Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1043

A friend of mine was in Scottsdale last month for an ICSC conference where Garrick H. Brown (VP of Retail Research for the Americas at Cushman & Wakefield) delivered this retail presentation . 

My friend flipped it to me this week and below are a couple of slides that stood out as I scanned through it.

Apparently over the last five years, a new dollar store has opened every four hours in the US. That’s how quickly this category is growing. A race to the bottom.

Food halls are hot and not just in the US. Check out: “ 5 huge food halls opening soon in Toronto ”.

This is similar to a chart I posted a few weeks ago that pegged online grocery shopping in South Korea at closer to 20%. I’m still fascinated by this market share number and want to better understand what’s driving it.

This is an interesting chart that shows the relationship between retail square footage per capita and sales per square foot per capita. The US has lots of retail space per capita but low sales. Now look at Germany.

Finally, this is a chart that shows where household growth is expected to happen from 2016 to 2025. It follows a very clear historical trend of Americans moving from cold places to warmer/hot places.

For the full presentation, click here .

Elon Musk’s apparent  distaste for public transit and random strangers prompted a Twitter battle last week. Though for the record, Musk later clarified that he loves trains, most subways and London buses .

Transit planner Jarrett Walker retorted that Elon’s views are the “ essence of elite projection ”. What’s good for Elon Musk may not, in fact, be good for the broader society. Elon responded by calling him an idiot.

All of this prompted Brent Toderian – city planner and former chief planner of Vancouver – to initiate the hashtag: #GreatThingsThatHappenedOnTransit . It then took off and the transit stories started pouring in.

Not surprisingly, this has been getting a lot of attention. It’s Elon Musk after all. But billionaire celebrities aside, it does serve as a good example of the two sides of this debate.

Some people seem to think that I am anti-car. I can see why some people might think that, but I am not anti-car. I love nice cars. And I love nice trains. What I value first and foremost is the city. 

The kind of city you can build on the backbone of transit is very different than the kind of city that gets built around the car. And as a rule of thumb, I prefer the former over the latter.

But this is not to say that the public transit model is perfect. It’s far from perfect for many reasons. And it can get even more imperfect when we don’t pair it with the right land use policies.

Deploying heavy rail through low density areas – that are by design inhospitable to car-less humans – will not magically flip the modal split. Public transport alone cannot solve that problem.

At the same time, if you’re a regular reader of this blog you’ll know that I am enamoured by the possibilities of autonomous electric vehicles. I am not assuming that the “car” of tomorrow will look and perform anything like the car of today.

Mobility is such an exciting space right now.

On Monday the province of Ontario posted a draft regulation intended to establish a framework for inclusionary zoning. It builds on a bill that passed last year allowing municipalities – should they choose – to require affordable housing in new developments and redevelopments.

Below are some, but not all, of the things that are being considered in the draft regulation. Some of these items were recommendations made by the development industry through the Ontario Home Builders’ Association (OHBA) and the Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD).

- The total number of affordable units or gross floor area dedicated to affordable housing units would not exceed 5% of the total units or 5% of the total gross floor area (excluding common areas). This number increase to 10% in high density transit station areas.

- The affordable period would be a minimum of 20 years but no greater than 30 years.

- There may be opportunities to provide the inclusionary zoning units off-site.

- The policies would only apply to developments / redevelopments with 20 or more units.

- The affordable component could not be used to determine community benefits under Section 37 . Section 37 would also not apply if the proposed development (with IZ) is in a location where a development / community planning permit is used.

- Municipalities would be required to offer incentives to help offset the IZ cost burden, but only if the development is not subject to a development / community planning permit. The incentives could include a waiver or reduction in application fees, parkland dedication fees, development charges, and so on. These offsets are very important to the industry and the affordability of the market rate units. But interestingly enough, increases in height and/or density are not being contemplated as a possible incentive or financial contribution.

- The financial contribution would be based on the following formula: (A - B) x 0.4. A is the total sum of the average market price for all of the affordable housing units and B is the total sum of the affordable price for all of the IZ housing units. In other words, the intent is that municipalities would be required to offset 40% of the costs associated with providing the affordable units.

Click here for the rest of the draft regulation. The OHBA also published this media release following the draft. They like the “partnership model” but were advocating for a 50/50 public/private cost share on all government-mandated units.

If you’re looking for more reading on inclusionary zoning, check here , here , and here .

Photo by Omair Khan on Unsplash