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

  • How Muji is collaborating with Japan’s housing agency

    This is a familiar story that is, of course, not unique to Japan:

    “Danchi”, or apartment blocks built by Japan’s housing agency during the country’s high-growth period, may look grim and outdated in today’s Tokyo, where flashy glass and steel towers reign.

    However, I only just learned that, since 2013, the Japanese houseware brand Muji has been renovating apartments within these housing blocks in an attempt to reduce vacancies:

    But danchi are becoming hip again, thanks to modern renovations by lifestyle brand Muji, which is turning the poky, multi-room flats into open-plan studios.

    The above excerpts are from a 2015 article, but this partnership between Muji and Japan’s Urban Renaissance (UR) Agency continues to this day. Today, they’re also focused on creating a greater sense of community within these danchi neighborhoods.

    It’s a logical collaboration. Both want to bring good and affordable design to the masses. And obviously there are brand benefits for Muji. It’s a way to expose more people to their products.

    But what I find particularly interesting is that it, once again, shows the potential of a strong brand within the real estate industry.

    According to the same 2015 article, as soon as Muji completed its first round of apartment renovations, UR saw 2x the number rental applications from people in their 20s and 30s. Perhaps the number is even higher today.

    Clearly what happened is that you had young followers of the brand who said to themselves, “oh if Muji is involved, it must then be cool and nice, and so I’d like to live there.”

    I mention this because, as a gross generalization, real estate companies don’t seem to focus on their own brands in the same way other companies do. (Again, I’m making a gross generalization.)

    Instead, they often rely on 3rd party brands — hotel brands, fashion brands, and whatever else — to augment as needed. (See “Dubai is now the capital of branded residences.”)

    Maybe this is truly the optimal way to do it. Just partner as needed. Or maybe more real estate companies should invest in their own brand.

    Photo by taro ohtani on Unsplash

  • Dynamic transit pricing

    Over the years on this blog, we’ve spoken a lot about dynamic pricing when it comes to roads and traffic congestion. And in this instance, the principal intents are to price congestion, improve traffic flows, and encourage other modes of transport. It follows the logic that if you’re going to tax things, tax the things you want less of.

    But what about using dynamic pricing for the opposite purpose — to induce demand?

    Diana Lind recently wrote about this here and talked about how London is exploring using dynamic pricing on its transit system. But rather than increasing prices during periods of high demand, I would imagine that the idea is to reduce prices when demand is lower. Already, it is piloting reduced fares on Fridays when its ridership drops by about 10%.

    It’s an interesting idea because, if done correctly, it should get more bums into seats on transit. And maybe it’s actually a more equitable pricing model.

  • Modest and beautiful

    It is hard to argue that this isn’t a beautiful building:

    Designed by Morris Adjmi Architects and located at the corner of Grand and Mulberry in New York City, it is exactly the kind of building that many of us would like to see more of in our cities. It has retail at grade and it’s, you know, modest in scale at only 7 stories, 20 units, and 35,765 square feet.

    Looking inside, here are some of the floor plans:

    Overall, I would say that these layouts are more generous than what you would typically find in new builds here in Toronto. For new condominiums, 686 sf would be considered large for a one bedroom. Many/most sales teams/departments would tell you to turn this into a two bedroom.

    But this doesn’t mean that developers in NYC are simply being more generous with their square feet. It all costs money. And according to StreetEasy, the average sale price in this building is US$1,979,210 and the average price per square foot is US$2,384 (19 most recent sales).

    This is another reminder that modest and beautiful can often equal expensive. It’s how you make the math work, or at least hope to.

  • Psycho pillow run

    I have been told by some of you that when I write about snowboarding, you tune out on those days. If you are one of these people, then today is a good day to skip over on the blog. See you tomorrow.

    However, if you’re not one of these people, and you enjoy exceedingly cool things, then you’re going to want to take 6 minutes and — at the very least — watch Part III of the above video. Travis Rice is one of the best. And in this Red Bull video he goes from BC to Wyoming. (If for whatever reason it doesn’t start in the right place, click here and fast forward to 7:22 for Part III.)

    I once heard Quentin Tarantino say that if you choose the right song for the right scene in a movie, you’ll never be able to listen to that song ever again without thinking of the movie. (Think Pulp Fiction.) Now, this isn’t a movie per se, but it definitely feels like one of those cases. This techno song will forever remind me of this psycho “pillow” run.

  • Traffic counts at Yonge & St. Clair since 1984

    Matt Elliott writes a newsletter called the City Hall Watcher. And one of his features is something called Intersection Inspection. It is where he does a deep dive into traffic counts and modal splits for intersections across Toronto. This week, he covered Yonge & St. Clair in midtown, and so I thought it would be interesting to share it on the blog. (Thanks to Canada Record for the tag on X.)

    Here are traffic counts for the intersection going back to 1984:

    What seems clear is that Yonge & St. Clair is fairly evenly divided between cars and pedestrians. And it has been this way going back many decades. At the same time, though, the volume of cars seems to be declining. According to the above data, cars haven’t seen a count above 20,000 since 2014. There does also seem to be a slight spike in bike usage recently (this is broken out further in Matt’s newsletter).

    Data is crucial to good city building and I don’t think it is leveraged nearly enough. For example, take the intersection of Baldwin St and Kensington Ave in Toronto’s Kensington Market. If you look at the traffic counts (which can also be found in the above newsletter), you’ll see that 88% of traffic tends to be from pedestrians (79%) and bikes (9%). Only 12% of traffic is from cars.

    With this data in hand, you might, then, ask yourself: Should Kensington Market be mostly pedestrianized? And in my opinion, this is a lot easier to answer when you have numbers in front of you telling you how humans actually occupy the area.

  • I think Roman Mars would appreciate Utah’s new state flag

    Utah got a new state flag over the weekend that looks like this:

    And I immediately thought of this TED Talk by Roman Mars. For those of you who don’t know, Roman is the creator of 99% Invisible and a great lover of well-designed flags. His general rules of thumb are to keep things super simple and to use meaningful symbolism. And I’m fairly certain that he knows what he’s talking about because, in his talk, he refers to the Canadian flag as the gold standard for flags.

    In the case of Utah’s new flag, the symbols are this. The blue at the top is meant to represent Utah’s wide-open skies and lakes. The white in the middle represents its snowy mountains (of course). The red stripe is meant to represent Southern Utah’s red canyon landscape. The hexagon is meant to reference a honeycomb. And finally, the beehive is there because, well, Utah is the beehive state.

    Utah has long enjoyed this reference to beehives. Supposedly, it was early pioneers who started throwing around this reference because they believed it symbolized working together, perseverance, and overall industry. And that’s why the state’s official motto is, “Industry.” So I’d say that they used/kept the right meaningful symbolism.

    Though when I first saw the new flag, I immediately wondered whether the hexagon and honeycomb could have been made just a little simpler. Was the yellow fimbriation, for example, really needed within the blue hexagon? But the more I look at it, the more I like it and the more I think that Roman Mars would be happy with how this turned out. What are your thoughts?

  • We are close to home

    I don’t use Facebook anymore, but I was recently sent this. It is a post by a reporter for The West End Phoenix asking people from the community what they think of the JUNCTION sign on top of Junction House. As of right now, there are 217 comments and, if you scroll through them, you’ll see that they are actually overwhelmingly positive.

    Some people were critical of the fact that, depending on what you consider to be the boundaries of the Junction, this sign may or may not actually be in it. Some see Junction House as belonging to the West Bend neighborhood. So here is yet another real estate developer stretching boundaries and renaming neighborhoods.

    I don’t know, neighborhood boundaries are a funny thing. They’re often amorphous and they often change. Here’s what Google believes to be the boundaries of the Junction:

    As you can see from the map, the whole point of the sign was to mark one of the entrances to the neighborhood. Although, Junction House seems to sit on contested lands; Google Maps shows it as simultaneously belonging to the West Bend. Whatever the case, it is really great to see that the vast majority of people seem to love the sign.

    My favorite comment is this one here: “Love it. My kid recognizes it and always yells that we are close to home.” I mean, this was our hope. We wanted to create something that could become a symbol for the area, help to reinforce its existing identity, and also bring people delight. The fact that kids are loving it makes it that much better.

    Perhaps this is proof that we shouldn’t be so rigid when it comes to the design of our cities. A little color, and some LEDs that look like neon, can be a positive thing. Just ask the kids.

  • Okay, fine, I support your laneway house

    This week, I received a notice in the mail that a neighbor to Mackay Laneway House is seeking variances for their own laneway house. I immediately thought to myself, “oh, the hypocrisy.” Here is a neighbor that vehemently opposed my Committee of Adjustment application back in 2017 and now wants to do something similar.

    It’s also not like you need minor variances in order to build a laneway house today. They are, as many of you know, permitted as-of-right. That’s how MLH was ultimately built. We went straight to building permit. But in this case, the request is for 7 variances to the current by-law. The build aspires to go above and beyond.

    As I’m sure you can imagine, there’s part of me that wants to be a real asshole here. But of course, that would run counter to many of the objectives that we regularly cover on this blog: more housing, revitalized laneways, and so on. So I can’t do that. It’s directionally the right city building move, and they have my full support.

  • France’s rental ban on energy-inefficient homes

    One of the things that you’ll notice on real estate listings in France is an Energy Performance Diagnostics (EPD) rating. In French, it gets reversed, and so it’s a DPE (diagnostic de performance énergétique). What it tells you is how much energy the dwelling (or building) consumes and how much greenhouse gas it emits. And it is a requirement on all real estate listings and for all dwellings, except those that are occupied for less than 4 months per year. The output of this diagnostic is a rating from A (best) to G (worst).

    According to FT, this is how primary residences in France rank today:

    Less than 5% of homes are rated A and B (the most energy efficient). And many more are rated G and F. Beyond just being energy inefficient, this is potentially a problem because there are penalties and restrictions for the lowest rated homes, one of which is that you are not allowed to rent out the property. Right now and as of January 1 of this year, the upper consumption limit is 450 kWh per square meter per year. Go above this and the home becomes ineligible.

    This number is also planned to reduce over time:

    • January 1, 2023: Rental ban on properties with G+ energy label
    • January 1, 2025: Rental ban on all properties with G energy label
    • January 1, 2028: Rental ban on all properties with F energy label
    • January 1, 2034: Rental ban on all properties with E energy label

    Now here’s what this is thought to mean for overall rental supply:

    By 2028, 5.2mn homes rated F and G, or 17 per cent of total housing stock, will become ineligible for rental. By 2034, all E properties will also be excluded, amounting to about 40 per cent of homes.

    This raises an interesting question: Is it more important to have energy-efficient homes or to have greater overall supply? Now obviously the goal and ideal scenario is both; lots of affordable homes that are also energy efficient. And presumably, one of the objectives of this rental ban is to stick/carrot owners into investing in energy measures. But it’s not exactly obvious as to how many owners will be able to renovate their homes in time, and how many homes will become ineligible for rent. This will be an interesting policy to watch as it plays out.

  • 4 predictions for Toronto’s laneways

    Brigitte Shim (of Shim-Sutcliffe Architects) invited Gabriel Fain and I to the Daniels Faculty this morning (at the University of Toronto) to talk about Mackay Laneway House.

    It was for a class on laneway housing and, as it turns out, some of the students had been using MLH as a case study. That’s pretty cool, although the primary lesson is probably “don’t build next to large trees.”

    Following the presentation, we had a good discussion about laneways, and it reminded me of some of the things that I believe to be true. More specifically, it reminded me of what I think will happen in the future:

    • Bona Fide Streets: Laneways will become bona fide streets. Meaning, they’ll get real names (most don’t have one today) and they’ll get serviced. Today, laneway suites are typically serviced via the main/existing house.
    • Severable Lots: Laneway lots will become severable. Right now this is strongly discouraged, because the intent is to create new rental housing and not new for-sale housing.
    • Market Inversion: Once these lots become severable, the market will then be able to decide which frontage is most valuable — the current street side or the laneway side. Maybe some get split right down the middle (50/50) or maybe some get biased toward one frontage. Either way, I think it will become common for the laneway frontage to be more desirable given its intimate scale and pedestrian orientation.
    • Mixed-Use: Non-residential uses will become allowed.

    I have no idea when all of this might happen, but I believe it will happen. So I wanted to write it down publicly.