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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  • Closing the homeownership affordability gap

    Through TAS, I’m involved in an affordable homeownership seminar at Ryerson University. The goal of the semester is to develop a comprehensive policy document for how best to deliver affordable homeownership units in Ontario. 

    The students are still working on their final report, but I wanted share one thought that came to mind as I was reviewing the draft.

    As a first step, I think the question of affordability needs to begin with a broader look at the market rate housing market. Have we optimized for the delivery of new housing or are we operating in a state of perpetual supply deficits?

    The reason for this question is that—as I’ve written before—I subscribe to Edward Glaeser’s argument that easing housing regulation and increasing supply can go a long way to broadly improving housing affordability. It won’t make New York as affordable as suburban Houston (Glaeser says), but it will help to avoid some of the outrageous pricing that can occur in severely supply constrained markets like San Francisco.

    Once this has been addressed, it then comes down to deciding how you want to make up the shortfall. If you want to provide housing below its costs (the market rate), somebody is going to have to pay for the difference. However, if you’ve optimized around the market rate, it means that the required subsidies should be less than they otherwise would have been. This makes it more cost effective for governments, or whoever else is providing the subsidy.

    So my point is to not take the market conditions as a given when looking at affordability. Are there structural changes that could be made to improve affordability more broadly?

    There’s certainly no easy answer, but it’s an important discussion to be having. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.

  • Minimal effort; maximum engagement

    I’ve been blogging almost every day for 3 months straight. It’s been a hugely rewarding process and I absolutely plan to continue. Though some days it’s hard to find something to write about. And some days it’s hard to find the time.

    One of those days was 5 days ago. I was busy and so I decided to post a video instead of spending a lot of time writing a post. I posted a video explaining how the Dutch design their street intersections to accommodate cyclists. You can find that post here.

    Well, it turns out that the post I easily spent the least amount of time preparing has now become, by far, the most popular post I’ve ever done. As of today, I received 460 notes via Tumblr. That includes likes and reblogs. And, as a result, my engagement graph now looks like this:

    I can’t even make out what the numbers were before this post blew up. This is really interesting to me, because I remember questioning if I should even post the video in the first place. I thought it may be a bit dry and perhaps too technical.

    It just goes to show that sometimes you can’t predict what will catch on.

  • Turning St Clair and Spadina into LRT

    I’ve talked before about how Toronto doesn’t currently have any true light rail transit lines. LRT does not equal what we have on St Clair Avenue. The stops are spaced far too close together. It’s just a streetcar on its on right of way.

    This is better than a streetcar that doesn’t have its own right of way, but it could be better. So here’s an idea for better optimizing some of the transit infrastructure we already have: let’s convert the St Clair and Spadina streetcar lines into true LRT.

    Here are 3 things we could do.

    1.

    First, we need to get rid of some stops. Let’s take the stop spacing being proposed for Eglinton Avenue and apply it to St Clair Avenue and Spadina Avenue. By stopping less, it means performance goes up. Think about how much time is wasted every time the streetcar has to stop for people to get on and off. This is why New York has express trains.

    Alternatively—and instead of actually getting rid of some stops—we could also just operate two types of stops: rush hour stops and off-peak stops. In the case of off-peak stops, the streetcar would simply skip them during rush hour. The cost of implementing this would be signage and consumer education.

    2.

    Second, we finally roll out a better payment system. While tokens do give me a kind of 1960s nostalgia, I hate change and I hate fumbling with microscopic tokens in my pocket. Why isn’t there an app for this?

    But more importantly, if we had a better payment system we could transfer the point of payment from the actual streetcars to the stops themselves. This would mean that you’d need to pay in order to gain access to the stop itself. The benefit of this though is that it streamlines onboarding. Customers can now just walk onto the streetcar, like they do on the subway.

    And if you’re thinking about those times where you give up waiting for a streetcar and just hail a cab, well we could simply make the fare refundable if you leave at the same stop. This type of system would also open up the possibility of distance based fares (see London, Tokyo, etc.)

    3.

    Third, put the LRT lines on the subway map and operate them with the same rigour. Right now the customer experience gap between subways and streetcars is huge. Subways run on time and streetcars are completely hit or miss. There’s an excuse for streetcars that run mixed in with traffic, but I don’t see why we can’t make light rail (using its own right of way) just as predictable as subways. I used to take the LUAS in Dublin everyday and it was a fantastic experience.

    We really need to start taking transit more seriously in Toronto. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be known around the world for having the best transit system than for having a debaucherous mayor.

  • A Third Coast Megaregion

    The distance between Chicago and Quebec City is roughly 1,000 miles (or 1,609 km). There are 6 major cities and a population of over 25 million people. You have the 4th and 5th largest cities in North America (Chicago and Toronto); the largest city in Canada; the capital of Canada; 2 different languages; 2 different countries; and 5 different states/provinces.

    image

    Now imagine if all of these 6 cities—Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City—were effortlessly connected through a high speed rail network, allowing you to travel from one end to the other in just over 5 hours. How would that impact the movement of people, goods and services across the region? How would it change our economies if you could wake up in Detroit and, without any lead time, travel 1 hour and 15 minutes to Toronto for a meeting?

  • [vimeo 70039050 w=500 h=375]

    The Great Lakes Century

    Since 2009, architecture firm SOM has been working on promoting awareness and developing a 100-year vision for the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River Basin region. With 20% of the world’s surface fresh water and with over 50 million people living in the region, it’s an hugely important discussion to be having.

    The video above is called the Great Lakes Century and it’s a good overview of the region’s importance, as well as SOM’s goals. If you happen to be in Chicago, there’s also an exhibition going on right now at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. It’s called Great Cities, Great Lakes, Great Basin.

    (Source: http://player.vimeo.com/)

  • Renderings that scare

    This morning I was reading about an anti-development activist group in Vancouver that’s trying to fight the Bjarke Ingels designed Beach and Howe Tower.

    Here’s a “rendering” of the project that the group is using to galvanize the community:

    And here’s an official rendering of the project:

    I’ve seen this tactic used before here in Toronto for the Minto Midtown towers at Yonge & Eglinton. These were highly controversial towers and someone in the community created a depiction showing 2 large monolithic black towers (meant to represent the TD Towers downtown).

    Now, I’ll be the first to say that renderings are abused from both sides of the table. Developers obviously want to represent their projects in the best possible light and upset communities try and do the exact opposite. But where I do become concerned is when communities start to form opinions and make decisions based on rumours and rhetoric, rather than fact. 

    We should be having intelligent conversations about the future of our neighbourhoods and communities. And I think the best way to do that—as well as to counteract potentially unnecessary NIBYMism—is to ensure that the correct information is out there and that it’s widely accessible. Transparency is king. This often scares developers, but I believe that the benefits of openness greatly outweigh the negatives. 

    Full disclosure: I’m a big fan of architect Bjarke Ingels. I’m openly jealous that Vancouver could be getting one of his designs before Toronto does.

  • [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA?wmode=transparent&autohide=1&egm=0&hd=1&iv_load_policy=3&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&showsearch=0&w=500&h=281]

    Want to know how the Dutch design their intersections so that they’re friendly for cyclists? Then check out this video. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you actually care about something and you put thought and intent into it.

    (Source: http://www.youtube.com/)

  • Is San Francisco so liberal that it’s actually conservative?

    One of the things I’ve always found funny about San Francisco is that, despite being a bastion of liberalism, it’s a city that’s incredibly anti-development. From the outside, it seems like a city filled with NIMBYs. Doesn’t that seem odd given its reputation as one of the most progressive cities in America?

    Of course, many would argue that part of the reason so many people love San Francisco is because it’s done such a great job of preserving its history. And don’t get me wrong, I think that’s important. But as I’ve argued before, development should be about a balance. We should be looking to the future, while not forgetting the past.

    Let’s put some numbers to this discussion.

    According to Atlantic Cities, San Francisco has produced on average 1,500 new housing units each year over the past decade. Seattle does about 3,000. And in the Greater Toronto Area, we’re probably around 30,000. I’m not sure if the Atlantic Cities numbers represent only the city proper but, either way, the spread seems massive. Even still, market analysts, such as George Carras of RealNet, have argued time and time again that the Toronto region needs 40,000 new housing units a year just to keep pace with demand!

    So what happens when supply doesn’t keep up with demand and you have a robust economy that continually draws in people from around the world? You get San Francisco. And you get expensive real estate and high rents that relatively few people can afford. San Francisco regularly tops the list of most expensive real estate markets in the US.

    This is a phenomenon that I don’t think many people appreciate: When you fight development you restrict supply and when you restrict supply you hurt housing affordability. This is the argument that economist Edward Glaeser makes in his book, the Triumph of the City, when he talks about why housing is so affordable in Houston.

    Now, if you think about it for a second, this actually means that it’s entirely contradictory to be a NIMBY and, at the same time, an advocate for affordable housing. The two are at odds with each other. Do you want an exclusive city with only enough housing for rich tech moguls? Or do you want an inclusive city with enough new housing supply for the middle class?

    When asked, I’m sure many liberals would choose the latter of those 2 scenarios. But in practice, at least in San Francisco, it would appear that many are opting for the former. And it’s happening because residents want their perfect community to remain unchanged. However, in the process, the values that supposedly underpin that community are being threatened.

    Which makes me wonder: Is San Francisco so liberal that it’s actually conservative?

  • Thinking of cities in terms of hardware and software

    Ted Serbinski is a Partner at Detroit Venture Partners. He works with billionaire Dan Gilbert. And obviously lives in Detroit. 

    On Monday of this week he wrote a post called, 24 Business Insights I’ve Learned from Billionaire Dan Gilbert. It was clearly inspired by a blog post Gilbert did last year called 27 Things I’ve Learned in 27 Years. They’re both great reads.

    But in particular I liked Ted’s 22nd point called “balance the hardware with software.” It goes like this:

    “Another interesting insight is Dan’s approach to rebuilding Detroit. You need to balance what buildings you own (e.g., the hardware), with what companies lease them (e.g., the software), along with properly connecting building to building via placemaking (e.g., more software), to create a truly vibrant area.”

    It’s an interesting analogy and I think it’s incredibly relevant to Detroit. The City of Detroit has great hardware. As I said before, the city is filled with gorgeous historic buildings. The bones are there. But hardware is useless without the right software. 

  • Florence vs. Atlanta [Mapping]

    As I was browsing Tumblr this morning, I came across this image (linked from Quora):

    image

    On the left is portion of Florence. And on the right is a single highway interchange in Atlanta. Both maps are at exactly the same scale.

    It’s a stark reminder of how varying land use patterns can be. On the left you have a dense and walkable city, and on the right you have an area that would be entirely inhospitable to pedestrians.