Tag: new york

• A year in review — 2015 on Architect This City

  Thanks to this blog, it’s pretty easy for me to go back and look at what I was doing and thinking throughout the year. That’s one of the benefits of writing a daily blog/journal. And as is usually the case, 2015 was a year of ups and downs.

  For my annual ski and snowboard trip with the guys, we went to Banff (Alberta) and Revelstoke (BC). But we got stuck with unseasonably warm weather in the west (the opposite of what’s happening this winter) and I got injured on day 3. That put me in the emergency room and knocked me out of snowboarding for the rest of the season – as well as from the gym for a number of months.

  Shortly after that I also got struck with some family health issues. That was pretty scary for a good solid month, but in the end, everything seems to have worked out. What a relief.

  Towards the end of March, I did a brand partnership between Architect This City and Porter Escapes, which brought me to Quebec City for a weekend. That was a lot of fun and gave me the opportunity to be a real flâneur in one of the most interesting cities in Canada.

  In April, I left my real estate development job at TAS and shortly after I joined CAPREIT (TSE: CAR.UN) to help build out their (real estate) development platform. Previously their/our focus had just been on acquiring existing rental assets. But now it is time to build.

  Later this month I also participated in the Toronto filming of a documentary called Waterfront Cities of the World. That was a lot of fun. But come to think of it, I don’t think I ever watched the final video.

  In May, I started lobbying hard for the removal/replacement of the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway East here in Toronto. If you’ve been reading this blog since the summer, I am sure you remember this period. With the help of a colleague of mine, I even started a petition that ended up getting presented at City Council.

  But in June, Toronto City Council voted to demolish and then rebuild the elevated expressway along our waterfront. I am still surprised by that. What a shame.

  In July, we (CAPREIT) announced our first joint venture development project. A mixed-use project – 506 rental apartments on top of about 160,000 square feet of retail – in Toronto’s Liberty Village. 

  In August, I went back to Philly to relive my Penn days. I do that every couple of years just to make sure that Bob and Barbara’s is still offering up “The Special.” The Special is a can of PBR and a shot of Jim Bean for $3. It’s famous in Philly, but it always sounds like a far better idea the night before, as opposed to the morning after.

  In this same month I also hit the 2 year mark here on Architect This City. That’s 2 years of getting up every single day and staring at a blank blog post screen and thinking of something insightful to say. 

  The following month on September 11 (I’ll never forget this date), I got laser eye surgery. More specifically, I got custom wavefront LASIK. And today it’s pretty hard to imagine that I used to have to reach for my coke bottle glasses as soon as I woke up every morning.

  Later in September, I also gave a talk at my alma mater, the Rotman School of Management, to a delegation of about 70 urbanists from Portland. It was an honor to be invited alongside rockstars such as Richard Florida and Jennifer Keesmaat.

  In October, I featured a guest post from the former mayor of Toronto, John Sewell. I don’t often do guest posts on my blog, but John had just published a new book and I thought it would be a good way to change things up here. John and I aren’t necessarily on the same page with many urban issues, but we did agree on the Gardiner East.

  For the remainder of October, it was basically just the Jays.

  In November, I spoke at a Product Hunt event focused on real estate + tech. It was incredibly encouraging to see so many entrepreneurs here in Toronto focused on the intersection of real estate and tech. There are lots of opportunities in this space and I am sure that there are many success stories in the making right now. Toronto is the perfect place for real estate + tech innovation.

  And finally, in December, I crossed something off my bucket list and attended Art Basel Miami Beach. I have wanted to go for well over a decade; pretty much since I started studying art history in undergrad. I don’t know what took me so long.

  Oh, I also announced that I was writing a book on becoming a real estate developer. 

  What a year. I can’t wait for 2016. 

  What do you have on your to-do list for next year?

  2015.12.27

• 50% of New York City’s population is estimated to be single. Here’s what that means for housing.

  Here in Toronto there’s a push for more family-sized apartments. That’s what the planners want to hear.

  Because the city has been trying to encourage developers to build more of them for years, but the challenge has always been that they didn’t sell or that they took a long time to sell. The market wasn’t ready.

  But as I discussed earlier this week, that is starting to change. I think Toronto is reaching a tipping point where low-rise housing has simply become too expensive and people are starting to look to alternatives, mostly at the mid-rise scale.

  It’s interesting though that something of the opposite appears to be happening in New York. I don’t know enough about the New York new construction market to really comment on overall unit mixes and sizes, but there definitely seems to be a push to create more affordable micro-units.

  Curbed published this last October:

  “…a report currently under public review, called Zoning for Quality and Affordability, recommends relaxing density caps and eliminating the 400-square-foot minimum for studio apartments, thereby creating more housing for single people. Almost 50 percent of the city’s population is estimated to be single, but only seven percent of the housing stock is studios.”

  And just recently, New York completed its first all-micro-unit apartment building called Carmel Place. Rents start at $2,650 per month for a 265 square foot apartment. 

  As a point of reference, that works out to be $10 per square foot per month and more than 3x the highest rents you could reasonably achieve in the more desirable areas of Toronto, today.

  The model suite is 302 square feet and looks like this:

  

  All of the above photos are via Curbed.

  2015.12.18

• Changing Lanes — A fireside chat with Jennifer Keesmaat and Janette Sadik-Khan

  

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  When I was in Miami at the beginning of this month I missed an interesting event that I normally would have attended. It was a conversation between the Chief Planner of Toronto, Jennifer Keesmaat, and the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation, Janette Sadik-Khan.

  Sadik-Khan was appointed under the Bloomberg administration and quite famously oversaw a huge number of urban changes in New York. Projects such as the addition of hundreds of kilometers of new bike lanes and the creation of 60 new pedestrian plazas across the city – including the one in Times Square.

  I was bummed I couldn’t attend, but thankfully Keesmaat wrote a post on her blog following the event and the Metcalf Foundation shared videos of the conversation. 

  Here’s a piece that I liked from Keesmaat’s blog post:

  “But she also pointed out that when they demonstrated what could be done, when they quickly mobilized around action, residents clamoured for similar changes in their neighbourhoods. Not surprisingly, this is why her book is called Streetfight – because it is a fight. City building is often the battle of ideologies, and when you’re trying to change the status quo, there is always a significant demographic of the population that is fully committed to maintaining business-as-usual.”

  If you have some time, you can also click here to watch the videos. There’s about an hour and a half worth of video, so you might want to open up a bottle of wine or something.

  2015.12.16

• What sea level rise is doing to the urban landscape of cities

  Resiliency is an important topic in urbanist circles these days.

  New York is working on a 10 mile “Dryline” to protect itself from future storms similar to Hurricane Sandy. And Miami Beach – one of the most vulnerable cities in the U.S. to sea level rise – is frantically building pump stations and raising its seawalls, streets, and sidewalks.

  Here’s what the city’s public works director had to say via a Curbed article published about a week ago:

  Miami Beach is planning to spend upwards of $500 million over the next five years on the pump stations and street-raising projects. “We are quite certain we are going to buy ourselves another 30 years, and we are hoping we are going to buy ourselves another 50 years,” Carpenter said.

  According to Wired, sea levels off the coast of South Beach have risen by 3.7 inches since 1996. But over the last 5 years the high tide levels have had an average increase of about 1.27 inches per year!

  This matters a great deal because of what South Beach would look like if sea levels increased by 2 feet (via the Miami Herald):

  

  It’s for this reason that Miami Beach has been working to alter its street elevations and install pumps – as many as 80 of them over the next 5 years – that quickly drain stormwater into Biscayne Bay. (The drains are equipped with backflow preventers so that the water leaves but doesn’t come back into the island.)

  Here’s an example of a raised street and sidewalk (via the Miami Herald):

  

  And here’s an example of a pump station (via Curbed):

  

  All of this strikes me as necessary work for Miami Beach. But I also think it’s important to keep in mind that all of this is patch work – regardless of how necessary it is right now. 

  The bigger question is: what are we doing to stop sea level rise? That’s the only way we’re going to get to true, urban, resiliency.

  2015.12.05

• Project: Under Gardiner — Re-imagining Toronto’s urban infrastructure

  

  If you’ve been reading this blog since the summer, you might remember that there was a period of time where I wrote incessantly about the removal of the eastern portion of Toronto’s elevated Gardiner Expressway.

  Ultimately City Council didn’t vote the way I believe we should have. But I remain hopeful that somehow we will manage to do the right thing and replace it with a surface boulevard. Now – before the east waterfront gets developed – is the right time to make that happen.

  However, the western portion of the Gardiner Expressway is a different story. The adjacent area is already developed and it is unlikely that this highway is going anywhere any time soon. So for the foreseeable future, we are stuck with it.

  And if we are stuck with it then we should make the absolute best of it – even celebrate it. Which is why Toronto is buzzing right now with the news that a 1.75 km stretch under the western portion of the Gardiner Expressway will be remade into a vibrant public space by 2017. This is thanks to a generous $25 million private donation. (Is that enough money?)

  Here’s the overall programming strategy, going from west to east (via undergardiner.com):

  

  And here are two renderings:

  

  The first phase is expected to run from Strachan Avenue in the west all the way to Spadina Avenue in the east. That is what is shown above.

  Two key elements include a grand stair at Strachan Avenue, which looks like this today (via Google Streetview):

  

  And a pedestrian bridge over Fort York Boulevard, which looks like this today:

  

  All of this doesn’t change my opinion of the Gardiner East, but I do believe that this is an incredibly exciting opportunity for the city. Today the space under the Gardiner is a void in our public realm.

  I also think it could be quite interesting to have these two opposing urban conditions along the central waterfront. A linear underpass park in the west and an open air boulevard in the east.

  It’s also exciting to see private money step up. It goes to show you that there is no shortage of passionate city builders in this town.

  Top image courtesy of Harry Choi Photography.

  2015.11.17

• Timeline of tall buildings completed in New York since 1908

  The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat recently published an interesting report called, New York: The Ultimate Skyscraper Laboratory.

  The money shot is this image here:

  

  It is a timeline of all tall buildings (over 100 meters) completed in New York since 1908 when the Singer Building was completed. At the time, but only for a year, that was the tallest building in the world.

  The gray bars represent the total number of buildings completed each year. And the colored dots represent specific completed buildings and their asset class (office, residential, mixed-use, hotel, and so on). It’s interesting to see the dips. During World War II, high-rise construction basically stopped.

  Check out the full report if you’d like to see a bigger version of the graph.

  2015.11.09

• Will parking spaces in cities become more, or less, valuable in the future?

  

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  Lately I’ve been having discussions around the future value of parking spaces in urban centers. So yesterday I tweeted out this poll:

  Will parking spaces in cities become more, or less, valuable in the future? 💸 #AThisCity

  — Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)

  November 4, 2015

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  The sample size is very small, but for what it’s worth, there are some/many people who believe that urban parking spaces will become more valuable in the future.

  This is a reasonable assumption. 

  Over the last couple of decades here in Toronto, I would guess that parking ratios for new multi-family developments have probably fallen by more than half. It used to be that you had to build 1 to 1.5 parking stalls for each unit and now we seem to be sitting somewhere close to 0.5. Although, there are also exceptions and some projects today are getting built with no parking.

  So given that the supply side of urban parking spaces seems to be getting constrained and many cities are actively trying to encourage other forms of mobility, it’s not unreasonable to believe that parking stalls will only become more valuable. That’s why a new underground spot in Toronto might cost you $60,000 today and why some spots in New York can even fetch a $1 million. 

  But this assumes that the demand for parking will remain more or less the same. What if it doesn’t stay the same? What if we were to experience a tipping point that rearranged urban mobility? What if the cost of driving became so high that people stopped driving at scale? In these scenarios, the demand side of the equation would change.

  If you’re a regular of this blog, you probably know what I’m going to say next. But already I can think of two innovations that would contribute to the above scenarios: Uber and driverless cars.

  Uber’s goal is to continually drive down the cost of transportation and eventually get you to no longer own a car. They know very clearly that the demand for transportation services is highly elastic and that the cheaper they get the more you will use them. And the way they get cheaper is by continually increasing the utilization rate of their drivers/cars. An idle driver/car is the enemy.

  Of course, the other way to drive down fares is to remove the driver all together. And once you’ve done that, there is, in theory, no reason that a car should ever sit idle – like they do today. (The utilization rate for my car is around 2%.) And if a car is never sitting idle, then why would you ever need to park it? Certainly you wouldn’t need to park it as often as you do today.

  All of this isn’t going to happen tomorrow, but I believe – despite the supply constraints – that we are going to end up with excess parking spaces in our cities. And that will mean that they are going to be perceived as less valuable than they are today. I also believe that it will eventually seem silly to drive your own car. 

  What do you think?

  2015.11.05

• How small is too small?

  I was up early on Sunday morning and I tweeted this out:

  620 sf. Family of four. Could you do it? https://t.co/raV5Ha3NIi

  — Brandon G. Donnelly (@donnelly_b)

  October 25, 2015

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  It’s a link to a Dwell article about a New York family of four that lives in a 620 square foot apartment. It’s technically a one-bedroom apartment but the way they have it set up is that the two kids share the bedroom and the parents sleep in the living room similar to as if it were a studio apartment.

  And my question in the tweet was, could you do it?

  Part of the reason the article caught my attention was because I currently live in a 640 square foot apartment – but as a family of one. And not surprisingly it’s more than enough space for me. Would I still feel the same way if it were a family of two? I believe so. But what about if it were a family of 3 or 4? I suspect it wouldn’t be as effortless, though certainly not impossible.

  I love the idea of distilling one’s life down to only what is absolutely necessary. And if you happen to live in a city, like New York, where the median price of a one-bedroom apartment is somewhere around $3,400 per month, there can certainly be lifestyle advantages to doing more with less.

  So I’d like to re-ask the question here to the Architect This City community: Could you do it? How minimalist could you go?

  2015.10.26

• Urban population densities, compared

  

  Earlier this month The Washington Post published an article called, There’s no such thing as a city that has run out of room.

  And what it was really about was that when we say there’s no more room (I guess people are saying this), we are really saying that we just don’t want to allow anyone else to become our neighbor. Because the reality is that urban population densities vary widely around the world. So how can you really call a place full?

  I’m not sure I feel this pain point as much as the author, but I always find population densities to be a fascinating topic. And accompanying the article was a tool – using data from Demographia – that allowed you to compare the population densities of various cities.

  Here are are two scenarios I ran:

  

  It’s important to keep in mind that these numbers are averages for the entire economically contiguous region. So it tells you nothing about the potential spikiness of certain areas. That’s why the population density of New York (which includes portions of New Jersey and Connecticut) probably seems low to you.

  Still, it’s fascinating to see how extreme some cities – including some first world cities like Hong Kong – can be. Clearly many cities have a lot of room to become a lot more dense. And I think that would be a good thing.

  2015.10.16

• How cities get branded

  

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  I have been thinking a lot about city branding lately. It’s a topic I’m interested in to begin with, and all of the Blue Jays mania going on in Toronto right now has got thinking about our own brand.

  Because at the end of the day, yes, it’s baseball. But it’s also something much larger. It’s about civic and national pride, and it’s about who we are as a city. That’s why city branding has become a global industry and why it’s so closely connected to tourism, media, sports, and entertainment.

  Still, great city branding is incredibly difficult to do. Lots of cities have tried and lots of cities – from Adelaide to Toronto – have failed. Anyone remember the “Toronto Unlimited” brand of the mid-2000′s? It had absolutely zero stickiness.

  But in reality, cities are brand building all the time whether they realize it or not. Here in Toronto, our biggest brand builder right now is probably Drake. That might sound silly to some, but I believe it to be true. And next to that, you have people like Jose Bautista with his bat flips and his support of local brands like Peace Collective. In addition to their day jobs, these people are helping to shape the identity of the city.

  What, then, is professional city branding supposed to do?

  Well, in my opinion, it is their job to mine a city for the things that already exist. A city brand, no matter how great it may be, cannot be expected to create something from nothing. There has to be something there to begin with.

  But once you identify that something, a great city brand can tie it all together; create a cohesive and collective identity; and serve as a guide for future decision making. And when that’s done effectively, you actually begin to enhance the things that you initially started out with. The associations become even more powerful.

  So today I thought we could have a discussion in the comments about city brands. How would you describe the brand of your city in one sentence?

  For me, I would describe Toronto along the lines of being the most livable and multicultural 24/7 global city. And when you think of it this way, you can probably see why I think a 2AM last call at the bar is laughable.

  2015.10.15