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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  • Boondoggle or architectural icon?

    Today, the new World Trade Center Transportation Hub, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, opened up – at least partially – in New York City. 

    Given that it was originally supposed to open in 2009 and cost about half as much (original budget was $2.2 billion), the critics haven’t been kind.

    Here are a few snippets from Michael Kimmelman’s writeup in the New York Times, called, Santiago Calatrava’s Transit Hub Is a Soaring Symbol of a Boondoggle:

    …at first blush, Mr. Calatrava’s architecture can almost — almost — make you forget what an epic boondoggle the whole thing has been. That virgin view, standing inside the Oculus and gazing up, is a jaw-dropper.

    The project’s cost soared toward a head-slapping, unconscionable $4 billion in public money for what, in effect, is the 18th-busiest subway stop in New York City, tucked inside a shopping mall, down the block from another shopping center.

    And it’s not really a hub. A maze of underground passages connects the site to far-flung subway lines, but there are not free transfers. The place is a glorified PATH station for some 50,000 weekday riders commuting to and from New Jersey.

    I haven’t been following this project, so I can’t really comment on the delays and cost overruns. But I sure wish that main hall (called the Oculus and pictured above) was a part of my regular travel routine.

    Image via Curbed

  • A breakdown of land use in Vancouver

    Last night when I was thumbing through Twitter before bed, I came across this blog post describing Vancouver’s land use types. The blog itself is called Mountain Doodles, but it’s not exactly clear who the author is. 

    In any event, what she/he did was analyze Vancouver’s land use dataset to come up with a series of charts that break down the percentage of each type: residential single detached, residential low-rise apartment, commercial, green space, and so on.

    Here’s what the chart looks like for Metro Vancouver:

    And here’s what it looks like for just the City of Vancouver, proper:

    When you look at the metro area, green / open space dominates. Although, the author states that, given the dataset, there could be a small overstatement of green space. There’s also the question of where the overall boundary was drawn.

    When you look at only the City of Vancouver, it’s land for residential housing (detached and duplex) and roads that dominate, with green / open space coming in a somewhat distant third.

    Of course, this does not speak to the intensity in which any of the above land might be used, such as the apartment lands (i.e., the third dimension). But from a two-dimensional perspective, you certainly get a sense of what we – for better or for worse – have chosen to privilege.

  • Warren’s blog

    I just finished reading Warren Buffet’s 2015 annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. If you haven’t yet read one of his letters and you’re at all interested in business and investing, I would encourage you to check them out. (By going to their website you’ll also get a reminder of what the web looked like circa 1995.)

    When I read them I feel as if I’m reading a giant blog post from Warren Buffet – albeit one that only gets published once a year. They’re well-written and easy to read. They’re personal. They’re light and humorous. (He drops Tinder, the mobile dating app, in this year’s letter.) And they’re packed full of invaluable information and insights.

    To give you a sample, here are two snippets that I liked:

    “Our flexibility in capital allocation – our willingness to invest large sums passively in non-controlled
    businesses – gives us a significant edge over companies that limit themselves to acquisitions they will
    operate. Woody Allen once explained that the advantage of being bi-sexual is that it doubles your chance
    of finding a date on Saturday night. In like manner – well, not exactly like manner – our appetite for either
    operating businesses or passive investments doubles our chances of finding sensible uses for Berkshire’s
    endless gusher of cash.”

    “America’s population is growing about .8% per year (.5% from births minus deaths and .3% from net
    migration). Thus 2% of overall growth produces about 1.2% of per capita growth. That may not sound impressive.
    But in a single generation of, say, 25 years, that rate of growth leads to a gain of 34.4% in real GDP per capita.
    (Compounding’s effects produce the excess over the percentage that would result by simply multiplying 25 x 1.2%.)
    In turn, that 34.4% gain will produce a staggering $19,000 increase in real GDP per capita for the next generation.”

    Overall, he remains, and rightly so I’d say, very bullish on the United States: “For 240 years it’s been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start.”

    What do you think?

  • Lo Mein Loophole

    Maria Godoy of NPR recently published an interesting piece called Lo Mein Loophole: How U.S. Immigration Law Fueled A Chinese Restaurant Boom.

    The article starts by talking about how rising anti-Chinese sentiment in the late 19th and early 20th century eventually lead to the U.S. passing new immigration laws. These laws explicitly restricted Chinese laborers from moving to the U.S. and even made it difficult for legal residents to return after a visit home to China.

    However, embedded in these laws was a small loophole:

    But, as MIT legal historian Heather Lee tells it, there was an important exception to these laws: Some Chinese business owners in the U.S. could get special merchant visas that allowed them to travel to China, and bring back employees. Only a few types of businesses qualified for this status. In 1915, a federal court added restaurants to that list. Voila! A restaurant boom was born.

    “The number of Chinese restaurants in the U.S. doubles from 1910 to 1920, and doubles again from 1920 to 1930,” says Lee, referring to research done by economist Susan Carter. In New York City alone, Lee found that the number of Chinese eateries quadrupled between 1910 and 1920.

    This is fascinating on so many levels. 

    For one, it’s always interesting when small loopholes have unintended consequences. It is doubtful that anyone could have predicted a Chinese restaurant boom.

    Secondly, despite the U.S. being a nation of immigrants, you see here a long history of trying to keep immigrants out. In the early 20th century, the fear was Chinese laborers who worked for low wages. Today, it’s Mexican laborers who work for low wages.

    Finally, it’s amazing to look back at the foundation that these early Chinese entrepreneurs no doubt created. Today, Asian Americans are often considered a “model minority.” The Pew Research Center refers to them as “the highest-income, best-educated and fastest-growing racial group in the United States.” 

    When it comes to Ivy League admissions, they’ve even been called the “New Jews” – referring to the fact that many believe that top tier schools have systematically biased admissions against both Jews and Asians because of their tendency to overachieve relative to “white Americans.”

    And to think that this may have all started, at least partly, with a Chinese restaurant boom.

  • NO TOWER on Commercial Drive

    For the past week or so I’ve been seeing the proposed Kettle Boffo Project in Vancouver make the rounds online. Here’s a rendering of the project, which is located at Commercial Drive and Venables Street:

    image

    The reason it has been making the rounds is that a community group called NO TOWER (written in all caps) has come out in fierce opposition of the 5 to 12-storey building. They have over 3,500 signatures.

    As an outsider looking in, this is surprising. The scale of the project seems appropriate. The height roughly matches the existing building shown above to the right. It may even be lower. And the project will provide somewhere around 30 social housing units, as well as additional space for the Kettle Friendship Society non-profit, who are currently on the site. (Note: An application to the city hasn’t yet been made.)

    What this has me thinking about is the push and pull between bottom-up and top-down planning. 

    When architect Bjarke Ingels talks about his Dryline project in New York, he likes to refer to it as the love child of Robert Moses (top-down planning) and Jane Jacobs (bottom-up planning). In the case of this project, it’s because it’s a large infrastructure project that they are trying to root into the local neighborhoods. Makes sense.

    But this same thinking could also apply to overall city building. Local communities rightly have their own wants. But at the same time, cities need to be thinking about the overall. The challenge is finding that right balance.

    I would be curious to hear your thoughts on the Kettle Boffo Project in the comment section below – especially if you’re from Vancouver.

  • What the UPX fare reduction means for the west side of Toronto

    Last week Metrolinx slashed fares on Toronto’s Union to Pearson Airport express train (UPX), by a lot. From $27.50 to $12 for people without a PRESTO card and from $19 to $9 for people with a PRESTO card. They listened to the pundits. And there were a lot of them regarding this topic.

    At these fares, the UPX is decidedly cheaper than a taxi or Uber, but more than regular transit, which I think makes sense given that it’s a better overall experience. I would take this train all day long.

    But the other thing that Metrolinx did was also reposition the train service as an inner city commuter service by matching fares with GO transit for non-airport trips within the city. As one example, this means that you can now go from Bloor & Dundas West in the west end to downtown Union Station for $5.30 in cash or $4.71 with a PRESTO card. This is in comparison to $3.25 in cash on the subway.

    But this is huge, because look at the options for this transit trip:

    • UPX Train: 8 minute trip; service every 15 minutes
    • GO Train: 12 minute trip (additional stop); service every 20-30 minutes during peak times and roughly every hour during off-peak times (so no drinks after work)
    • Subway: 26 minute trip; most frequent service

    This is a significant connectivity upgrade for the west side of the city. One that reinforces my belief that, next to Union Station, Bloor/Dundas West is the best connected mobility hub in the Toronto region. This now a perfect location for companies and people who need quick access to both the Financial District and the airport. Unfortunately though, I don’t think we’ve taken full advantage of this connectivity in terms of what we’ve allowed and disallowed to be built in the area to date.

    I’ll end by saying that I think the pundits have been overly critical of the UPX train. Everyone loves to talk about it as a failure. But look, every organization and person makes mistakes. If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not pushing yourself hard enough. The key is to iterate and refine as you charge along. So go make some mistakes today 🙂

    Image: UP Express

  • #BuildHereNow — Crowdsourced city building

    image

    This week Strong Towns has been running a great social media campaign called #BuildHereNow. 

    The way it works is very simple. They asked people to get outside and take photos of vacant and/or underutilized properties in their town or city and post them to Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #BuildHereNow. The goal was to start to identify properties that could “use a little love" and to encourage city builders who might need a little push to develop a particular property.

    I’m a big fan of crowdsourcing information and I love the idea of digitally annotating buildings and spaces. In this case, it’s about pulling together the desires of the community,

    Hashtags are a great way to quickly make something like this happen, but I would love to see a purpose-built tech platform do this in a more permanent way. Of course, it doesn’t just have to be about developing. Buildings are rich in information; hopefully so rich that a platform like this could survive.

    If you think about it, property titles are already a form of annotating real property. So this isn’t really a new idea. 

    But now technology allows us to harvest all kinds of other information – such as what people would like to see built. Imagine the possibilities if we became more effective at collecting, organizing, and leveraging this data at scale.

  • How things could be

    I have about 15 minutes before I need to head out for dinner, so I’m afraid that there won’t be much of an ATC post today. It has been a busy week.

    But given that this week was Bjarke Ingels’ talk in Toronto and many of us are pretty excited about his King West project, I thought I would share a video where he sketches and talks about architecture. Click here if you can’t see it below.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIsIKv1lFZw?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

    I love the idea that architecture is about imagining how things could be. That’s how I feel about both architecture and real estate development.

  • The local vs. global city

    Blogger and Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Aaron M. Renn, recently published an interesting long-form article called, Rethinking America’s Cities’ Success Strategy.

    One of the central themes is the idea that globalization has caused a kind of bifurcation in cities – a disconnect between the local and the global. In an effort to compete with other global cities around the world, we have begun to turn our back on local concerns. At the same time, not every city has the market power of, say, New York or London.

    So what does this mean for cities? Here’s a quote from the article that I think does a good job explaining the mental model:

    At the end of the article, Aaron makes a number of recommendations for how to better think about local entrepreneurship and economic growth. The first one is as follows:

    “Local civic priorities should favor building a successful and inclusive local economy, including entrepreneurship, over global concerns and real estate development.”

    Despite this being seemingly contradictory to do what I do for a living, I think it’s important to note that on a fundamental level, architects and developers simply create space. 

    It might be a beautiful space. A space that improves well-being, creates value, and enables certain activities. But at the end of the day, there needs to be demand for that space. And a robust local economy is paramount to that equation. So I agree that we shouldn’t forget about local and expect that “if we build it, they will come.”

    If you have the time, the full article is worth a read. It’s also part of a broader series on entrepreneurship and cities, so there are a bunch of other related articles on the same page.

  • The advantages of disadvantages in business and entrepreneurship

    This morning I stumbled upon an interesting book by Claudia Kalb called Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History’s Great Personalities. 

    I obviously haven’t read it yet, but I like the premise. The book examines 12 famous figures and makes the argument that each of them had some sort of mental health condition that aided them in their success. 

    Here is an excerpt from a recent Harvard Business Review interview with the author:

    “The most common one may be narcissism. Frank Lloyd Wright is a good example. He had classic narcissistic qualities — a sense of grandiosity, superiority, a huge and complete belief in his aesthetic sensibility, and disregard for architecture that did not live up to his standard. Narcissists also have an ability to be charming, and to lure people into their orbit. That’s obviously useful for an entrepreneur. The issue is that while these qualities may make you a good leader, they may not make you a winning boss. Employees often feel that narcissistic bosses are ruthless or lacking in empathy. Also, unlike people with depression or anxiety disorders, narcissists don’t suffer as much personally from their condition — but the way they behave can be much harder on the people around them.”

    Related to this topic is an emergent body of research that, more specifically, looks at the relationship between mental illness and entrepreneurship. And according to work done by professor Michael A. Freeman of UC-San Francisco and professor Sheri Johnson of Berkeley, there’s a significant relationship. 

    Below are two excerpts from a Washington Post article published last year.

    “Forty-nine percent of entrepreneurs surveyed reported at least one mental health condition. Nearly a third reported having two or more mental health issues, such as ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety or substance use conditions. And half of the entrepreneurs who reported no mental-health conditions identified themselves as coming from families with a history of mental illness.”

    Why would these conditions be of any benefit to entrepreneurs?

    “For all of its ills, depression also brings empathy and creativity. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi attempted suicide as teenagers. Uncommon levels of empathy can allow a businessman to better understand a customer’s need. And a creative mind won’t be satisfied on the corporate ladder, but instead in a fast-moving start-up where he or she can unfurl ideas and dreams.

    Individuals with ADHD naturally make decisions faster, are comfortable working independently and are more creative, necessary skills at a start-up. They’re likely to be bored working for someone else.”

    From a city building standpoint, all of this is quite relevant. Because for all of the focus on promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, we don’t seem to be talking about healthcare and mental health systems. And there’s clearly an argument to be made that the two are connected.