Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1022

Sidewalk Toronto is currently looking for  “12 smart, creative, and caring people who are interested in the future of Toronto’s waterfront and how we [Sidewalk Toronto] can responsibly incorporate technology to improve urban life.”

Each Fellow will complete a 2-day orientation session in Toronto; 6 days in Amsterdam and Copenhagen; 5 days in New York City and Boston; 3 days in Vancouver; and then do a final 2-day working session back in Toronto before presenting their takeaways.

This feels like a response to the criticism that Sidewalk Toronto wasn’t doing enough to listen to the community and that it simply wanted to build a tech-infused neighborhood that could serve us more ads – but it’s cool nonetheless. 

If you’re between 19-24 years old and you live in Toronto, you can apply here . It sounds like a fun opportunity for young city builders. I know that I certainly would have been all over it when I was in that age bracket.

Altus Group just released its January (2018) sales figures for the new home market in the Greater Toronto Area.

- 1,251 new homes sold last month. 886 of these (or 70.8%) were condominium apartments (everything from stacked townhouses to high-rises).

- This is down from 2,429 homes in 2017 and 2,118 homes in 2016.

- Almost half of the new home sales (609 homes) came from Toronto alone. And almost all of these (607 homes) were condominium apartments. Only 2 new single-family homes sold in the city last month.

- Benchmark price for single-family homes was $1,229,454, which is a 19.6% increase from January 2017.

- Benchmark price for condominium apartments was $714,430, which is a 40.8% increase from January 2017.

That last increase really stands out. I did a double take.

But as we’ve talked about before , low supply and high prices seem to be pushing more buyers toward condos – and larger ones at that.

Recently we’ve been seeing an increase in both average unit sizes and prices per square foot.

According to Altus , sales of new single-family homes in the GTA last month were the lowest for a January since before 2000.

Below is a short video that was created by the MIT Senseable City Lab , World Economic Forum and TomTom for a study on how people move in 100 cities around the world. They call it the Global Mobility Index .

It shows congestion levels (using real-time traffic data from TomTom ), commute times, and an estimate for the percentage of trips that could be shared if people were willing to wait up to 5 minutes.

In the case of Toronto, they estimate that 99% of trips could be shared and that it would increase average speeds by ~7.9 km/h and reduce overall traffic levels by ~44.09%.

Their solution to solving traffic congestion is a cocktail that involves car-sharing, bike-sharing, and public transit. It’s about developing a “mobility portfolio.” Seems sensible.

I found myself wanting more information and data after watching the video. Still, it was interesting to see what the authors describe as the “pulse of our cities.”

If you can’t see it below, click here .

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