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.

Subscribe

Tag: toronto

  • A subway network at the scale of a country

    The Hyperloop space has a number of competing companies that are all trying to figure out how to move people (between cities) in low-pressure tubes at nearly the speed of sound (1,234.8 km/h). For what it’s worth, Virgin Hyperloop One, which was founded in 2014, has supposedly completed the most testing and raised the most money ($295 million as of December 2017).

    This morning I was reading up on the Toronto-based TransPod, which was founded in 2015 by Sebastien Gendron and Dr. Ryan Janzen. They raised a $15 million seed round from an Italian tech group in 2016 and are close on another $50 million round right now. Following this, they’ll look be looking for a few hundred million. They seem encouraged by where Canada’s Strategic Innovation Fund has been placing money.

    Supposedly, their biggest competitive advantage is cost. The company estimates their cost per kilometer to be about $25 million, which would put the cost of a Toronto-Montreal link at around $15 billion. This is not cheap, but it is allegedly cheaper. The travel time between these two cities could then be as short as 40 minutes.

    Virgin Hyperloop One has been similarly looking at a Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal line, as it would stitch together about 25% of Canada’s population. But apparently the federal government recommended that TransPod instead look at a line that sits entirely within one province — at least at the start.

    So the company has gone ahead and secured a 10-kilometer parcel of land in Alberta that will eventually form part of a future connection between Calgary and Edmonton. TransPod hopes to have this test track operational by 2022.

    However, their focus right now is on France. (Being in Europe is another differentiator for the company. Europe gets transport.) With the help of a few partners, the company has started work on a 3-kilometer test track in Limoges, France. Permits were received at the end of last year and they hope to begin testing by the end of this year.

    There’s no question that this technology has the potential to be transformational, which is why so many companies are competing in the space right now. But it’s obviously going to take a whole lot of moxie. Gendron is on the record talking about the risk-adverse nature of both Canadian regulators and investors when it comes to these sorts of large-scale innovations. That’s a problem that we need to address.

    The title of this post is a quote by Gendron taken from this TechVibes article.

    Image: TransPod

  • Architect Jeanne Gang named to the TIME 100 list

    Architect Jeanne Gang (of Studio Gang) has just been named to the TIME 100, which is Time magazine’s annual list of the world’s most influential people. Jeanne is the only architect to be included in the 2019 list.

    Jeanne was named to the “Titans” category, which typically honors those who are at the top of their respective field. She sits alongside Mark Zuckerberg, Tiger Woods, and LeBron James in this year’s TIME 100.

    Past honorees within the architecture profession include Elizabeth Diller, David Adjaye, and Bjarke Ingels. All, stars.

    The list is in its 16th year. But it’ll be the first year where there will also be a day-long conference. (Lynne and Marc Benioff, of Salesforce, acquired the magazine in 2018 for $190 million in cash and are making some changes.)

    Congratulations Jeanne.

    Full disclosure: Studio Gang is the design architect for our One Delisle project in midtown Toronto.

  • How are condos in Canada used?

    Jens von Bergmann (data analyst and mathematician); Nathanael Lauster (sociologist); and Douglas Harris (law professor) have been working since 2018 on a study of how condominiums are used and occupied across Canada. The goal is to use the results to better inform public and academic debate.

    They recently presented some of their early findings at the National Housing Conference in Ottawa and have since made that information public. It is still a work in progress, but already there are some interesting takeaways. To start, here is a chart showing occupied housing units in Canada and in select CMAs:

    Not surprisingly, Canada is broadly speaking a nation of single-detached houses. But in our three largest cities — Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver — apartments/condominiums are doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

    Vancouver has the highest proportion of condominiums. It is a geographically constrained metro area and it is one of the first cities in the country to adopt condominiums as a housing tenure. And in Montreal, there are more apartments under 5 storeys than there are single-detached houses. Not surprising. There’s no “missing middle” in this city.

    But the really interesting question is, how are these condominiums being used and occupied? It’s a challenging question to answer, which is why it’s so often debated, but here’s what the researchers have found so far:

    The owner and renter categories are self-explanatory. Temporary, which is the least common type of tenure, is where the owner has declared their principal residence as being somewhere else. In other words, the condominium is a second home.

    The vacant category is effectively that city’s condominium rental vacancy rate. These are condominium units which are empty, but that are at the same time listed for rent. There are relatively few of these. In Toronto and Vancouver they’re virtually non-existent in this dataset (2016).

    Finally, we get to unoccupied units. This one is tricky and the researchers aren’t exactly clear on what is driving this number. They chalk it up, at least partially, to the flexible nature of condominiums. For example, it could be empty because the unit is switching from owner-occupied to rental, or vice versa.

    That said, it is very interesting to note that Toronto and Vancouver actually have the lowest percentage of unoccupied condominium units. This may be surprising to some of you given the public discourse around investor units in these two cities.

    Generally, they found that in Canada’s three largest metro areas, the following rule of thumb seems to apply: For every 10 condominium units built, 6 will become owner-occupied, 3 will enter the rental stock, and 1 will go unoccupied. Does that seem right to you?

    If you’d like to dig into the methodology that the researchers used, you can do that over here at Mountain Doodles. All of the charts and data used in this post were taken from there.

  • Exploring KING Toronto

    Today I stopped by the Exploring KING exhibit that is currently on at 134 Peter Street. It is an exhibition celebrating the design of KING Toronto.

    It explains how the design came about. Note all the different unit layouts on the floor.

    It includes (foam) study models that go as far back as 2015. That’s four years of design iterations.

    It has samples of the glass blocks that will be used on the building’s facades.

    Related article: Glass blocks, that staple of 1980s kitsch, are trendy again. Sorry, it’s behind a paywall.

    It has a VR setup that allows you to explore the building’s inner courtyard. It’s going to be a fun space.

    And there’s even a KING Toronto candle for sale. (Aromatic woods with spicy overtones.)

    I thought the overall exhibition was very well done and I am thrilled to see architecture and design so front and center. It is an exciting time to be living in this city.

  • Holding a shadow

    Debating the merits — or shortcomings, depending on which camp you’re in — of all-glass buildings isn’t new. But there seems to be a bit of a resurgence happening right now because of the recent opening of Hudson Yards in New York.

    There’s an important environmental consideration here: Glass is, as a rule, a poor insulator. But often the other concern with all-glass buildings is their sameness. Witold Rybczynski recently wrote about this on his blog in a post called The Transparency Trap:

    Le Corbusier described (modernist) architecture as “the masterly, correct and magnificent play of volumes brought together in light.” Corbusier used glass but he never designed all-glass buildings. Neither did Mies; he added superfluous I-beams to his facades (which also had substantial spandrels). The problem with transparent glass is that it doesn’t hold a shadow, and without a shadow there can be no “play of volumes.” Since minimalist modernist architecture doesn’t offer decoration or ornament, that doesn’t leave much to look at.

    Witold isn’t usually appreciative of that which is new and I often find myself disagreeing with this critiques. But I like his metaphor of “holding a shadow.” Light and shadow are, of course, fundamental to architecture.

    Photo by LinedPhoto on Unsplash

  • London is piloting its first ever 3D zebra crossing

    London is currently running a 12-month pilot on its first ever 3D zebra crossing. The objective is to improve pedestrian safety by making the crossing more visible to drivers. A 3D zebra crossing stands out by appearing to float above the road.

    Here’s a photo (image credit to Gusti Productions):

    While this is the first of its kind in the UK, similar crossings have already been installed in Iceland, India, Taiwan, and other countries. According to the trials in India, they do appear to have a meaningful impact on vehicular speeds. They also feel like public art.

    If this first one proves to be successful, the plan is to roll out these 3D crossings across the entire borough of Westminster. Assuming they do actually work, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more noise around them here in Toronto.

    A London-based software company is also working to completely rethink the zebra crossing for today’s smartphone world. Their system imagines LEDs embedded into the street so that a crosswalk can be triggered basically anywhere.

    Perhaps this is something that might work with the street paving that Sidewalk Toronto is piloting.

  • Golden hour cranes

    I was out this past Saturday evening with my Fujifilm X-T3. I usually always have it on me when I’m traveling, but less so when I’m at home. It can be harder to be a “tourist” in your own city because things don’t stand out in the same way. And oftentimes it is that novelty which sparks the desire to take a photo. But that’s no excuse. So here are two photos that I took right before sunset from CityPlace, Toronto. The cranes you see in the first picture (mostly) belong to The Well.

  • Canada admitted 321,065 permanent residents last year

    Bloomberg recently reported that Canada admitted 321,065 permanent residents last year. This is up 12% from 2017, where the country admitted 286,479. Last year was also the largest cohort since 1913 (the year before World War I), where the country admitted just over 400,000 people.

    Here is a chart from Bloomberg (it is interactive if you click through):

    Of course, Canada was a much smaller country back in 1913 (about 7.6 million people), and so on a percentage basis we are much lower than where we were at the beginning of the 20th century. We’d have to admit close to 2 million permanent residents a year to get to a similar rate.

    And that is not what is in the books. Here are the projected admissions for 2019 to 2021. All of the below stats are from the 2018 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration.

    I couldn’t find a geographic breakdown for last year, but in 2017, about 40% of admitted permanent residents (or 111,925 total) ended up in Ontario and about 72% ended up in Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta (the top 3 provinces for this year). If we add in BC, it brings this figure up to 86%.

    Here are also the top 10 countries of origin:

    If you’d like to download a PDF of the full report, you can do that here.

  • Junction House is a finalist in the 39th Annual BILD Awards

    I am excited to announce that Junction House is a 2019 finalist in the 39th Annual BILD Awards. The project is up for the following 4 awards:

    1. Best Signage (it was probably the neon that did it)
    2. Best Suite Design (large suite)
    3. Best Innovative Suite Design (it’s a suite from our unique 2-storey House Collection)
    4. Best Mid-Rise Building Design

    This last one is a “Pinnacle” award, but I’ll be honest in that I don’t know what that means. It sounds impressive though.

    BILD received some 850 submissions this year, so kudos to the project team: Superkül, Dialogue 38, Vanderbrand, Unique Urban Homes, DTAH, WND Associates, and others.

    We spend an inordinate amount of time on our floor plans — they are people’s eventual homes. So it’s nice to see a bit of that effort reflected above.

  • An elevator equalizer show

    This week two new office buildings were announced in Toronto and Vancouver by Allied Properties and Westbank. Both are being designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). As you would expect, Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail has done a proper writeup, here.

    The building in Toronto (called Union Centre) is generally located at 171 Front Street West. It is a revision to a previous proposal for the site that was originally submitted back in 2014. That project got approved by Council, but the implementing by-laws were never enacted.

    My favorite image from their rezoning resubmission is this one here:

    It clearly shows the big idea behind the project, which is to push all of the building’s elevator shafts to its north elevation. This opens up its large floor plates to the south, but also allows for a kind of elevator equalizer show on the outside of the building. The cabs are intended to be lit and the shafts are intended to be built using clear glazing. That’s what you’re seeing above.

    I don’t think we have enough fun with building lights here in Toronto. So I was pretty pumped to see this get proposed. What are your thoughts?

    Rendering by Bjarke Ingels Group