectoliters per hectare of vineyard – is often seen as an important indicator of quality. The idea being that low yields produce better wines because the flavors get concentrated over fewer grapes. 

    Part of what drives this is the leaf to fruit ratio. Too much fruit and not enough leaves, means the grapes won’t ripen properly.

    The parallel to this conversation is that leaves are much like time. There’s only so much of it. And while many of us are constantly trying to maximum yield – I know I am – there are limits to the kind and quality of grapes we can produce when we do that. 

    I know this in principle. And more and more, I know this in practice. I am learning to say no.

    Image from Flickr