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

  • Unzipped wall on King Street West

    image

    Last night I checked out the Unzipped Toronto exhibition, which is the relocated Serpentine Pavilion (pictured above) that was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group in 2016. 

    It was initially housed in Hyde Park London, but it’s now on King Street West Toronto. Westbank purchased the “unzipped wall” after it was installed in London and supposedly it will eventually find a permanent home in Vancouver.

    The official opening of Unzipped Toronto is September 15th, 2018. It will be free and open to the public. If you’d like to get a complimentary ticket, you can do that here. 

    The timing of all this lines up with condo sales for Bjarke Ingels’ first project in Toronto. I believe that will be starting this fall. And I am sure they will end up setting some new records for the King West submarket.

  • New Toronto architecture bike tour

    I have a friend visiting from Detroit this weekend. We went to architecture school together at Penn. But unlike me, he decided to become a full fledged architect.

    Not surprisingly, he wants to see some new Toronto architecture while he’s here. I say new because he has seen the classics. So I mapped out a short bike route this morning. It’s more or less a downtown loop that starts in the St. Lawrence.

    First we head west to the Queen Richmond Centre West by Allied Properties REIT (developer) and Sweeny&Co (architect). After that I’d like to show him the main drag of King West and point out two buildings by Saucier + Perrotte Architects and CORE Architects. I don’t think Unzipped Toronto is open yet.

    Next it is north to One Spadina Crescent – home of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. This is one of if not my favorite new building in the city right now.

    After that I figure we’ll cruise east along the Bloor bike lanes and look up at 1 Bloor East. Then it is back south to check out the River City collection by Urban Capital (developer) and Saucier + Perrotte Architects (they are getting good face time on this tour).

    Then we’ll do what every good new Toronto architecture bike tour should do and end with a drink on a rooftop patio somewhere. Maybe we’ll check out the Broadview Hotel. I like the neon in the lobby bar.

    If I missed anything critical, let me know.

    Photo by Tiffany Nutt on Unsplash

  • How Singapore fixed its housing problem

    There are a number of affordable housing plans being thrown around in Toronto right now given that we have a municipal election coming up this fall. 

    From what I have read, the plans are largely centered around surplus and/or available public land and possibly some subsidies. 

    These subsidies are very important because the money has to come from somewhere. This is often overlooked.

    In light of these debates, I thought I would share a short Bloomberg video that my friend Evgeny shared with me this morning all the way from Tokyo.

    The video is about how Singapore fixed its housing problem. If you can’t see it embedded below, click here.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cjPgNBNeLU?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

    It strikes me as being very Singaporean.

  • Downward pressure on parking supply

    There’s a significant amount of downward pressure on parking supply in most major cities. Part of this has to do with the push toward more sustainable forms of transport, which is, of course, a good thing. But it also has to do with rising construction costs, the fear of obsolescence in the wake of autonomous vehicles, and probably many other factors.

    Developers, ourselves included, have responded by being cautious about the amount of parking being provided and by considering alternative future uses for the parking that is being built. I think it is also obvious that we will continue to see more, rather than less, parking stackers and other more efficient parking solutions.

    So far the cost of parking in dense urban centers has continued to rise. A new parking spot in the core of Toronto priced at $100,000 would not surprise me. And Hong Kong recently set a record for what is allegedly the most expensive parking spot in the world: USD 765,000 or CAD 1 million.

    But what is going to happen going forward?

    Researchers at the Singapore – MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and MIT Senseable City Lab, along with Allianz, have recently tried to quantify what the impact of autonomous vehicles will mean on required parking, and on traffic, in Singapore. The study is called Unparking.

    Today, they estimate the total number of parking spots in Singapore to be around 1,370,000. This is based on minimum parking requirements from the Housing Development Board and on the idea that home-work commuting consumes two parking spots: one at home and one at the office.

    They model four different scenarios, but the last one is based on fully autonomous vehicles and on shared parking spaces. Holding current mobility demands and traffic volumes constant, the demand for parking in this scenario drops by 70%.

    It is possible to reduce the number of parking spaces even further to 85%, but this has a negative impact on traffic congestion in their model. Fewer parking spaces means the autonomous vehicles have to drive around more picking people up. 

    I also don’t know if there was any consideration given to induced demand as a result of the more affordable autonomous vehicles. Demand for transportation services is generally thought to be fairly elastic.

    Whatever the case may be, numbers are made to be questioned. And Singapore is a unique city-state. But ¼ the amount of parking does not seem that far fetched to me.

    Photo by Tobias Jussen on Unsplash

  • The Future of Hamilton

    image

    As many of you know, we have a development project in Hamilton, Ontario – more specifically in the Corktown neighborhood. We filed our development application earlier this summer.

    Because of this I was invited to participate in a Bisnow event on The Future of Hamilton. It takes place the morning of Wednesday, September 12, 2018 in The Alley by Core Urban. I walked this space last summer while it was under construction and so I’m excited to see it finished.

    For those of you who aren’t familiar with Core Urban, they are doing some really great work in Hamilton and have established themselves as a responsible city builder with a focus on adaptive reuse projects.

    Steve Kulakowsky, who is co-owner of Core Urban, will be speaking at the event along with the mayor, some guy who has pretentiously included his middle name, and many other smart people. To see the full list of speakers and to buy a ticket, click here.

    Photo of Hamilton by Vivek Trivedi on Unsplash

  • Planning staff reports

    A bunch of people have asked me lately about what they should do if they want to get smarter on land use planning and on the entitlement process for development projects. It was specific to Toronto, but I don’t think my answer is specific to only this city.

    I took a few planning classes in graduate school when I was in the US. But I was more focused on architecture and real estate, and so I did not leave school an expert by any means.

    I learned about the failures of euclidian zoning and about things like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, which always seemed like a sensible supply-side tool to get the private sector to invest in affordable housing.

    But what I have found most useful is to just read planning staff reports. These are the responses to actual development proposals and they show you how staff interpret the policies that are in place and how staff apply them to real buildings.

    I may be in the minority in that I actually find these reports interesting. But regardless, they are a great crash course in planning and development approvals and they can help you manage your entitlement risk.

  • Preliminary design ideas for Toronto’s Quayside

    Last week Sidewalk Toronto held a roundtable discussion here in the city and released some preliminary design ideas and strategies for Quayside. (That’s why Dan Doctoroff was talking on BNN Bloomberg.) 

    I went through the full presentation this morning and below are a bunch of slides that I thought you all might find interesting.

    Here is the extent of “Quayside” along the waterfront. The current land use permissions allow for about 3 million square feet of space and towers as tall as 50 storeys.

    Here is a paving system being explored for the area. It is modular. It may melt snow. And perhaps most interestingly, it would allow for dynamic changes in road use throughout the day. This sort of thing already happens to a lesser degree on streets like Jarvis. This technology could take that much further.

    One of their primary goals is to double Toronto’s usable outdoor hours. To do that, they are proposing simple weather shields (pictured below) and weather-responsive systems.

    They are spending a lot of time thinking about the ground floor of buildings, which they are calling Stoa. The idea is to create flexible and porous spaces that respond quickly to changing needs and that integrate more seamlessly with the surrounding public realm.

    There’s a lot on the potential hierarchy of the street network and how each will function for transit, conventional cars, AVs, cyclists, pedestrians, and so on. I was happy to see “laneways” as a core part of the pedestrian network. They are designed for walking speeds. Access would be restricted for things that move too quickly.

    This image ties in the street grid and Stoa.

    Finally, the goal is to build the neighborhood entirely out of timber, and more specifically, Canadian timber. If they follow through on this, I think it would really push adoption of this material forward in the city.

    I would encourage you to check out the full package, which you can do here. I can’t wait for these projects to get underway along Toronto’s waterfront.

  • North American cities with the most construction cranes

    Rider Levett Bucknall recently released its RLB Crane Index for Q3-2018. Here are the top 10 cities in North America (table via the New York Times):

    For the third consecutive reporting period, Toronto has taken the number one spot at 97 cranes – 85 of which are being used on residential projects. 

    I’m not at all sure how the study defines “mixed-use” projects. But given that Toronto only has 2 of them, it must not include projects with grade-related retail.

    Across North America, residential and mixed-use projects (whatever they are) make up approximately 70% of the total crane count. 

    I am surprised that Miami didn’t make the list.

  • A global hub for urban innovation

    Dan Doctoroff, the CEO of Sidewalk Labs (and the former deputy mayor of New York City), was recently interviewed by BNN Bloomberg about the company’s plans and ambitions for Quayside here in Toronto. 

    He talks about the project; their interest in timber construction; how the company, Sidewalk Labs, might ultimately make money; and how their mission is to create a global hub for urban innovation.

    This last point is, of course, the most exciting opportunity – both for Sidewalk Labs/Alphabet and for Toronto. And it’s why many people believe that Quayside will end up a far greater (economic development) coup compared to HQ2.

    The interview is only 10 minutes. If you can’t see it embedded below, click here.

    https://webapps.9c9media.com/vidi-player/1.5.1/share/iframe.html?currentId=1461888&config=bnn/share.json&kruxId=InSaVlLc&cid=%5B%7B%22contentId%22%3A1461888%2C%22ad%22%3A%7B%22adsite%22%3A%22ctv.bnn%22%2C%22adzone%22%3A%22ctv.bnn%22%7D%7D%5D

  • Cities with perfect climates

    Last year Nolan Gray mapped out “the cities of the world where you don’t need AC or heat.” And just recently he updated his data with the help of Guardian Cities for their “sweltering cities” series. As part of the study, they projected out average temperatures, in both the summer and winter, to 2059, showing which cities may become more dependent on air conditioning. The answer looks to be many.

    In his original study, Gray had 9 climatic categories, all of which were based on average high and low temperatures throughout the year. Category 1 was you definitely don’t need AC or heat. These cities are essentially perfect year round. And category 9 was you definitely need heat and AC. These cities are basically the worst places on earth to occupy from a climate perspective.

    Here is that climate classification system in lovely chart form (note his caption):

    The climatic utopias ended up being places like Bogotá, Guatemala City, Lima, Mexico City, San Diego, São Paulo, and Sydney. The worst places were the southeastern United States, Central Asia, and northern East Asia.

    But one factor that is not included in the study is humidity, which Gray rightly points out has a meaningful impact on comfort. Toronto, for example, is classified in his system as category 7. Heat needed. But AC definitely not needed. Personally, I would bump us up to category 8: AC preferred, but not needed.

    Still, this is an interesting study. There are relatively few cities with so-called perfect climates. And I have always found these sorts of climates fascinating because they empower a very different kind of relationship to outside spaces.