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: toronto

  • 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.

  • Quietly booming tech town

    We have all seen these headlines before, so it’s not so under the radar for us. But the New York Times just published this article about Toronto calling it a “quietly booming tech town.” Depending on how you want to measure things, Toronto is now the third largest tech hub in North America after Silicon Valley and New York City (or at least that’s what the NY Times is telling me). The article touches on some of the ingredients for this success, but let me be a bit more explicit in this post because I think it is particularly relevant right now.

    Canada is a “Western” country. What does that mean? It means that we’re a democracy, we have the rule of law, we respect individuals (including private property), and we allow for pluralism of opinion, along with many other freedoms. These are all wonderful and magical things that are sometimes taken for granted. But I couldn’t imagine living in a place that doesn’t allow for such freedoms, nor would I want to.

    On top of this foundation, we have two other important ingredients: extraordinary universities, like the ones mentioned in the article (University of Toronto and University of Waterloo), and some of the most liberal immigration policies in the world. Our borders are open for the smartest and most ambitious. With just these handful of things — freedom, rules, education, and talent — we can screw up a lot of other stuff and still accomplish some pretty great things. I may be oversimplifying, but probably not by much.

    Humans are wonderfully talented. Let people be and they’ll show you. Because history has shown us time and time again that the above recipe works remarkably well. (Related post: Do the best cities have a lot of immigrants?)

  • Toronto should light the underside of the elevated Gardiner Expressway

    Back when Toronto was debating the future of the eastern portion of the elevated Gardiner Expressway, I was an annoying and vocal supporter of tearing it down and replacing it with an at-grade boulevard. I was blogging about it ad nauseam. I participated in Jane’s Walks where I spoke about the merits of removal. And I even created a petition that went to City Council the day the decision was being made.

    But throughout all of this, I felt like I was in the minority. Most people said I was crazy (though former mayor John Sewell agreed with me). How will people and services get to downtown Toronto? This is critical infrastructure, they said. And indeed, Toronto voted not to remove it.

    Whatever you feel was the right decision at the time, that ship has sailed. We tore down a leg of the Gardiner east of the Don River, at that was positive; but the rest of it is either staying intact or being relocated. In both cases, it will be elevated.

    But I believe in looking forward, not backwards. And so with that, I think we should be doing everything we can urbanistically to make the Gardiner as nice as it can be. It is for this reason that I think The Bentway is an extraordinarily important project. And it is for this reason that I wish we would light the underside of the Gardiner so that when you’re driving on Lake Shore it makes you feel happy.

    A good example of this in action is the Yan’an Elevated Highway in Shanghai (greenery, of course, also helps):

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BzvTmo3nN2J/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

    Relevant scene from Skyfall (James Bond):

    But let me be clear before my inbox lights on fire: I am not suggesting that this is an approach to urbanism that is in any way desirable or worth emulating. I am not advocating for elevated highways running through the middle of dense downtowns and walkable city centers. All I am saying is that if we are stuck with something as dreary and as utilitarian as the Gardiner Expressway, the least we can do is make it kind of cool. And lighting can be a relatively cost effective way of doing that.

  • High-rise urban families in Toronto’s CityPlace

    The narrative in this fairly recent FastCompany article about Toronto’s CityPlace neighborhood is that the area was initially planned and built for young professionals who wanted to be close to work and party. But that it has since evolved to become a more mixed residential community. Over time, the young professionals started having children and now the area is filled with a surprising number of urban families. “Hundreds” according to FastCompany. In response to this shifting demographic, the Canoe Landing Campus was recently completed, containing a community center, two public schools, a public park, and childcare facilities. And apparently it was long overdue.

    This is interesting for a few reasons. CityPlace has long been criticized for its planning. Local Toronto lore has been that the area was destined to become a slum. But is that actually playing out? Anecdotally, it would seem that families are sticking around (and being attracted to the area) and that it’s settling in nicely as an urban residential community. In fact, I wonder if CityPlace might be emerging as one of the areas in the city with the highest concentration of high-rise urban families. I quickly tried to find some data on this but couldn’t.

    Something else worth pointing out: One of the objections that you’ll often here when it comes to new development is that there isn’t the infrastructure in place to support it. Where are the schools? Where are the community centers? And where are the hipster coffee shops? Because without these invaluable things, development should be stopped immediately. Now I’m not suggesting that these things aren’t important. But the CityPlace example is yet another reminder that cities and neighborhoods evolve — often in fortuitous ways. The best city building is nimble and entrepreneurial.

  • Construction update: Junction House

    This is a photo of Junction House that I took this morning after our weekly construction meeting. The team is currently preparing for the first concrete pour of level 4 (each floor has been split up into three pours). We’re now flying our forms, which means that we’re able to move a lot faster. This is the exciting part of a new build mid-rise like Junction House. The underground garage part is like watching paint dry.

    We’re scheduled to be topped out by this summer, so expect some gratuitous view photos on the socials.

  • Columns vs. shear walls in residential and office construction

    If I were to make a broad generalization for the way that we typically design the structural systems for residential buildings and office buildings here in Toronto it would be as follows: office buildings tend to have a big structural core with perimeter columns and residential buildings tend to have a smaller core accompanied by both columns and shear walls (long structural walls essentially). There are a myriad of other differences, but for the purposes of this post, I’m going to run with this broad classification.

    When something is typically done a certain way it often means that it is generally what the market wants and it is a cost effective solution. In the case of office buildings, this sort of structural system is essential for maintaining open plans and future flexibility. You can’t have shear walls interrupting your floor plates. And because big office buildings also tend to have a lot of elevators, the structural core is usually what provides lateral stability to the building (or at least this is what the structural engineers tell me).

    But this same imperative for open plans isn’t usually there for residential buildings. In this case, the unit demising is often fairly fixed and the individual resident/tenant spaces tend to be smaller than in office buildings, which makes frequent structural elements a lot more palatable. And since the elevator cores also tend to be smaller (fewer elevators), there is usually a need to introduce other structural elements that can provide the building with lateral stability. (Again, this is what the engineers tell me.) So enter all the shear walls.

    But every now and then, somebody in Toronto will ask: Is this the right way to be building? Other cities don’t build their residential buildings with all of these shear walls and so should we really be limiting the future flexibility of our multi-family housing supply by constructing in this way? These are good questions. The short answer is that it tends to be easier/cheaper to build this way. Our market is used to it. And generally end-users are just fine with it.

    However, this method of building isn’t necessarily a universal truth. The structural system for One Delisle, for example, is far closer to that of an office building than it is to that of a typical residential tower. Much of this was driven by the building’s architecture and its continually changing floor plates. I have also heard of instances where purpose-built rental developers are choosing to go column over shear wall so that there’s greater flexibility in the future. There’s certainly a case to be made for this.

    As developers, it is impossible to know all there is to know about any one discipline. You need the right team in place for that. But we do have to look at the bigger picture, weigh all of the constraints, and then hopefully make a reasonably good decision. This is one example of that.

    Image: Bay-Adelaide Centre North, Toronto

  • Office utilization update

    Some of you might remember my Jimmy the Greek Reopening Index. It has become my crude way of measuring office utilization in Toronto’s CBD. Based on this I can tell you that utilization is firmly up this week. Most lunch spots in Toronto’s PATH are back to having lines and the people working at these fine establishments are saying things like “finally” and “the people are back.” All of this is, of course, anecdotal. And I am not saying that we are back to pre-COVID levels. But there was a clear and meaningful uptick this week, which happens to coincide with the lifting of a number of COVID restrictions.

    Now let’s consider some actual numbers. I don’t know what they are for Toronto’s CBD (if you do, please share them in the comments below), but Kastle Systems has what seems like accurate “office swipe card” data for the 10 largest US cities. What this data tells us as of the end of February 2022 is that there has been a “return to normal, but not to the office.” Compared to 2019, NBA games are at 93.3%, movie theater ticket sales are at 89.4%, TSA checkpoints are at 87.8%, OpenTable reservations are at 87%, and yet office utilization sits on average at 36.8%.

    The “best” performing city is Austin with an average utilization of 53.4% as of February 23. And the “worst” performing city is San Francisco with an average utilization of 26.1% as of the same date. This makes intuitive sense given that tech has been pretty much leading the charge when it comes to remote and flexible work. Still, things are heading up and to the right. And as I argued at the beginning of this year with my annual predictions, I continue to believe that the majority of office workers will return at some point. Offices aren’t going away. And I think they’re going to remain the dominant place of work.

    Chart: Bloomberg

  • The world’s top performing luxury residential markets

    Knight Frank just released the 16th edition of its Wealth Report along with the disclaimer that, with everything going on in Ukraine right now, this outlook is of “little relative importance” and kind of doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. In any event, it includes the latest edition of their Prime International Residential Index (PIRI 100), which looks at the annual % change in luxury residential prices around the world. The chart is interactive, but I screenshotted (above) the top risers and fallers. Toronto is 4th in the Americas and 7th globally with a 20.3% year-over-year increase. Miami is also no surprise and came in 4th globally. The top three cities were Dubai, Moscow, and San Diego. Thankfully though, the number two city is in serious jeopardy right now and I suspect that its position will look quite different next year. Money will go where it feels safe and secure.

  • Sensible, balanced, affordable, and livable

    I just discovered a new alliance of non-partisan, non-profit resident and ratepayer groups in the Greater Toronto Area that have come together in opposition of what they see as “unregulated overdevelopment and the lack of sensible growth vision for the GTA.” If you’d like to read through their public letter to the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, you can do that over here.

    In it you will learn that the Toronto region is vying desperately for the title of the most densely populated place on earth by trying to compete with already established locales like the slums of Mumbai and Monk Kok in Hong Kong. One has to admire ambition.

    But what is not clear to me is what exactly “sensible, balanced, affordable, and livable developments” should look like. Should we quash our low-rise “Neighbourhood” designations (the majority of our land area) and instead blanket the region with mid-rise buildings similar to Paris? This is one option and, by the way, Paris is far denser than Toronto (relevant reading here and here).

    Or should we maintain our low-rise “Neighbourhoods” exactly as they are and simply reduce overall housing supply by limiting height and/or density at our transit stations? Is this the ask? I’m not sure. But this is a good question for city builders: What should sensible, balanced, affordable, and livable development look like? Is the 33-storey building that I live in sensible?

  • Comparing the weekly earnings of Canada’s visible minorities to white people

    We just finished up three days of snowboarding and skiing in Tremblant, Quebec and we’re now in Montreal closing out the long weekend. I am arguably Toronto’s greatest fan and supporter, but I continue to admit that Montreal is the coolest city in Canada.

    In other news, Theresa Qiu and Grant Schellenberg recently authored a Statistics Canada report looking at the weekly earnings of visible minorities and white people across the country. The study focuses on Canadian-born individuals aged 25 to 44 who were gainfully employed and making money in 2015.

    The reason why they isolated the study to Canadian-born visible minorities is that they wanted to eliminate the noise around new immigrants who may be struggling with the language(s), the recognition of their foreign credentials, or some other variable.

    In this case, every individual that factors into the study was born in Canada and, in theory, had access to similar sorts of opportunities. Of course, we know this isn’t always the case, but it’s an attempt an equal baseline.

    The findings are pretty interesting.

    Korean, Japanese, and South Asian men all tend to earn more than white males (which formed the baseline for the study). More than 60% of Chinese and Korean men also have a bachelor’s degree or higher, whereas only 24% of white males are in the same position.

    This is an important data point because we know that economic outcomes tend be positively correlated with educational attainment. The benefits of education also tend to compound later in life and this study only focuses on people aged 25 to 44. So the spreads could widen.

    One the factors that is surely influencing the above findings is that visible minorities are overwhelmingly urban. About 60% of visible minorities in Canada live in just three cities: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. This compares to only 27% of white people.

    Again, an important data point given that people in big cities tend to earn more than those in smaller communities.

    For the full study, click here.