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.

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Tag: gregg lintern

  • The Walk-Up

    Today on the blog, I thought we’d feature a new fourplex being developed here in Toronto at 2343 Gerrard Street East called The Walk-Up. Designed by Studio JCI and presented by Paul Johnston of Unique Urban Homes, this is the first in a series of “missing middle” projects now being developed by Urbinco.

    Housed on your typical single-family lot, The Walk-Up is somewhere between 3-4 stories and has four homes: a garden suite, a ground suite, a center suite, and a sky suite. And each is family-oriented both in terms of design and size. They all have over 1,000 square feet of interior space, have two bedrooms, and have access to outdoor space.

    In other words, it is exactly the kind of housing solution that Toronto needs a lot more of! Thankfully, this form of housing has been permitted (as-of-right) in Toronto since May 2023. Unfortunately, there are still many municipalities and politicians who don’t seem to get it. But that’s okay. This is usually how things go. Toronto leads, and then others follow.

    For more information on The Walk-Up, click here.

  • Thinking about the things we’re used to

    This is a powerful perspective:

    We evolved to be wary of change. Our attention is limited, new things can be a threat and the status quo feels comfortable.

    As a result, we spend a lot of time and energy being afraid (and arguing about) the upcoming changes in our lives, but almost no time at all thinking about the things we’re used to.

    As an example of this tension, check out this “exit interview” with Toronto’s former chief city planner, Gregg Lintern. The underlying theme is change and why it’s desperately needed.

    But of course, that’s not easy.

    The interviewer, Victoria Gibson, mentions this survey stat: nearly half (47%) of all Torontonians think the city is building too little housing, and yet only about a quarter (27%) think their area could handle more.

    We need this, but not here. Probably because we’re used to the way things are.

    But if you read the interview, you’ll see that the answer, or at least one answer, is to make the conversation personal, and ultimately think critically about, you know, the things we’re used to.

    Change starts with not giving the benefit of the doubt to the status quo.

  • Thank you for your service, Gregg

    It was bittersweet to learn last week that Toronto’s chief planner — Gregg Lintern — will be retiring at the end of this year.

    He accomplished a lot during his six-year tenure. Here’s an excerpt from a recent Globe and Mail article by Alex Bozikovic:

    “…he took the department through significant reforms: allowing new houses in back laneways, then garden suites; eliminating minimum parking requirements; even legalizing four-unit apartment buildings on any lot in the city.“

    All of this was not easy, as anyone in our industry will attest.

    I also got to know Gregg, a little, by way of our development projects. And I can say that he (1) genuinely loved our great city and (2) was always looking for ways to make things better, whether that be through planning policy or through processes internal to City Hall.

    Thank you for your service, Gregg.

  • Consistency over intensity — rethinking Toronto’s low-rise neighborhoods

    Toronto’s chief planner, Gregg Lintern, published this piece in the Toronto Star over the weekend where he argued that “expanding housing options in [Toronto’s] neighbourhoods is the missing piece of the growth puzzle.”

    What he is saying is that if we’re going to have any chance at reasonably accommodating the 700,000 or so people who are expected to move to this city over the next three decades, we’re going to have to evolve our low-rise neighborhoods. That includes more retail, more amenities, more density, and yes, built form that houses multiple units.

    I immediately thought that this was meaningful progress in the right direction. It is acknowledgement that things need to change and that our low-rise communities need to change.

    But others felt that this was a case of soft-serve ice cream, arguing that there’s “danger in praising incremental, belated change when dramatic change is what’s needed.” I also see this point.

    To quote the late architect Daniel Burnham, “make no little plans.” But this is arguably a little easier to subscribe to when you’re rebuilding after a great fire has decimated your entire city (he was instrumental in the rebuild of Chicago following its fire of 1871).

    The unfortunate reality today, at least in this environment, is that bold vision isn’t often rewarded politically. The status quo bias is simply so great. Change is painfully slow. That’s why we rely so heavily on pilot projects when it comes to city building.

    So while I too am a fan of bold vision, I also see value in what Simon Sinek and others refer to as consistency over intensity. Small, repetitive, and compounding actions can have powerful long-term results. You just have to keep going in the right direction.

    And I think that many of us, or perhaps most, will agree that the right direction is rethinking our low-rise neighborhoods.

    Photo by Tungsten Rising on Unsplash

  • Toronto is on the verge of finding the missing middle

    Toronto’s chief planner Gregg Lintern (who you can follow over here on Twitter) was recently in the Toronto Star talking about the city’s plans to allow more multi-unit dwellings in our low-rise single-family neighborhoods.

    I was careful to say “more” because they are already permissible in some areas. The challenge is that they’re not happening at any sort of meaningful scale, which is an obvious signal that some key ingredients are still missing.

    Or perhaps there are too many required ingredients. For example, right now the zoning by-law requires one car parking space for every dwelling in a multi-unit building. This is, of course, dumb and the requirement should be completely eliminated.

    Changes like this, as well as many others, are long overdue. Not just in Toronto, but in many other cities. And it is partially what I was getting at when I wrote about laneway housing this past weekend and hinted at the need for other solutions to increase housing supply.

    So when you have a few minutes, I would encourage you to complete the city’s survey on expanding permissions for multiplexes across the city. I just did it and voted to bring on the multiplexes.

    Photo by Tiago Rodrigues on Unsplash

  • Housing supply in Tokyo

    It has been well documented that Tokyo tends to build a lot of housing. And the argument goes that this has helped to maintain a certain level of housing affordability. The city is constantly building and rebuilding. It also has different views about housing. Now, we could, of course, debate how much of its relative affordability is a direct result of supply but, regardless, there seems to be a lot of it. In 2014, the city of Tokyo saw 142,417 housing starts, according to this recent FT article. This is compared to ~5,000 units across the Bay Area (2015 data), 83,657 units for the state of California, and 137,010 units for all of England.

    If you’re wondering how Toronto is doing, here are the latest numbers:

  • An apartment dwelling city

    Toronto’s Chief Planner, Gregg Lintern, posted this on Twitter a few days (if you can’t see it below, click here):

    A couple things came to mind when I saw this.

    First, it’s a reminder that census data is painfully slow. Five years is a long time and a lot can and will change during that time period, including the kind of built form that people are living in.

    Second, I agree with Gregg. Toronto is in the process of transforming into a majority apartment/condo dwelling city (if it hasn’t already), and it signals a pretty important juncture in our city’s history.

    It also begs an important question: How should our planning response change and adjust as this percentage of urban dwellers continues to creep upward?

  • Two new chiefs

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    There were some big announcements in the planning world this past week here in the Greater Toronto Area. Gregg Lintern (follow him on Twitter) was named the new chief planner of Toronto (he was previously the acting chief planner following Jennifer Keesmaat’s departure) and Andrew Whittemore (couldn’t find him on Twitter) was named the new chief planner of Mississauga.

    As I went through the articles announcing the above appointments, I couldn’t help but be reminded that this region is at an exciting and pivotal moment in its history. All of the talk is about improving urban mobility (i.e. becoming less dependent on cars); intensifying around transit stations (as well as gently intensifying neighborhoods); making downtown a better place for families; and so on.

    It can be easy to feel defeated in this big bad world of city making. Oftentimes things seem to get reduced to either urban vs. suburban rhetoric or, as if nothing else matters, this one simple question: “But, how tall is the building?” So its nice to know that those at the helm continue to see endless opportunity in this region. I know that I wouldn’t want to be doing what I’m doing anywhere else.

    Photo by mwangi gatheca on Unsplash