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

Tag: cities

  • Betting on electric and autonomous

    On Monday, Tesla surpassed GM in market value, making it the most valuable U.S. automaker. It’s also the first time in modern history that this title was held by a car maker not based in Detroit. The gravitational pull to Silicon Valley is immense, today.

    I subscribe to Alan Murray’s CEO Daily newsletter and his overarching comments were as follows: GM sold 10 million cars last year. Tesla sold 76,230 cars (albeit high value cars – my 2 cents). And Tesla lost three quarters of a billion dollars last year. Are we partying like it’s 1999?

    This is an expectations game.

    Elon Musk crafted an electric sports car that was actually cool and Tesla is certainly one of the leaders when it comes to autonomous vehicle technology. If Tesla is the company that transitions our economy to both electric and autonomous vehicles, then is a current market cap > $51 billion justified?

    I don’t know.

    But given how often we talk about electric and autonomous vehicles on this blog (in the context of city building), I thought it would be worthwhile to also talk about where Wall Street is putting its money and placing its bets.

  • Thickets of haphazardly planned condo towers

    I couldn’t sleep last night, so I got up and pulled out an old issue of Monocle magazine from my nightstand. I then stumbled upon the following article by Taras Grescoe.

    What really stood out for me was this line:

    “Thickets of haphazardly planned condo towers, compacted amid neighbourhoods of single-family houses, have led to congestion nightmares in Toronto and notoriously out-of-hand housing costs in Vancouver.”

    It bothered me for a few reasons:

    – The frame of reference is the single-family house. It perpetuates the cultural bias that what matters most in cities, like Toronto and Vancouver, is low-rise housing.

    – I don’t get the “haphazardly planned” comment. New tower development has been heavily concentrated in the downtown core, growth centers, along the Yonge subway corridor, and so on. Their built form is also significantly influenced by their relationship to these low-rise “Neighbourhoods.”

    – I believe that building up, as opposed to out, is the way to address congestion nightmares. Though I will concede that our ability to plan and execute on transit in this city is positively deplorable. 

    – How did thickets of condos create an affordability problem in Vancouver? Many factors at play in this city, including a powerful geographic supply constraint.

    Those are just a few of my thoughts from early this morning. What are yours?

  • This river I step in is not the river I stand in

    image

    I was over at the Riverside Bridge yesterday taking photos and I was reminded of Eldon Garnet’s installation called, TIME: AND A CLOCK (1995). 

    The work spans a few physical sites, but perhaps the most well known component is the line of text on the west side of the bridge, which reads in 18″ high letters: “This river I step in is not the river I stand in.” (Photo above from Garnet’s website.)

    If you’re from Toronto, you may be already be familiar with this installation. But I love the message and I think it’s an important one. So I thought I would reiterate it here on the blog. 

    The text is derived from the thinking of the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Its meaning is a simple one: change is fundamental to the universe. 

    Neighborhoods change. Cities change. Industries change. We change. The river you first step into, is not the same river that you’ll be standing in. That initial river has come and gone, replaced by a new river. In the words of Heraclitus, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.”

    As people, organizations and cities age, there can be a tendency to resist change. I believe in fighting that tendency. 

    Because that’s how established rich companies get destroyed by young poor companies. They – the incumbents – underestimate the importance of change. They forget that the river is constantly flowing.

  • Case Study: Chophouse Row, Seattle

    The Urban Land Institute recently published an interesting case study for a project in Seattle called Chophouse Row. 

    It is the last phase in a series of projects that the developer, Liz Dunn, has been involved with in the neighborhood over the last 16 years.

    This particular project has 25,317 sf of office, 6,379 sf of retail, and 4,795 sf of residential (3 penthouses). It also incorporates a heritage building. Good example of fine-grained urban infill.

    Here is the video (click here if you can’t see it below):

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PmAMsWEv98?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

    On a related note, ULI’s 2017 Toronto Symposium is coming up later this month (April 24 – 25, 2017). Here is the program. 80+ speakers. If you’d like to register, you can do that there.

  • Ingressi di Milano

    A new architecture book, called Entryways of Milan, will be released next month that profiles some of the city’s most beautiful residential entryways. There are 144 of them and they are housed in buildings dating from 1920 to 1970. For a sneak peek of the architecture, click here.

    What makes a book like this interesting is that these are private entryways, which means they are spaces that are largely overlooked within a city. They are the spaces that mediate between public (street) and private (residences). The book also dives into things like materials and the art-historical and social significance of each lobby.

    I am now wondering if similar books or photography projects exist for other cities. I think it would be fascinating to compare residential entrance halls across different cities during the same time period. Although the above Milanese lobbies have set the bar pretty high. 

  • The Millennial Dream [Documentary]

    Back in 2015, I was interviewed for a documentary called The Millennial Dream. I then completely forgot about it until somebody tweeted it at me yesterday. So the documentary is out – it was released last year – and you can rent it or buy it on iTunes.

    The documentary calls into question the [North] American Dream. This idea that you just have to work hard, save up, buy a house in the suburbs, pay off your debt, and then everything will be just fine. For many, that dream is quickly disappearing, if it hasn’t already.

    Enter the Millennial Dream. Our economy is changing. Our jobs are changing. Our cities are changing. And by 2020, the Millennial generation is expected to form 50% of the global workforce. What is this generation dreaming about? That is what this documentary is about.

    But I should probably stop here because I haven’t actually seen the film. I could be overselling it. I’ll watch it this weekend and then report back. If you can’t see the trailer embedded below, click here.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVCNXJk2fT8&w=560&h=315]

  • Downstream effects of electric and autonomous vehicles

    I speculate a lot on this blog about what electric and autonomous vehicles will mean for the future of our cities. The reason it’s speculation is because it’s phenomenally difficult to know with any sort of certainty what the downstream effects of these technologies will be.

    I’ve seen some people claim that a car is still a car. That is, all of the same rules will apply even if they’re powered completely by renewals and we manage to make drivers obsolete (5-10 years?). But I fundamentally disagree with this line of thinking. There will be both positive and negative consequences. They are just yet to be seen.

    Benedict Evans recently wrote a post where he started to think about where some of these changes might happen. And so I thought it might be valuable to throw a few of these into the discussion mix. Here are some of his ideas:

    • About half of car maintenance spending in the US goes to things directly related to the internal combustion engine. Electric takes that away.
    • There are about 150,000 gas stations in the US. They go, along with their associated convenience stores, which is where the margins are made. Interestingly enough, more than half of all US tobacco sales happen at gas stations. Where does that go?
    • It is estimated that electric vehicles will increase overall electricity demand by 10-20%. But this could disappear with the battery storage and off-peak power.
    • Globally, about 1 million people die every year from car accidents. In the US, something like 90% of all accidents are thought to be caused by human error and about 1/3 of fatal accidents involve alcohol. Autonomy has the potential to take most of this away. Personally, I think we’ll look back and think about how dangerous driving used to be and wonder how/why we all did it.
    • A complete rethink of parking. This obviously gets talked about a lot. ~14% of LA’s land is thought to be used for parking. My guess is that parking ratios/requirements go way down (we’re already in the 0 to 0.3 per residential unit territory here in Toronto) and parking garages transform into yards for AVs.
    • Autonomous vehicles once again rewrite the retail real estate landscape. Benedict believes they will create more billionaires in real estate and retail than in tech or manufacturing. I like how he describes big box retailing as an arbitrage of land costs, transportation costs, and people’s willingness to drive and park. This point is likely about AVs + e-commerce. See yesterday’s post about Amazon.
    • Finally, his last point is that autonomous vehicles could become a kind of mobile Panopticon. The Panopticon was an institutional building typology conceived of by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. It was based on the idea that inmates could all be monitored by a single watchman, without any of the inmates knowing if they were, in fact, being watched. It was a way of trying to impose strict obedience in prisons, and so on. Since virtually all autonomous vehicles require some sort of computer vision, Benedict argues that they could become the 21st century watchmen. Move over CCTV.

    The other big question is about decentralization. New transportation technologies have consistently promoted greater suburbanization – think streetcar suburbs to car suburbs. The fact that you’ll be able to use your time more productively in an autonomous vehicle is continually floated as an argument for this trend to continue. But I haven’t made up my mind about this one.

    Do you have any other thoughts on the downstream effects of electric and autonomous vehicles?

  • Amazon is just getting started

    image

    The Economist has an article up talking about what a behemoth Amazon has and will continue to become. Here are some interesting stats for you to think about:

    • More than half of every dollar spent online in America now goes to Amazon
    • Amazon’s share price has increased 173% since the beginning of 2015 (12x faster than the S&P 500)
    • With a market capitalization > $400 billion, it is the 5th most valuable company in the world
    • 92% of its value is supposedly being derived from profits expected after 2020 – they are playing the long game
    • Investors believe that revenue will go from $136 billion (2016) to half a trillion over the next decade

    If I can buy something online, instead of in person, I will do it. And that very often leads me to Amazon. In fact, I bought my new camera lens from them last week. Many others seem to be doing the same.

    When I go to a store now it’s because I need something immediately or because I’m looking for a new experience. I want novelty and I want to feel something special when I walk in. That, or I just need groceries.

  • rain gravity heat cold

    image

    Today I got a copy of rain gravity heat cold. It’s a book by the Toronto-based architecture firm superkül and it’s meant to celebrate their first 10 years of practice. 

    The book itself was put together by Blok Design. Blok has also done a new – yet to be rolled out – identity for superkül. (Definitely worth a click through.)

    One thing I wanted to highlight from the foreword of the book (written by Kiel Moe) is this line: “Great design does not respond to a static sense of context but rather perhaps transforms its flaws into assets and certainly amplifies the potential of site.”

    We often talk about contextual architecture. That is, architecture which responds to and is sensitive to its surroundings. But here’s the idea that responding is, in fact, not enough. The ambition should be “amplification of site through design.” 

    I like that a lot.

    If you’d like a copy of the book, it can be found on Amazon, at the University of Toronto bookstore, as well as, I’m sure, other places.

  • Ecodesign for cities and suburbs

    Larry Beasley and Jonathan Barnett are about to start teaching a free online course through the University of British Columbia edX called: Ecodesign for Cities and Suburbs. It starts April 4, 2017 and runs for 6 weeks.

    Here’s what you’ll learn (taken verbatim from edx.org):

    • The principles of ecodesign and why it is important as a response to the current disorganized urban growth model
    • Ways to adapt to a changing climate, and ways to mitigate climate change locally
    • Policies to balance auto and airplane transportation with walking, cycling, transit and high-speed rail
    • Ways of designing urban and suburban regulations to make cities more livable and environmentally compatible
    • Strategies for designing and managing the public realm, plus innovative arrangements and processes for implementing ecodesign

    The course is geared toward urbanists from all over the world and so the case studies will be global in nature. You can also participate as actively or passively as you’d like. Though, if you’d like to get a certificate, then you need to fully participate.

    What immediately stood out for me was the focus on both cities and suburbs. In many ways the suburbs are a more challenging problem to solve. So I hope there’s a good amount of focus on that context.

    Beasley was formerly co-director of planning at the City of Vancouver and Barnett is a professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania (my alma mater). It should be an interesting course.