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.

Subscribe

  • The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion

    A few days ago I wrote a post talking about what happens when you demolish an urban highway. It was a link to an article giving 5 examples of cities that have removed their urban highways and benefited.

    After I wrote the post, a number of people responded on Twitter. Some thought it was a great idea and gave examples of other cities, such as Detroit, that are thinking about doing the same. But others responded and said that I was out of line. And that while it might work in some cities, it simply isn’t a viable option in cities like Toronto.

    So as somebody who believes we should be taking down the Gardiner Expressway, I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit the topic and provide a bit more information.

    To be clear, I’m not suggesting we remove the Gardiner and replace it with nothing. My belief is that we should replace it with a broad surface street that would still move lots of cars, but that would make our waterfront much more open and accessible to everyone.

    So how is this feasible?

    Again it comes back to the concept of induced demand. Back in 2009, two economists from the University of Toronto and University of Pennsylvania – which are actually both of my alma maters – published a study called The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion.

    In it they discovered something really fascinating: there’s a near perfect relationship between new roads and highways built and the total number of miles driven. In other words, as cities increased road capacities (during their study period of 1980 to 2000), the amount of driving went up just as much.

    What this should tell you is that trying to build your way of out road congestion is usually a losing proposition. That’s why every large city has a traffic problem. Try and think of one that has solved this. And as much as it might seem intuitive to tell people at cocktail parties that your city simply needs to build more roads and highways, it’s typically not that simple. (In my view, the solution is road pricing.)

    The other really interesting thing that this study revealed is that it works both ways. When you reduce road capacity, drivers start to disappear. People choose to live closer to where they work. People choose transit. People go into the office at different times. People make all sorts of different decisions in response to this road change, just as they do when there are more free roads available to them.

    So within a reasonable band (obviously you can’t remove all roads), there is no perfect amount of road capacity. If you added another lane to your highway, it would be full. If you took away a lane, it would end up equally full. That’s why removing the Gardiner Expressway isn’t lunacy.

    Instead, it actually makes a lot of sense:

    • It’s the cheapest solution (compared to repairing it or burying it)
    • It would free up money for transit and other mobility solutions
    • It would make our waterfront more open and accessible
    • It would beautify our downtown
    • It would increase land values all along the waterfront

    And since we’re still in the early days of developing our eastern waterfront, now is the time to do it. The longer we wait, the harder it’ll get and the more expensive it’ll get.

    So I hope that the leaders in this city will think long and hard about this as opposed to immediately assuming we need an elevated highway to keep this city moving. The last time I checked, it doesn’t work so well in its current state.

    Images: Before and After the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco (via Gizmodo)

  • Muuto stacked shelf system

    I don’t have a lot to say today. I had a busy day and then this evening I set up some new shelving in my apartment. Here’s what it looks like:

    There’s a bulkhead directly above it (that you can’t see in this picture) and so I’ve been wanting to put shelving in this corner ever since I moved in almost 2 years ago. I haven’t really organized the contents yet, but I did get some wine into the bottom of it. First things first.

    Initially I thought about getting built-in shelves. But custom millwork is expensive and, to do something even remotely interesting, the pricing got stupid. So I searched and searched and eventually stumbled upon the Muuto stacked shelf system designed by JDS Architects.

    This is the picture that sold me:

    My setup doesn’t look nearly as impressive, but I’m still thrilled with it.

    The way it works is really simple. You stack up the boxes however you would like and then, once you’re satisfied, you just clip them together. That’s what those yellow things are in my picture. You can hide them at the back if you want, but I purposely ordered yellow ones in order to highlight how the system actually goes together.

    It wasn’t the cheapest option out there, but I’d rather have fewer things of higher quality. I already have too many things.

  • What happens when you demolish a highway

    Earlier today I tweeted this:

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It’s a link to an article talking about 5 cities – New York, Milwaukee, Seoul, Portland, and San Francisco – who all demolished an elevated highway that used to run through their downtowns.

    To be completely fair, some of these cities didn’t really have a choice. San Francisco’s Central Freeway was so badly damaged in an earthquake that it had to be closed. But it doesn’t make the lessons any less relevant.

    In all of these cases, the elevated highways were taken down and never replaced with another highway. Some were turned into large boulevards. Others were turned into parks. But in none of the cases was a new road of similar capacity built.

    Intuitively it might seem like this would cause utter chaos. I mean, where were all of these cars going to go? 

    But that didn’t happen. Instead, demand redistributed itself. Car volumes dropped dramatically. More people took transit. Some people took other routes. And some people traveled at different times. Oh, and nearby property values all went up.

    And the reason this happened is because of something that economists call induced demand (I’ve written about it before, here). What it means is that as you increase the supply of some valuable good (such as free highways), more of that good becomes demanded.

    In other words: more free highways = more cars on the road.

    So if you’re a city – like Toronto – with an elevated highway running through your downtown, you should give this some serious thought. The outcomes aren’t as bad as you might think. In fact, they’re quite good.

    Image: Seoul via D Magazine

  • A labor of love

    image

    We’ve taught generations of architects to speak out as artists, but we haven’t taught them how to listen.

    This is a line from a recent New York Times op-ed that has been making the rounds online today called: How to Rebuild Architecture. 

    The premise of the article is that architects have marginalized themselves by being pompous elitists who increasingly serve only the rich and don’t respond to public opinion about architecture.

    For too long, our profession has flatly dismissed the general public’s take on our work, even as we talk about making that work more relevant with worthy ideas like sustainability, smart growth and “resilience planning.”

    The author’s recommendation is that architects need to get better at listening to their clients and listening to the public. 

    Reconnecting architecture with its users — rediscovering the radical middle, where we meet, listen and truly collaborate with the public, speak a common language and still advance the art of architecture — is long overdue. It’s also one of the great design challenges of our time.

    What’s interesting about this viewpoint is that it’s precisely the sort of thing that entrepreneurs and business people are trained to do today. The mantra is that you should never build your product or service in isolation. Get out of the building. Talk to customers. Get feedback. Adjust. And iterate.

    But architects don’t like to do this. Why is that?

    The answer, at least partially, comes down to taste. As the author correctly pointed out, the kinds of buildings that architects like are often not the same ones that the general public likes.

    I don’t have any hard data to support this claim, but I suspect that most people out there – particularly those with money – would prefer their home to look like something that Robert Stern designed as opposed to a glass box designed by Philip Johnson.

    And yet the latter is what architects and architecture students make pilgrimages to. I certainly did when I was in architecture school. 

    In fact, I think you’d have a difficult time getting into any architecture school right now with a portfolio of work as traditional as the work of Robert Stern. It’s simply not part of the architectural discourse at this stage.

    So to many architects, it can be difficult – even painful – to listen to what the public wants. Architects are not trained in terms of market size and profit maximization. It’s about passion. It’s a labor of love. And when you’ve already fallen in love, it can be hard to change your mind.

    Image: Flickr

  • 19 Duncan Street bought for $47 million

    image

    Last week it was announced that Allied Properties and Westbank have acquired 19 Duncan Street in Toronto for $47 million.

    The property sits at the southeast corner of Adelaide Street West and Duncan Street (shown above), and includes an existing 61,911 square foot (GLA) office building, 36 surface parking spots, and a laneway (it was specifically called out in the press release).

    The plan is to restore the existing heritage building, as well as build additional retail space, office space, and rental apartments. Given the nature of this site and the team behind it, I have high hopes that it will end up a remarkable development project.

    It’s interesting to see the continuing interest in rental apartments here in Toronto – which is something I’ve written about before. Up until recently, the development community had almost zero interest in purpose built rental apartment buildings. Now they’re coming back in fashion.

    But the other piece that’s interesting to me is the laneway. Below is a photo from Google streetview, showing what I believe is the laneway that the press release is referring to.

    image

    As many of you know, I’m involved in a non-profit here in Toronto called The Laneway Project (advisory role only). We want to transform Toronto’s underutilized laneways. And this strikes me as a perfect opportunity to do something really exciting at the corner of Adelaide and Duncan in the Entertainment District.

    So if the new owners have any interest in things that are exciting, I would encourage them to get in touch with me or one of the founders of The Laneway Project.

  • Barrels and ammunition

    A few weeks ago I watched a talk by Keith Rabois called, How to Operate. Keith is a venture capitalist with Khosla Ventures, the former COO of Square, and a member of the PayPal Mafia.

    The talk was primarily geared towards startups, but much of what he talked about could be applied to any organization where people are managed. So whether you’re an architect, real estate developer, or governmental organization, I bet you’ll find the lessons relevant.

    One in particular that stood out for me was the idea of barrels and ammunition.

    For a lot of organizations, the thought is often that by adding more people you’ll be able to increase output. More people = greater velocity. But Keith’s reasoning is that most people are actually ammunition. And just like in war, it doesn’t exclusively matter how much ammunition you have. You can only shoot through the number of barrels you have. Output depends on barrels.

    So who exactly are barrels?

    Barrels are the kind of people who can take something from idea all the way through to completion, while at the same time taking a group of people along with them. They are, in other words, your leaders.

    But, they are difficult to find.

    There are fewer barrels than ammunition. And, the culture of the organization itself will impact every person’s ability to be a barrel. Here’s how Keith puts it:

    Barrels are very difficult to find. But when you have them, give them lots of equity. Promote them, take them to dinner every week, because they are virtually irreplaceable because they are also very culturally specific. So a barrel at one company may not be a barrel at another company.

    That’s something for you to think about as you start your workweek.

    Image: Flickr

  • GoPro city tours

    This past week was Toronto’s first real snowstorm of the season. It was awesome. I love snow. And part of the reason I love it, is because it means snowboarding season is here. Yes, the “mountains” in Ontario suck, but Quebec and Vermont aren’t too far away and every February there is The Annual.

    This year in preparation for the season I decided to splurge on a GoPro camera. We had a lot of fun filming last year in Jackson Hole and, since it looks like we’re going to have close to 10 people at this season’s Annual, I wanted to throw another camera into the mix. Expect another ski and snowboard video sometime in February 2015. We’re heading out to Alberta and British Columbia.

    I also ordered this mount for the camera:

    image

    But as I was ordering the camera, I started to think about what else I could use it for. And then it hit me: city tours. One of the things I love to do in the summer is ride my bike around the city and explore. I like to find areas I don’t know very well, find new developments I may have missed, and generally just get to know the city more intimately.

    Being on a bike is really the perfect way to do this. You don’t cover enough ground walking and with driving you simply miss too much of the city. So what I want to do is strap my GoPro to my handle bars and bring you along for these exploratory bike tours. I think it could be a unique way to show you the city – even if you happen to also be from here.

    How does that sound?

    It likely won’t happen until the spring, but if you’re interested in joining me, let me know. I think this could be a lot of fun with a group of city geeks.

    Image: GoPro

  • The MFA is the new MBA

    Harvard Business Review recently published a conversation between Roger Martin – who is the former dean of the Rotman School – and Tim Brown – who is CEO of the global design firm IDEO. The title of the talk is “Capitalism Needs Design Thinking.” But I decided to call this post something else after reading Roger say this:

    My friend Dan Pink argued in an HBR piece in 2004 that the MFA is the new MBA. I wrote to Dan to say that if that’s the case we have a problem because America pumps out a mere 1,500 MFAs a year versus 150,000 MBAs. Thirty MFAs per state per year is just a rounding error. This is one of the reasons I was so keen on transforming business education. It’s a huge infrastructure: 27% of all graduate students in America are in an MBA program. If they’re all being taught how to analyze things to death, that’s going to affect how they’ll shape the future of business.

    But what this conversation is really about is the future of democratic capitalism, which is why I think it’s a nice tie-in to yesterday’s Architect This City post about startups and inequality.

    I’m very worried about the fact that in America we’ve now gone 24 years without the median household income rising — it was the same in 2013 as it was in 1989. That’s unprecedented in American history. The longest that’s ever happened before is when it took just under 20 years to recover, after the Great Depression. This long period of stagnation has coincided with the top 1% of the economy doing spectacularly.

    And so while it’s easy to point fingers at the tech community and say that it’s to blame for rising income inequality, the reality, I think, is that there are other more fundamental issues that need addressing. Roger and Tim believe that design thinking can help. Here’s another great snippet from the former:

    I think the way that government generally works is to think, think, think, think, and then finally create legislation that brings about some change, and then they ignore their legislation and say okay, we’re finished with that. Then people go and figure out how to game that legislation, and the government doesn’t do anything about it. Whereas if they had a design view of it, they’d say when they passed a bill, that’s just the best idea we’ve got now, we have to go see how it works in practice, and then fix it. That’s just not the mentality.

    Technology is having a profound impact on the world. And it’s something that is very visible. But part of the challenge is that governments aren’t keeping up. They are almost never out in front.

    So when something new comes along, like Airbnb or Uber, the reaction is to just stop it. It doesn’t conform to the rules and regulations currently in place, and so it shouldn’t exist.

    But as Roger and Tim point out, maybe we need to look at our rules and regulations as simply part of an iterative process (like designers do). Because if we did that, maybe we’d be better equipped to transfer the benefits of innovation over to society as a whole.

    Image: HBR

  • Are startups causing inequality?

    Earlier this week Richard Florida published on article on CityLab talking about the relationship between tech innovation (in cities) and inequality. Specifically, the article deals with the correlation between venture capital investment and a variety of factors, such as monthly housing costs, wage and income inequality, and so on.

    The intent of the piece was to address the growing backlash against tech workers – in places like San Francisco – who have become the symbol for the growing gap between the rich and poor.

    The strongest correlation appears to exist between venture capital investment and housing costs. As the amount of venture capital goes up, so do housing costs – which probably shouldn’t surprise you. The rich start outbidding the poor for housing. Note: The two outlying dots at the top right, in the graph below, are Silicon Valley and San Francisco.

    image

    But when it comes to inequality, the relationship isn’t so clear. For wage inequality, there seems to be a relationship. But for the broader income inequality measure, the relationship is fairly weak. Here’s the graph:

    image

    So this is not as black and white as it might seem. Regardless, Florida ends the piece with the following statement (that I think is spot on):

    It’s time to stop pointing fingers and get on with the far more important task of harnessing the urban tech revolution to create a new urban middle class and a more inclusive urbanism—one in which many more workers and residents can participate, and one from which many more can benefit.

    The answer is not to stop innovating. That would be counterproductive. We should be be encouraging innovation, but at the same time figuring out how best to harness it for society as a whole.

    Tomorrow, I’ll touch a bit more on how we might go about doing that. I have a post planned that I think will tie in really nicely to this discussion. So stay tuned.

  • Renovating Architect This City

    I’ve made a few changes around here. If you’re reading this post on the actual site (as opposed to via Tumblr, your email subscription, or some other feed) and you’re a regular reader, you might notice that I’ve completely redesigned the look and feel of Architect This City. If you can’t see it and want to take a look, click here.

    It’s something that I’ve been meaning to do for awhile now. And it’s because I haven’t been happy with how this blog showed up on mobile devices. It wasn’t responsive. That made ATC less enjoyable to read on your phone and it made it a bit of a pain to leave comments. And since almost 35% of readers are on mobile (and that number is only going to go up), it was time to make a change.

    This site now looks more or less the same whether you’re viewing it on your desktop or on your phone. I also made sure to make the font nice and big so it’s an easy read on mobile. I think it’s a big improvement. But I’d love to also get your feedback on the redesign. I hope you like it as well and I hope it leads to more frequent discussions in the comment section 🙂