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: shawn micallef

  • The great housing supply debate continues

    The great housing debate continues: Are we building enough housing, or are we not?

    Right now the media is talking about a new report from the Union of B.C. Municipalities, which is claiming that cities in British Columbia are actually building enough housing to keep pace with population demand.

    Between 2016 and 2021, the province’s population grew by 7.6% and the number of new dwellings grew by 7.2%, according to the report. So supply appears to be lining up with demand.

    One problem with this robust analysis is that many people, including the Housing Minister, don’t agree. Here’s an excerpt from the Globe and Mail:

    “The overly naive analysis comparing housing to population growth to declare the adequacy of our housing supply fails to understand that housing and population growth are intimately related,” said statistics analyst Jens von Bergmann, a regular decoder of housing statistics for Vancouver and Canada. “It’s a slap in the face of those who have been pushed out, or those who failed to move here, because of the unavailability of housing.”

    And on a related note, here is a recent piece by Shawn Micallef (Toronto Star) talking about why the left can’t get Toronto’s housing right.

  • Stable low-rise residential neighborhoods are the be-all and end-all

    Toronto city council has decided to defer its decision on legalizing rooming houses across the city one more time. Some of you may remember that this item went to council in the summer and was deferred to this fall. So now a new report is going to be drafted and the item will then make its way back to council sometime in the new year. Perhaps a decision will be made at that point. We will see.

    This is an interesting debate for many reasons, one of which is its divisiveness. Shawn Micallef wrote a searing piece in the Toronto Star over the weekend talking about how city council is showing its contempt for renters in this city and how council’s inaction is both “insulting and cowardly.” Article, here (paywall).

    At the same time, we know that many/most councillors don’t want this to happen. Which is why you get comments like this (taken from Micallef’s article): “…fundamentally what we need to talk about is what we don’t talk about enough at this council … homeowners’ rights. People who invest in this city and who live in stable residential neighbourhoods, the people that pay the taxes in this city.”

    I have already shared my views on this topic in past posts, but these are annoying comments. I live in a multi-family building. I build multi-family buildings as my job. And my next home is already planned to be in a multi-family building. Does that make me a second class citizen because I don’t live in a “stable residential neighborhood?” Am I not adequately investing this city?

  • Building a new city in Colombia

    This month’s issue of Monocle Magazine has a feature on a new masterplanned community to the north of Cartagena called Serena del Mar. Currently under construction, the entire 971 hectare community is slated to be finished by 2030. When complete the developers believe it will house upwards of 200,000 people — effectively an entirely new city.

    It will also be entirely self-governing. There will be no mayor or city council. Revenue to operate the community will be collected through a mandatory monthly fee, though low-income residents will be exempt from paying it. As I understand it, large projects in Colombia have historically been mired in corruption issues, and so this is probably a response to that.

    But the approach has naturally caused a bunch of skepticism. Does this bifurcate the city between public and private? Is this a vote of no confidence on Cartagena’s current governance structures? Building a city from scratch is also exceptionally difficult (there’s a quote in Monocle from Toronto’s own Shawn Micallef on this). Cities usually take time to evolve and settle in.

    I don’t know enough (or anything, really) about Colombia, Cartagena, and this development project to comment specifically. And so I won’t. But these are the questions that are being asked of contemporary masterplans. There’s a reason most (or all) of the tech companies involved in large scale masterplans have banned the word “campus” from their lexicons.

  • Good morning Hong Kong

    image

    It’s about 6:30 am on new year’s eve day and I’ve been awake since around 4:00 am because of jet lag. I initially resisted, but now I am up and starting my day. 

    The coffee shop downstairs doesn’t open for another hour so this is coming to you live from my surprisingly spacious hotel room. (I’ve been in far smaller both here in Hong Kong and in New York.) There’s a wide array of teas available in this room, but sadly no coffee. I could go for a coffee right now.

    I took the express train in from the airport last night, which is what I did the last time I was in Hong Kong over a decade ago. It takes just over 20 minutes and it is a great way to get into Central. It immediately signals to you that this city thinks and cares about efficiency.

    The experience of landing and getting into a city is an important, but often neglected, consideration. For many people this is their first impression of a place and so it only makes sense to pay attention to it. 

    Think of it like fine dining. Most nice restaurants will greet you at the front, take your coat, and show you to your table. Few expect you to come in the backdoor and wander bewildered through the kitchen. But that’s what some cities ask you to do after you land.

    Come to think of it, I left Toronto aboard our own airport express train. That’s standard practice for me. And so I started and ended my 2-day journey on efficient rail. I’m good with that.

    Before signing off for today, I would like to apologize for missing yesterday’s post. I was in the air for over 19 hours without internet. I also didn’t have much to say. As always, you should expect me to show up here every day. But expect more travel-related posts over the next week to go along with my Instagram posts.

    I would also like to point you toward this tweet storm by Shawn Micallef (discovered during jet lag haze). Please do me a favor and check it out. It is a hilariously accurate satire about many of the city building challenges that cities face today, told by way of a miniature “Dickens Village.”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And with that, I wish you all a happy new year. See you on the other side. Bring on 2018.

    Photo: Night shot of Gloucester Road from pedestrian overpass

  • Thoughts on labor, and the end of summer

    Well, just like that, the unofficial end of summer. Labor Day weekend. But I agree with Shawn Micallef: “Defy the crowd and keep enjoying summer.” There are still weeks of it left.

    But given that it is Labor Day weekend, here are two things to think about. 

    The first is a Financial Times article by Lawrence Summers where he argues that America needs unions more than ever and that, indeed, the central issue of American politics today is the “economic security of the middle class.”

    Here is an excerpt that speaks to declining bargaining power on the part of labor:

    “But I suspect the most important factor explaining what is happening is that the bargaining power of employers has increased and that of workers has decreased. Bargaining power depends on alternative options. Technology has given employers more scope for replacing Americans with foreign workers, or with technology, or by drawing on the gig economy. So their leverage to hold down wages has increased.”

    It’s also worth mentioning that only about 6.4% of private sector workers in the U.S. are in a union today. This is a decline of almost two-thirds since the 1970s and is a good segue into the second thought of this post.

    Two years ago Fred Wilson wrote a post on his blog (which he reblogged today) where he argued that “labor needs a mechanism to obtain market power as a counterbalance to the excesses of markets and capitalism.” 

    But, that this mechanism needs a refresh. He calls it Union 2.0.

    “However, like all bureaucratic institutions, the “Union” mechanism appears anachronistic sitting here in the second decade of the 21st century. We are witnessing the sustained unwinding of 19th and 20th century institutions that were built at a time when transaction and communications costs were high and the overhead of bureaucracy and institutional inertia were costs that were unavoidable.”

    This makes perfect sense to me. 

    At the same time, we can’t forget – and this is how Summers ends his article – that, today, “the most valuable companies are the Apples and the Amazons rather than the General Motors and the General Electrics.”

    That tells me that what may have worked in the past will likely not work in the future.

    Photo by Jonas Viljoen on Unsplash

  • Frontier city

    Opposition to new development is nothing new in this city. In fact, it’s the norm in almost all cities, regardless of how big or small the project might be.

    But the battle happening right now in Toronto with respect to the proposed 8 storey condominium project at 321 Davenport Road is certainly taking things to the next level. All over 16 units.

    Some of the most recognized names in this city have their hat in the ring and virtually every media outlet has covered the topic. See here, here, here, and here, for a small taste.

    Just this evening I saw that Shawn Micallef (yes camp) had sent a copy of his recent book to Margaret Atwood (no camp) in the hopes that she would read it and better appreciate why it behooves our neighborhoods to move past this “village mentality.”

    If you haven’t yet read it, it’s called Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness. I’ve just moved it to the top of my reading pile. I hope more folks do the same.