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: urbanism

  • Car-dependent spatial structure

    Earlier this week a 58 year old woman named Dalia was struck and killed by a car near the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. This tragedy has everyone talking about and questioning how to make our roads safer, though the answers are not difficult to find. Here is an excerpt from a piece that Richard Florida penned following the incident called, Toronto’s Deadly Car Crisis:

    Today, more Torontonians die from being hit by cars than from being killed by guns. In 2016, nearly 2,000 pedestrians and 1,000 cyclists in the city were hit by cars. Of these, 43 resulted in fatalities. On average, a pedestrian in Toronto is hit every four or five hours, and a cyclist every eight or nine. This means that Toronto’s rate of pedestrian deaths was 1.6 per 100,000 people in 2016 — worse than in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, D.C., Portland, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo. It has risen to 1.7 deaths per 100,000 people in 2017 and is on track to rise still further to 1.8 deaths per 100,000 this year. And, children and the elderly face the greatest risk of being struck and killed by a car. The problem is only getting worse. Across Canada, pedestrian fatalities increased by more than 10 percent between 2010 and 2016; at time when they decreased by more than 25 percent in European countries like Norway, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

    The broader issue is what he refers to as Toronto’s “car-dependent spatial structure.” And it is detrimental to not only our public safety, as we saw this week, but also to our ability to grow as a global city. The Greater Toronto Area is projected to reach 10 million people by 2041. I agree with Florida that, for a number of important reasons, we are going to need to commit ourselves to a new model for growth.

  • What to do about Hong Kong’s land supply problem?

    My friend Jeremiah shared this ULI article with me this morning, which talks about Hong Kong’s land supply problem. The interesting thing about this problem is that only 9.3 square miles of the city’s land (out of ~424 square miles) is actually developed (and about 60% of the region’s area is water). The rest has been preserved for parks, farmland, and so on. And that is certainly a remarkable characteristic of Hong Kong. It doesn’t take very long to escape its hyper-urbanism and be in the countryside.

    Preserving greenspace is of course vital. But at what point do population and growth pressures justify the unlocking of some of that land for development? This is the question that Hong Kong appears to be asking itself. At the same time, it is looking at developing other islands (such as Lantau, which I understand is a pretty lush place); reclaiming (i.e. creating) additional land; and positioning the city as part of a planned “Greater Bay Area.” 

    If it were up to you, how would you suggest that Hong Kong deal with these pressures? The city is already fairly adept at building up.

    Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

  • An example of city building doublethink

    Earlier this month, Shane Dingman wrote a piece in the Globe and Mail talking about TAS’ proposed development for 2 Tecumseth Avenue here in Toronto – the former home of Quality Meat Packers, a slaughterhouse. In the article there’s a quote from Mazyar Mortazavi, which I posted to my Instagram (as a story), but that I have been meaning to also post to the blog. So here it is: 

    “It’s not a conversation about towers good, towers bad: Mid-rise is the most expensive construction typology and it delivers effectively luxury housing, so it doesn’t respond to the needs of affordability,” he said. “We didn’t buy Tecumseth to build a bunch of condos and move on. We bought it because we wanted to pursue a vision around city building. You need density … the question is how do we actually deliver density that’s relevant today and relevant 50 years from now?”

    He’s of course right about mid-rise construction costs. There are diseconomies of scale and other construction inefficiencies that we have talked about many times before on this blog. The result is one of the Catch-22s of city building. Mid-rise and small scale infill is often seen as desirable, but we also say that we need more affordable housing.

    It’s doublethink.

    Image: 2 Tecumseth by KPMB Architects for TAS

  • DANCHI DREAMS

    Below is an interesting Kickstarter project by photographer and art director Cody Ellingham. I think many of you will appreciate it. It is a photobook of Japanese public housing apartments, which are known as Danchi. All of the photos were taken by Cory at night, hence the dream part. The book is about the promise that these projects represented in the post-war years, but it is also about their decline in the subsequent decades.

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cbje/danchi-dreams-a-photobook-of-japanese-public-housi/widget/video.html

  • Toronto Community Council voted unanimously in favor of laneway suites

    It happened.

    Today, Toronto and East York Community Council voted unanimously in favor of adopting a planning framework that would allow laneway suites on lands within the Toronto and East York District that are designated as “Neighbourhoods.” 

    If you’d like to see the actual vote (and the clapping that ensued), check out this YouTube video at the 41 minute mark. There are also some great speeches prior to the vote by Councillor Bailão, Councillor Perks, and others.

    Now, it still needs to go through City Council, but today remains an important milestone and a positive step forward. So kudos to everyone who has been working tirelessly to push this initiative forward.

    I would also like to take this opportunity to address some of the comments that I recently received about this blog, one of which is that I continue to offer a one-sided perspective on this issue of laneway housing in Toronto.

    Think of this blog – and I’m stealing this analogy from another blogger – as a bar. I am the bartender and I show up here pretty much every day. I’ve been doing that consistently for almost 5 years now.

    At this bar I sip on negronis – okay, it’s probably beer – and I talk about topics and issues that excite me and that are usually related to city building. If it doesn’t excite me, I don’t talk/write about it. And I get lots of emails every day asking me to write about things that do not excite me.

    If you would like to take a seat at the bar, have a drink, and join the conversation, you are more than welcome to do that in the comment section at the bottom of every post. In fact, it’s encouraged. I make a mean vodka soda.

    So maybe I’ll see you at the bar. The bartender is a fairly open-minded guy who enjoys good conversation.

  • Relationship between female literacy and total fertility rate

    This recent post by Sam Karam at NewGeography illustrates the relationship between female literacy and total fertility rates in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and China. The overarching argument, which won’t surprise any of you, is that, “higher female literacy is a reliable predictor of lower fertility and improved prosperity.”

    The following graph uses data from populyst, the UN Population Division and UNESCO. The time period for the dataset varies by country but approximately corresponds to the latest 2000′s. All Sub-Saharan countries are represented, except for the Congo, Somolia, and South Sudan.

    image

    Noteworthy about this dataset is that the biggest decline in the total fertility rate happens precipitously after female literacy reaches and exceeds 80%. What is also interesting, but not surprising, if that the countries with the lowest gender equality rankings tend to also have high fertility rates. And that’s because low gender equality tends to translate into lower female literacy rates. 

    According to populyst, the above phenomenon – precipitous decline in TFR with rising female literacy – has already proved itself out in China. 

    Based on data from the World Bank, China’s total fertility rate dropped from 6.38 in 1966 to 2.75 in 1979. And since the one-child policy was only enacted in 1979, it doesn’t appear to be driven by that. (I would have initially expected some sort of surge in births prior to that policy.) From 1982 to 2000, the female literacy rate in China rose from 51% to 87%. Today it is 99.6%, which is basically the same as it is for males.

    For a more detailed look at the above data, check out this populyst post.

  • Urban American life before the car

    This morning I stumbled upon an old (2013) post from Rebel Metropolis that documents urban American life through street photos taken before the automobile. 

    Above is Little Italy, New York City, 1900. All of the photos in the post are from Shorpy. 

    The photos are beautiful architecturally and from a photography standpoint. But as is pointed out in the post, they also speak to a different kind of street:

    What’s more, the street here is not purely the thoroughfare – it is the essential common gathering place for demonstrations, for buying and selling food, for children to play in, for celebration, for lingering and people watching.

    That sounds like a great street. And now I am off to start my day. Because I have meetings all around the city today, I’ll be driving to the office. 

  • A celebration of skateboarding culture

    I used to skateboard when I was growing up and so I have a lot of respect for the sport. This summer, from June 30 to August 12, The Bentway here in Toronto will be working with Build for Bokma and Vans to transform its outdoor (ice) skating trail into a summer-long celebration of skateboarding arts and culture. This is great.

    I am sure you all know Vans. But you may not be aware of Build for Bokma. They are a non-profit whose mission is to create skateable public structures. And their long-term goal is to develop a permanent skatepark that commemorates the late Canadian pro skateboarder, Justin Bokma.

    A big part of skateboarding culture is reimagining spaces and adapting to different urban environments. And if you think about it, that’s exactly what The Bentway is doing. They are reimagining a part of this city’s urban infrastructure. So I think this is a perfect fit and I am excited to see it come to life this summer.

  • Fastest growing large cities in the US

    Last week the US Census Bureau released its 2017 population estimates for the largest cities in the country. All of the figures are for the city itself and not the broader MSA or some other boundary.

    Here are the top 15 cities with the largest numeric increases between July 1, 2016 and July 1, 2017:

    However, if we switch over to percentage increases, Frisco, Texas – which is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area – jumps up to number one with an increase of 8.2%. 

    In fact, the top 3 cities (on percentage basis) are in Texas and 10 of the top 15 cities are located in the South. That shouldn’t come as a surprise to many of you. Related post: Follow the sun and sprawl.

    However, if we only consider the 25 largest cities in the US, the fastest growing city on a percentage basis was Seattle at 2.47%. Number two was Fort Worth at 2.18%. And number three was Charlotte at 1.84%.

    New York City sits at 0.08%. And Detroit lost people. But it’s not a horrible figure (-0.35%). For more tables and data, click here.

  • Spaces between buildings

    Doug Saunders recently published a great piece in the Globe and Mail about the “the dead spaces between buildings” and the architectural revolution that is taking place from Mexico City to Toronto to solve this underappreciated problem.

    The example in Mexico City is that of the San Pablo Xalpa public housing complex where architect Rozana Montiel transformed the underutilized spaces between the apartment buildings into vibrant “common-unity” spaces. 

    This meant removing 95% of the fences and gates that had previously been erected as safeguard against the unsavory people and acts that were taking place in these open spaces.

    The underlying goal was to try and address the socioeconomic decline that had taken root in Mexico’s public housing complexes. And there was a sense that part of the problem was simply their physical design.

    Of course, this is partially about trying to correct the failures of post-war planning. But I think this conversation around the “spaces between buildings” shouldn’t just be a corrective one. It can be broader than that.