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: placemaking

  • New On the Bench website

    The Project Bench team spent the last several weeks capturing photos and videos of Canada’s largest wine region — the Niagara Benchlands (link is to the official tourism website). And today I’m excited to share that we’ve launched our own new placemaking website called On the Bench.

    The purpose of the site is to help celebrate the region. There’s also some very preliminary information about Project Bench. In our humble opinion, we don’t feel that the Benchlands region receives the attention that it clearly deserves. More people are familiar with Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Falls, especially globally.

    The Bench is a distinct area, with its own unique character and with more — and arguably better — wineries. This v1 website is the start of us working to demonstrate this. So if you’re a local business or community member that would like to collaborate with us on this overall initiative, we’d love to hear from you.

    To join the Bench community and be first to learn more about Project Bench, email subscribe at the bottom of the page, and follow us on Instagram and X.

  • Pink glow

    Here’s a potentially hypothetical question.

    If you were in the market for a 3-bedroom penthouse, and its 1,100 sf wraparound terrace with skyline views just so happened to have an enormous neon-like sign above it, would you consider this to be a feature or a bug?

    The sign does turn off at 11PM, but before then, it creates this awesome/lovely pink glow on the terrace. My sense is that this will be fairly divisive. You’re either going to love it or you’re going to hate it. Which side are you on?

    Let me know in the comment section below.

  • Toronto’s next best photo-op is in the Junction

    Today is a travel day, so I don’t have a whole lot to say. But BlogTO did just publish a story about our Junction placemaking sign: “This intersection is set to become Toronto’s next best photo-op.” I am also happy to report that the sign’s timer has now been installed, which means that, starting today, it will get illuminated each night from sunset to 11PM. (We’re required to shut it off at this time because, you know.)

    So far the response has been overwhelmingly positive. And I truly hope that this installation will become a symbol for the Junction neighborhood. This was our sole purpose for pursuing it. It would also be ironic if something that was so difficult to get approval for ends up being loved by city. Perhaps it’s a lesson that stubbornness can be a good thing when you believe in something.

  • Community living rooms in New York City

    This is a great collection of third places or “community living rooms” in New York City. Simply speaking, a third place is any space where people hang out that isn’t their home and isn’t their place of work. Hence the third moniker. The most typical example is arguably the humble coffee shop. But what is clear from this thread list, is that a third place can take on many different permutations — everything from a bathhouse to an art library with the world’s largest collection of artist’s sketchbooks. What is also clear is that these are the kinds of spaces that really define a city. They create a sense of place, they give us community, and they help us with our sense of self — because they allow us to think things like, “I am the kind of person who hangs out and enjoys independent bookstores in the East Village.”

  • The fast-foodification of cities

    Greg Isenberg recently wrote about what he refers to as the fast-foodification of everything — including cities. His arguments are that (1) we have reached peak sameness (Toronto is largely indistinguishable from, say, Sydney) and (2) the best brands and companies going forward will be local, unique, and community-driven.

    I don’t know how to assess whether we have reached peak sameness, but I do know that, whatever we are experiencing right now, is at a minimum 100 years in the making. The International Style (of architecture), which emerged after WWI, is exactly what the name suggests. The intent was to fashion an approach to architecture that worked anywhere in the world. Location, climate, and context were all irrelevant.

    This approach has been widely criticized for the reasons you might expect and for the reasons that Isenberg outlines in his post. But sameness is not exclusively the result of European architects who wanted to eschew ornament and local flourishes. As the world continues to globalize and become “smaller”, there is an inevitability to this growing and continued sameness. Business wants economies of scale.

    But there is no question that, more than ever, people are craving unique and local experiences and places. And if you can create that in our globalized world, you are going to win.

  • The tricks with masterplanning

    Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail recently made a good point in one of his articles about how challenging it is to properly “placemake” when it comes to large-scale masterplanned projects. This blog post is not at all intended as a commentary on any one project, but I would like to acknowledge that, for a variety of reasons, places do often need time, layers of history, and some patina on them in order to really settle in. When you build big, it can be easy for things to end up feeling sterile.

    It is also true that tastes can change over time (as we have talked about before), though you could argue that this change is driven by the settling in process. Spaces start to get rethought, reconfigured and recast, and that can make them more desirable.

    But it’s not just about time. What else is going on here that makes masterplanning so tricky? Four things immediately come to mind. If you have any others, please share them in the comment section below.

    One, a lot of the old stuff that we love is now illegal and no longer possible. Here is a great example from Paris that I wrote about. But there are countless others. Another example from Toronto might be the corner retail stores that used to dot our residential neighborhoods. In my opinion, these are wonderful additions. They create urban vibrancy. But today they are generally legal non-conforming uses.

    Two, great urban experiences often happen at the micro scale. Things like the perfect patio with a great view of the street and full afternoon sun. Or that intimate side street lined with beautiful homes. These are some of the moments that make cities great. But when you’re masterplanning at the master scale, it is perhaps easier for more of these intimate details to get lost.

    Three, any new community needs to be seeded. Cities and communities are nothing without people. And so what will be the anchors? What will bring people here? How are we going to animate its streets and public spaces? These can be tricky problems to solve and they often take time (and density).

    Four, masterplanning likely equals fewer feedback loops. I recently came across this great line from Chris Dixon: “Composability is to software as compounding interest is to finance.” Composability is the ability to mix and match software components. And the idea here is that open source software allows new software to get built on top of existing stuff (just like interest on top of interest). This way the world never needs to solve a problem twice.

    I’m not sure what the pithy line should be for city building, but cities also compound. We are constantly building on top of the efforts of others, except when we’re largely not, and we’re designing a whole bunch of new stuff all at once, as is typically the case with masterplanned projects. This isn’t inherently wrong, but building a community from scratch will always be more difficult than adding on to one that is already successful.

  • Neon and space

    At this point, it is well known that I am a big fan of neon. It is something that we have obviously worked to incorporate into our Junction House project through things like our rooftop placemaking sign (it’s actually LED), our collaboration with local artist Thrush Holmes (his work incorporates neon), and the neon popup gallery that we hosted last year in collaboration with the Downtown Yonge BIA and Neon Demon Studio. So it was no surprise that a friend of mine sent me an ArchDaily article this morning talking about how neon lighting shapes architecture.

    What I like about the piece, and the pictures it includes, is that it emphasize the spatial qualities and potential of neon. For a lot of us, neon has come to represent brash advertising. Neon is bright. That was and is great for advertising. But that association has been changing. Even cities like Hong Kong, which have for so long been synonymous with neon, are starting to lose that form of advertising. I’m not saying that loss is a good thing. But I do think that we are now seeing neon being used in completely different ways. It has become more creative. It has become architectural.

    Below is an excerpt from the ArchDaily article that speaks to this same idea. But what you really want to do is shoot over and look at all of the photos.

    Yet because neon is so fundamentally associated with signage, which can feel limiting or kitschy for some architects, it is often neglected. Rudi Stern writes further that “Unfortunately for many architects, neon is the last shoddy pink ‘pizza’ sign they have seen, and they summarily reject a medium that offers great promise as a spatial and environmental element.” Thus, despite its historical and commercial associations, neon has the potential to be even more than retro symbols or cosmopolitan phrases. Abstract designs, atmospheric colors, and the kinetic properties of light combined can completely alter a space even without references to a historical aesthetic or explicit messages. In the images of the With.It Home below, BodinChapa Architects have used neon in a non-representational way to create a stunningly memorable James Turrell-esque room that is simultaneously tranquil and radiant. Neon light has the power to completely transform a room even if used in as simple a way as lining the corners of the ceiling, due to the unique properties of light in conversation with the sense of space itself. If architects can move past its commercial associations and investigate its relationship to architectural space, neon can become an even more powerful atmospheric element than it is already.

    Photo by Yuiizaa September on Unsplash

  • What drives attachment to cities

    The Knight Foundation recently published a report looking at what attaches people to the place in which they live. To get this information, they surveyed over 11,000 Americans, some of which live in urbanized areas and some of which just live in metro areas across the United States. This is interesting information to know at any time point in time, but you could argue that it’s even more important at a time like this, where everyone seems to be questioning everything about cities.

    Here are two of their key findings:

    • People who spend more time in the principal or main city of a metro area — whether as residents or as frequent visitors — tend to be more attached. This is is true both in terms of how they feel, but also in terms of how they act, such as how much they give back to the community. I suppose you could debate whether going to the city creates attachment or whether attached people tend to go to the city, but this association does seem somewhat intuitive to me. I am imagining a greater sense of place in principal cities.
    • People who choose to live in a place because of its quality of life tend to express more attachment than people who live in a place for other reasons — such as for work. About 40% of Miami transplants cited the climate as the primary factor for moving. Sounds right. Weather is pretty hard to control, but there are lots of other things that cities can do to improve quality of life. And it seems to be one of the stickier factors. Similarly, access to cultural activities and recreational amenities seem to lead to greater attachment.

    More specifically, here are how some people feel about their metro areas:

    This chart is showing the “perceived accessibility to quality features.” The left column is what they believe to be the national average. And the other columns are for Akron, Charlotte, Detroit, Macon, Miami, Philadelphia, San Jose, and St. Paul. Looking at one row in particular — affordable housing — we see that about 50% of Americans surveyed believe they have access to it. In comparison, only 29% and 12% of residents in Miami and San Jose, respectively, feel the same way.

    For a full copy of the report, click here.

    Chart: Knight Foundation

  • Toronto should placemake a “sports alley”

    Being a sports fan is like having a bipolar disorder. The highs are high. And the lows are low. But right now — with the Toronto Raptors having clinched their first ever NBA Finals appearance — we are all on a high. Though the job is far from over, this city has waited 24 seasons for this moment. Turns out, all we were missing was one of the greatest basketball players of all time.

    It’s pretty amazing to see how far we have come both as a franchise, and as a global city. When Scotiabank Arena was completed in 1999, it, and the surrounding area, looked like this. On Saturday night after the win, it looked like this, a veritable “sports alley.” I have long thought that Bremner Boulevard should be placemade into a sports alley connecting Scotiabank Arena (on the east) and the Rogers Centre (on the west).

    From now until this Thursday, all is right in the world. Enjoy it Toronto, and Canada. Masai Ujiri made a bet that I think most, if not all, of us would agree has paid off. Had it not, Raptors fans across the country would be criticizing him for trading away our franchise player. But that’s par for the course in this bipolar world of sports fandom.

  • From retail to logistics

    Over the past few weeks we’ve been talking about the future of the mall on this blog. It’s a topic that I’m very interested in.

    Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published an article talking about the trend of converting retail/shopping facilities to logistic centers. 

    Here’s an excerpt:

    “In Mesquite, Texas, FedEx Corp. next month will open a 340,000 square-foot distribution facility on what once was the site of the former Big Town Mall. Located along U.S. Highway 80 in Texas, the mall declined after newer malls were built nearby. It was demolished in 2006 and the land was later rezoned for industrial use.”

    It turns – and we’ve talked about this – that good retail locations are also good distribution locations. They are usually located close to humans and infrastructure.

    Here’s another example from the article:

    In North Randall, Ohio, Amazon.com Inc. is considering the site of the former Randall Park Mall as a fulfillment center, according to Port of Cleveland, a local government agency focused on spurring job creation and economic growth in Cuyahoga County. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

    For a short time when it opened in 1976, Randall Park Mall was the largest shopping center in the world and had been “a thriving heartbeat” for the local economy, according to Mr. Davis. But the mall closed in 2009 as stores struggled with fewer shoppers.

    Assuming this trend continues and people continue to buy things online, one has to wonder about the placemaking that should or needs to happen in these areas.