Some of you might remember my Jimmy the Greek Reopening Index. It has become my crude way of measuring office utilization in Toronto’s CBD. Based on this I can tell you that utilization is firmly up this week. Most lunch spots in Toronto’s PATH are… Read More
The last decade has been pretty good for many cities. Recent 2020 Census data tells us that of the 50 largest cities in the US, 46 of them grew their population over the last 10 years. On average, these 50 cities grew by about 8.5%,… Read More
One of the co-founders of Juno — a new mass-timber and modular housing company — was recently interviewed by Dezeen. Prior to cofounding Juno, BJ Siegel was Apple’s design director and spent 19 years designing and working on their stores. And so this is the… Read More
This is an interesting chart from the New York Times showing the breakdown of (real estate) uses across the largest downtowns/CBDs in the US. It was put together using satellite data and data from CoStar, including their boundary definitions for each downtown/CBD. The point of… Read More
In the world of startups, a unicorn is used to refer to a company with a market cap greater than $1 billion. A decacorn, the latest benchmark, is what it sounds like in that it’s a company with a market cap greater than $10 billion.… Read More
I can’t open Twitter these days without seeing someone in the tech industry talking about moving or talking about someone who just moved to either Austin or Miami. “What’s the best neighborhood in Miami for startups? My friend just moved to Edgewater. Where did so-and-so… Read More
Another day, another set of announcements about large companies and rich people moving to lower cost US states. Yesterday it was announced that Oracle will move its corporate headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas. (If you remember, Elon Musk also recently announced that he… Read More
Robert C. Ellickson’s recent paper, titled Zoning and the Cost of Housing: Evidence from Silicon Valley, Greater New Haven, and Greater Austin, really holds back when it comes to the shortcomings of zoning ordinances. Here’s an excerpt: Zoning, as practiced in much of the nation,… Read More
This past weekend I was in a condo building here in Toronto with large signs in the elevator saying, “No Short-Term Rentals Including Airbnb Are Permitted. Trespassers Will be Prosecuted.” It was the first time I had seen anything like this, but it immediately signaled… Read More
The video below is a good follow-up to my recent post about the 100 million city and the rapid population growth that we are seeing in some parts of the developing world. If you can’t see the embedded video below, click here. It’s a video… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 