Tag: athiscity

• Looking at Berlin from the back of a napkin

  

  Depending on who you ask, the current condo boom in Toronto might be viewed as either a good thing or a bad thing (most will have an opinion). Some people think we’re simply building too many condos. And that too many of them are small, crappy, and geared towards investors – as opposed to end-users.

  While I do agree that we could be doing more to create complete communities – that is communities which serve everyone from young singles to families with 3 kids – I think there are also a lot of positives associated with Toronto’s condo obsession (full disclosure: I’m a real estate developer). It has made us more sustainable, more reliant on alternate forms of (non-car) transport, and it has made us a generally more exciting place to live.

  But that doesn’t mean we can’t do better.

  Lately I’ve been wondering about how other cities do it. Specifically, those European cities that somehow seem to always be able to build awesome housing projects. So today I thought I would pick one and profile it. What I really wish I had was a financial pro forma to share with you all, but in the absence of that, I’ll try and back into some of the numbers on my own.

  

  Shown above is the 9-storey Charlotte Apartments in Berlin. It was developed by WI Concept and designed by Michels Architecture Office. I chose this building because I think it’s an attractive one and because it’s of the (mid-rise) scale that Toronto is trying to promote along its many avenues. Here are the stats I was able to find online:

  • Site area: 347 square meters / 3,735 square feet
  • Building area: 3,000 square meters / 32,291 square feet (says gross floor area, but I don’t know if that means the same thing as it does here)
  • Construction costs: €3.6 million / C$5,065,691 (as of today’s rate)
  • Units: 28 (sold within 1 week of launch)
  • Market: ~70% of buyers in Berlin are believed to be foreign investors

  Now, if we were actually building a development pro forma, we’d want to get a lot more granular in our calculations than what I’m about to do. We’d want to know gross construction area, net saleable areas, and so on. But for the purposes of this post (and because I have very little information), I’m going to simplify and do a back of the napkin set of calculations.

  Based on above, the FSI (or density) is about 8.65 (32,291 sf / 3,735 sf). That’s roughly in line with many of the residential developments we’re seeing in downtown Toronto. The average unit size works out to be about 1,153 sf (32,291 sf / 28 units), but in reality it would be less if that 32,291 number is truly the gross floor area. You would need to subtract the corridors and other non-saleable areas from it before doing this calc. Either way, that is big compared to most downtown Toronto condos, but small for Berlin standards according to this ArchDaily article. Finally, if we look at construction costs, we get $157 per square foot in Canadian dollars ($5.065M / 32,291 sf). That’s low. I wonder what the land costs were.

  Again, these numbers are rough rough. But I wanted to try and dissect a European development project and compare it to Toronto. The most surprising figure seems to be the low construction costs. If you have any additional insights, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.

  Images: Werner Huthmacher
  

  2014.10.05

• Taking a picture of the world, every day

  This morning I finished watching the rest of Steve Jurvetson’s Spark 2014 talk, which I shared with you all yesterday. And so I’ve got technology on the brain right now.

  I’ve said this many times before on ATC, but I truly believe that the pace in which technology is infiltrating “non-technology” companies is only going to increase. The video clip of Flux.io is a perfect example of that. After watching that demo yesterday, I immediately thought a handful of consultants that real estate developers use on projects that the Flux platform could replace.

  

  So today I thought I would share another company that Steve talks about in yesterday’s video called Planet Labs. Planet Labs’ mission to image the entire world and make it universally accessible to people. But unlike Google and Microsoft – who already offer satellite photography – Planet Labs has figured out a cost effective way to do it on a daily basis.

  Because the problem with services like Google Maps and Bing is that they’re updated too infrequently. If I go to Google Maps right now, the building I live in doesn’t even exist in their aerial photography of Toronto – it’s still a parking lot. So there are limits to what you can do with this information.

  But once you increase the image frequency to daily, you create all sorts of new opportunities. You could track the number of cars in every parking lot in the world to measure retail activity (an example Steve gives in his talk). You could track changing water levels. You could track deforestation. You could track urbanization in China. And the list goes on. Here’s a blog post from Planet Labs that gives a few examples of the benefits of daily imaging.

  To return to my earlier point, consider the fact that every potential use case I’ve just outlined is in an industry that most of you wouldn’t consider to be tech. And yet Planet Labs is clearly a technology company. So the key insight here is really to focus less on the way things are done and classified today, and more on the way they could be – and likely will be – done in the future.

  Image: Planet Labs

  2014.10.04

• How technology could completely change the real estate development industry

  If you’re involved in the built environment in any way, shape, or form – as a developer, architect, policy maker, and so on – I would highly recommend you watch the video below. My friend Candice Luck, who I went to Rotman with, sent it to me this morning with a link starting at the 24 minute mark. I haven’t yet watched the whole thing, but given how interesting this short section was, I plan to.

  The video is a talk by Steve Jurvetson, who is a venture capitalist with DFJ. He was one of the founding investors in Hotmail and currently sits on the board of companies like SpaceX and Tesla Motors. At the 24 minute mark he talks about a startup called Flux.io that hasn’t yet launched their product, but is working towards “reimagining building design”. They’re a spin-off from Google X and plan to officially launch in early 2015.

  Rather than try and describe the video here, I will just say that it’s an incredible example of how technology and digitization could completely change the real estate development industry. If you can’t see the video below, click here. The video starts at the Flux.io section.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPgyb6euISs]

  2014.10.03

• Don’t forget that this is about people

  

  Yesterday I wrote about the High Line Park in New York and the tremendous success that it has seen since the first section opened in 2009. It attracts somewhere around 5 million visitors a year and is thought to be responsible for over $2 billion a year in economic activity.

  But the economic activity it’s generating and the future tax revenues it’s creating are really a byproduct of the fact that people, quite simply, love the High Line. It attracts people. And that reminded me of a short post I wrote earlier this year called: It’s all about people. Because if you think about it, that’s really the key metric for a lot of things in life and in business.

  When you build a park like the High Line in New York or Millennium Park in Chicago, you’re designing it to attract people. When you build a mall, you seek out anchor tenants, because you know they drive foot traffic. When you build a new neighborhood, you’re trying to create street life from scratch. When you run a bar, you want headcount. And when you build a web or mobile app (or write a blog for that matter), you want registered users and eyeballs on your platform.

  And you want these things because foot traffic, street life, eyeballs, impressions, users, and headcounts ultimately generate revenue. But here’s the thing: if you focus directly or too much on that end goal, you run the risk of missing an important step along the way, which is simply to delight real people.

  In his most recent essay, startup guru Paul Graham put it perfectly when he said:

  “The way to succeed in a startup is not to be an expert on startups, but to be an expert on your users and the problem you’re solving for them.

  He’s obviously talking about technology products, but the same could be said for parks, streets, malls, plazas, and so on. To design and build better cities, we need to be experts on people. And we need to create spaces and environments that people actually want to occupy. Spaces that improve people’s lives.

  Now, this may sound fairly obvious to some of you. But quite often I feel like we get sidetracked by things that don’t matter as much as people do.

  Image: Flickr

  2014.10.03

• Learning from, but not copying, New York’s High Line

  

  In 1980, the last train ran on an elevated corridor on the west side of Manhattan known as the High Line. Originally built in the 1930s, the trucking industry had made these trains obsolete and service was halted.

  At this point, neighboring property owners began to lobby for the demolition of the High Line, as they no doubt saw it as an opportunity to increase the value of their land holdings. But thanks to local residents – most notably a man by the name of Peter Obletz – the 1.45 mile-long elevated rail corridor was saved from demolition.

  In 1999, Joshua David and Robert Hammond then decided to form a non-profit with the goal of both preserving and reusing this unused rail corridor. The group was called Friends of the High Line.

  By the early 2000s, Friends of the High Line had successfully made an economic case for transforming the rail line into a public open space and things started moving forward. Initially, it was thought that a public park of this sorts would attract about 400,000 people annually and generate upwards of $286 million in new tax revenues over the following 2 decades (Globe and Mail).

  With these expectations in mind, construction on the new High Line Park began in 2006. The first section opened in 2009 – a decade after Friends of the High Line was formed. And the third, and last section, opened just two weekends ago at the end of September.

  Today the High Line Park attracts 5 million visitors a year and is believed to be directly responsible for about $2.2 billion in new economic activity. The increased tax revenues over the next 2 decades are expected to reach about $980 million. Without a doubt, the High Line has been a huge success. It has become the 2nd most visited cultural attraction in New York (Globe and Mail).

  Which is why every city now wants their own High Line. Philadelphia wants one. Chicago wants one. Mexico City wants one. Seoul wants one. And the list goes on. Here in Toronto, we’ve recently proposed one called the King High Line, which will connect the Liberty Village and West Queen West neighborhoods across a rail corridor.

  While I do believe that this is an important connectivity problem to be solved, I worry about how explicit the references are to the actual High Line. Even the street furniture is the same in their promotional video.

  I worry not only because it means we’re clearly taking on the role of follower, as opposed to leader, but because an elevated park isn’t going to work in all urban contexts the same way that the High Line worked in Chelsea. This is similar to how Frank Gehry can’t magically turn your city into the next Bilbao. 

  So while I have shown my support by becoming a “Friend of the King High Line” (and I would encourage you to do so as well), it’s important to keep in mind that the problems we’re trying to solve here aren’t necessarily the same ones that New York had to deal with.

  The High Line – from the start – was designed to have an intimate relationship with its surrounding buildings. The tracks rain directly through them so that the trains could easily load and unload their cargo – that was the whole point. So when the High Line was redone, all of a sudden these buildings were able to reconnect themselves to the park in a way that they were already accustomed to doing.

  But in Toronto’s situation, and perhaps in your city, that’s not the case. We’re talking about stitching together two completely disconnected neighborhoods. It’s a noble goal and certainly one that I wholeheartedly believe we should pursue. But I don’t think we should assume that it’s a problem that has already been completely solved for us.

  Image: Flickr

  2014.10.02

• DUKE starts construction

  Below was the scene at the DUKE Condos site in The Junction last Saturday morning at 7:00AM. Michael Bros. mobilized their equipment to begin site preparation so that shoring and excavation can begin. The plan is to be at the bottom of the hole by the beginning of next year.

  

  

  

  We’re all very excited in the office and so I half jokingly told our VP Construction that I would meet him on-site at 7:15AM with beers. He responded with a one word email saying: champagne. In the end, I decided to go swimming instead (probably a better decision), but I am sure we’ll have a drink soon.

  There are still some killer suites available at DUKE, so feel free to drop into the sales office at 2800 Dundas Street West, give the sales team a call at 416-800-7738, or tweet the TAS team with any questions.

  2014.09.30

• How does your city address its streets — literally?

  

  Depending on where you live, street numbering may not be something you’ve given a lot of thought to. In Canada, and in many other places in the world, the convention is usually to start on one end of the street and count up – with even numbers on one side and odd numbers on the other.

  In many cities in the US, they’re even more rational. The streets themselves are numbered and the addresses indicate location. For example in Philadelphia, where I used to live, if you were going to let’s say 1750 Walnut Street, you would know that it’s between the cross streets of 17th Street and 18th Street. It’s a kind of hyper-rational approach, which lets you know precisely the number of blocks you need to go to get to your destination.

  But not all countries and cities are this rational.

  According to this Economist article – which a friend of mine forwarded me over the weekend – Costa Rica actually had no street numbering system until about 2012. Which means that directions were all based on landmarks: “100 metres south of the McDonald’s.” It seems almost hard to believe. But I guess that’s why ¼ of all mail was getting lost.

  Of course, there are also lots of variations in between these two extremes.

  Japan numbers its buildings, but they’re often clustered together in blocks and have no particular order or logic to them. Brasilia (Brazil) also assigns numbers based on sectors, quadrants, and blocks. And in Ireland, where I also used to live, they actually never adopted postal/zip codes. They’re one of the few developed countries in the world not to do that – though it’s coming next year.

  If your city or country has a unique numbering system or you’ve come across one in your travels, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.

  There are obviously practical reasons to adopt an easy to understand numbering system. People need to be able to figure out where they’re going. But I would also imagine that there are spatial implications to the way you number and the way you organize your city.

  Image: Flickr

  2014.09.29

• The new Regent Park

  Yesterday morning I went for a swim at the new Regent Park Aquatic Centre. I used to swim regularly when I was in grad school in the US, but it fell off when I moved back to Toronto and there wasn’t a convenient place for me to walk to. Having to drive to a gym or to a pool can really cut hurt how often you’re able to go.

  In any case, the pool was fantastic. On the west side of it are glass sliding doors that face the park. And since yesterday was such a beautiful day, they were all open while everyone was swimming lanes. The wooden ceiling also gives the space a nice, warm feel.

  

  The biggest surprise for me though was the universal change rooms. I had never been in a co-ed change room before – or one that was completely open and visible to the pool (there are small private rooms so you can actually change). For families, it makes a lot of sense. Everyone can go in together and it’s easy to watch your kids in the pool from within the change room.

  After my swim, I rode my bike around Regent Park and tweeted this out:

  Posterity will say: Did you know that Regent Park used to be shitty? No way. Way. #athiscity #TOpoli pic.twitter.com/VSgFwLc8NI

  — Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)

  September 27, 2014

  What’s happening in Regent Park is incredibly exciting. To me, it feels like a return to the fundamentals of city building. They’ve reconnected the old street grid – which had previously been removed to create the old “towers in a park” scheme – and they’re clearly working towards a proper urban neighborhood with retail at grade and buildings pushed right up against the street.

  A big measure of success, though, will be how animated the streets become and how well the retail does. Because all of that isn’t quite there yet. But we’re on our way. And already I feel like we’re about to forget what the old Regent Park used to be like. Toronto may have lived with that neighborhood for over 60 years, but future generations will barely know it existed.

  Image: Shaigil

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  2014.09.28

• Assembled realities of the New York landscape

  

  New York photographer Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York next month called Assembled Realities. I just heard about it through CityLab.

  Here’s a bit of background on his work:

  Pushing the boundaries of traditional documentary photography, Liao (b. 1977) creates large-scale panoramas by combining multiple exposures of the same location taken over the course of several hours. The resulting composite photographs are often fantastical; complex, hyper-real views that no single shot—or the eye—could capture.

  And here’s two more of his photos:

  

  

  For higher resolution versions, click here.

  I love how his photos begin to distort reality and how they focus your attention – in many cases – on New York’s vibrant street life. I thought you might all enjoy them as well.

  2014.09.27

• The Laneway Project: Engaging In-Between Spaces

  

  A few months ago I was asked to join the advisory committee of a small Toronto-based non-profit called The Laneway Project. The goal of the organization is to create a network of vibrant, safe, and people-oriented public spaces throughout the city by leveraging our extensive, yet underutilized, network of existing laneways. 

  If you’re a regular reader of ATC, you’ll know that I have a huge interest in laneways and laneway housing. So not surprisingly, I was thrilled to be a part of the project.

  It’s still early days, but we are getting ready to actively fund raise. And we’ve also just announced our first event. It’s called Engaging In-Between Spaces, and it’s going to consist of 5 speakers giving super fast presentations on the potential of Toronto’s laneways (think 20 seconds a slide type of thing). There will also be a moderated discussion, and drinks, I’m sure. So mark your calendars for the evening of Thursday, November 20th – more details to follow.

  In the interim, you can show your love for Toronto’s laneways by subscribing to The Laneway Project. Happy Friday everyone!

  Image: Flickr

  2014.09.26