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

  • Shutdown and restart

    Very few of us have a mental model for the macro conditions that we are living through right now. We have been through economic downturns, but most of us haven’t lived through a pandemic. I am an optimist and I know that we will get through this and normalcy will return. But one of the questions that we’re all asking ourselves right now is: What will “normalcy” look like on the backend?

    Here is an interesting piece of evidence for the current shutdown:

    https://twitter.com/biancoresearch/status/1240793859455700992?s=20

    When I see pictures of our cities, like these from Italy, I can’t help but think of the life that normally plays out in the streets. The conversations. The chance encounters. And even the smells. Some of that activity has moved to every single balcony in Italy and that is a beautiful thing. But it’s no substitute for true street life. Thankfully, we know that public life will both return and prevail.

    Along the way there will be changes. There are going to be winners and losers. Some companies are going to go bankrupt. And there will be adjustments that we have made that will invariably stick. Are we all going to video conference more? (The obvious one.) Will we all travel less? Will this macro event accelerate our transition to a knowledge-based digital economy? I’m sure it will. Also consider all of the new companies that are being started right at this very moment.

    But as I said on Twitter today, we are social beings. That is one of the reasons why we choose to live in cities. And I am certain that isn’t going away.

    Photo by Kristijan Arsov on Unsplash

  • The ride-hailing red herring

    There’s a lot of data/speculation out there about the impact of ride-hailing apps. Many dense urban centers are claiming that they have increased traffic (slowed average speeds) and pulled people away from public transit. The University of Toronto published this study last year. And the WSJ recently published this chart for Chicago:

    To be honest, I’m not sure how much of the above is a result of ride-hailing apps, overall urban growth, e-commerce deliveries, public transit disinvestment, or other factors. But what is clear is that ride-hailing is pretty convenient and most (if not all) cities are seeing massive growth in this space.

    But all of this feels to me like a bit of a red herring. People will obviously choose what is most convenient and relatively affordable. And congestion was a problem well before people started using these apps (demand > road supply). The only solution I have seen work is to price congestion/roads.

  • How old do you have to be to live downtown?

    The North American rule of thumb is that young people — specifically people in their 20s — are the most likely to to live in an urban neighborhood. After that it’s all down hill and, broadly speaking, the percentages decline. But at some point, much later in life, the data suggests that there is a reversal and people start to return to urban neighborhoods, albeit not to the same extent. Part of the explanation for this is that as people age they start to look to more walkable neighborhoods where they don’t need to get a car to get around.

    But in this recent NY Times article, Jed Kolko points out two interesting trends. One, the “urban boomer” appears to be on the decline in the US. In 1990, about 21.6% of Americans aged 54 to 72 lived in an urban neighborhood (categorized by density). As of 2018, this number had dropped to around 17.8%. And two, the age at which there is a reversal (and people start returning to denser neighborhoods) is also increasing. Perhaps because people are living longer.

    Jed’s conclusion: American boomers, today, are actually less urban than previous generations.

    Graph: New York Times

  • Two-up, two-down

    Feargus O’Sullivan is doing a series in CityLab right now on the “home designs” that define four European cities: London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris. The first one is on London’s classic “two-up, two-down” design, which refers to a two storey home with a living room and kitchen on the ground floor and two bedrooms on the second. It’s a simple design, but one that has supposedly endured.

    O’Sullivan argues that for many, or perhaps most in Britain, this is what a “home” feels like. It’s grade-related and there are two floors. Indeed, only 14% of British people live in an apartment, compared to 57% in Germany (a majority). This percentage is much higher in London, with about 43% of people living in an apartment. But about 25% of the population still lives in some sort of attached house.

    Home equals house. And for us North Americans, this is of course relatable. But the Germany example is a reminder that this is not necessarily universal. Attitudes toward housing are cultural. And cultures can and do change. I am seeing that happen right now in Toronto. Some of us are becoming less like the British and more like the Germans.

  • The re-allocation of capital (and predictions for this decade)

    I have stayed at two hotels over the last month where I did not need to interact with a human as part of the check in process. And in one of those two instances I didn’t even need to interact with a computer at the hotel.

    My room key was issued to me through an app and I used that (and Bluetooth) to open my hotel room door (after the app, of course, notified me that my room was ready).

    This is prediction #2 in Fred Wilson’s annual roundup of what is going to happen next in the world. Automation is reducing the costs associated with operating many businesses. Who is going to be the beneficiary of this consumer surplus?

    The other prediction that should interest most of you — because the impacts would be widespread — is this one here regarding climate change:

    The looming climate crisis will be to this century what the two world wars were to the previous one. It will require countries and institutions to re-allocate capital from other endeavors to fight against a warming planet. This is the decade we will begin to see this re-allocation of capital. We will see carbon taxed like the vice that it is in most countries around the world this decade, including in the US. We will see real estate values collapse in some of the most affected regions and we will see real estate values increase in regions that benefit from the warming climate. We will see massive capital investments made in protecting critical regions and infrastructure. We will see nuclear power make a resurgence around the world, particularly smaller reactors that are easier to build and safer to operate. We will see installed solar power worldwide go from ~650GW currently to over 20,000GW by the end of this decade. All of these things and many more will cause the capital markets to focus on and fund the climate issue to the detriment of many other sectors.

    For the rest of Fred’s predictions, click here. These are always great reads.

  • The power brokers

    The Nib’s recent comic about Jane Jacobs vs. The Power Brokers (i.e. Robert Moses) is a good little overview of her lessons and legacy. But I don’t understand the claim that developers co-opted her ideals in order to exploit and gentrify urban neighborhoods. According to the comic, gentrification is always a top-down affair by developers, and never a spontaneous emergence as a result of other humans and/or industry wanting to be in a particular place.

    I can think of many neighborhoods that have seen investment from groups other than traditional developers, including from individual homeowners. Take, for example, Cabbagetown in Toronto. There was never a top-down developer moment. It was individuals who saw beauty (and also opportunity) at a time when others were scared of the area. Is that acceptable? Perhaps more importantly, did these people wear black suits?

    The other missing piece is the fact that desirable urban neighborhoods are, today, in incredibly short supply. During the reign of Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs had a view of cities that was in opposition to the planning zeitgeist of the time. But over time, she went from controversial to enlightened, and alongside this we saw a return to cities.

    Combined with strict land use policies, this rising demand for Jacobian-style neighborhoods has meant that many/most dense urban centers operate with a perpetual housing supply deficit. There’s not enough cool urban housing to go around. Add in the current low interest rate environment, and you then have even more money searching for that perfect home in the West Village. That tends to do things to prices.

    Image: The Nib

  • A story about architecture, interiors, and branding

    I was recently having a debate with one of our architecture partners about the interrelationship between architecture, interiors, and branding. This came up because, in New York City, you almost need a name brand architect attached to your project in order to sell luxury condos.

    But this raises an interesting set of questions: How much value is driven by the quality of the architecture versus the architect’s brand? (Though, presumably you need the former in order to build the latter.) And how much of the value is actually just driven by the finishes (interiors) and the branding that you layer on after?

    This latter scenario is a depressing thought for architects. It is architecture as a kind of “empty vessel.” One that just gets dressed up for today’s Instagrammable moments. And I am sure that you can think of some examples of this. Not everything can be capital A architecture.

    But what is clear is that the most successful design-driven projects don’t think in this way. They are thoughtful and deliberate about each component, and they all work together to strengthen each other. Marketing, after all, is about telling the right story. It is always helpful when you actually have one to tell.

  • Missing middle on Toronto’s collector roads

    This recent Spacing article by Geoff Turnbull and Laurence Holland makes a compelling case for “missing middle” type development along Toronto’s collector roads. The idea being that we are already focusing on (and have policies for) infill along our Avenues and within our single family neighborhoods, but we have yet to pay attention to the scale of street that sits somewhere in between the two. Streets such as Hallam that were once commercial spines, but lost their economic purpose for a variety of reasons.

    Here’s a map, from the article, of Toronto’s collector roads:

    There are almost 800 kilometers of collector roads in the city. As the name starts to imply, these streets are designed to collect vehicles and funnel them toward arterial roads and “Avenues.” But this scale difference changes things and creates a kind of in-between condition. They’re less desirable from a residential standpoint (because they’re not as quiet and secluded), but they’re also not designed to become strong retail/commercial streets (despite the odd retail remnant). In fact, retail is probably prohibited on most. Which is why I like the idea of thinking of these streets differently.

    Of course, we have work to do in order to make this scale of development economically feasible, and the authors do acknowledge that. But the more we continue to talk about the future of our low-rise neighborhoods, the more that intensification starts to feel inevitable.

  • How coffee grew São Paulo

    For all of us who are involved in the building of cities, it is important to remember that cities emerge and thrive as a result of economic purpose. Take, for example, Sao Paulo. Once one of the poorest of Portuguese colonies, it is today the largest city in the southern hemisphere and one of the largest and most diverse urban agglomerations in the world.

    How did all of this happen? It was probably because of coffee.

    Brazil is the largest producer of coffee in the world. And it has owned this title for some 150 years. The best areas to grow coffee (as a result of climate, I’m told) are in the southeast part of the country, in and around Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The inland state of Minas Gerais is the biggest producer.

    But here’s the thing. Rio de Janeiro is along the coast and Sao Paulo is not, though as of 1869 it had been connected to the port of Santos by rail. This geographical feature made Sao Paulo a logical place for rail to converge as it made its way from the coffee plantations in the interior of the country to the coast, and then out to the rest of the world.

    Coffee was the economic purpose. And it was facilitated by Brazil’s longstanding use of slave labor.

    In 1888 that changed. Slavery was abolished, giving Brazil the dubious distinction of being the last country in the Western world to do so. The problem is that the coffee industry relied heavily on this labor. So to fill this void and keep the coffee industry happy, a deliberate effort was made to increase immigration.

    From 1870 to 2010, about 2.3 million immigrants settled in the state of Sao Paulo, many from Italy and Japan. Today, about half of the city is thought to have at least some Italian ancestry. And it is generally believed that it was this significant influx of immigrants that helped the city to industrialize in the way that it did.

    Big and diverse. And coffee probably had a lot to do with it.

    Photo by ViniLowRaw on Unsplash