Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1077

It’s still sunny and beautiful outside, so I don’t mean to be the one who prematurely calls fall. But I would like to get 3 Toronto events on your radar for the coming two months. 

Full disclosure: These are all events that I support and/or my company supports in some way. 

If you’re not based in Toronto and you don’t plan to be here this fall, you can stop reading right now and check back tomorrow. I promise to will try to be less Toronto-centric.

1. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation and Technology , September 28 - October 8

This is a 10-day immersive experience that will showcase how the intersection of design, technology and innovation can change the world. Think exhibits by Bruce Mau and Carlo Ratti ; talks by David Suzuki and Scott Dadich (former editor-in-chief of WIRED and creator of the Netflix series The Art of Design); and projects spanning 3D-printed prosthetics to indigenous housing solutions. 70 speakers. 40 workshops. And over 150,000 sf of exhibits. Too much to write about here, but all topics and themes we frequently explore on this blog. Ticketing information here .

2. NXT City Public Space Symposium , October 13 - 14

This is a two day symposium about public space on a global stage. Talks. Public space tours. Round table sessions. And an epic after-party. Some of the speakers include Jeff Risom (Partner at Gehl Architects); Enrique Norten (Founder of TEN Arquitectos in Mexico City – and one of my grad school professors); and Mirik Milan (Amsterdam’s Night Mayor and someone who has gotten quite a bit of airtime on this blog). If you click here to grab your tickets, you’ll get 15% off. If for whatever reason that doesn’t work, use the code BDONN15.

3. lost&gone : Romeo & Juliet, October 19 - 21 and October 27 - 28

This is, I think, Toronto’s first truly immersive theater experience. For those of you who aren’t familiar, immersive theater is about turning the audience into participants of the production. It eliminates the “ fourth wall ” that traditionally divides audience and performers. I’ve heard great things about similar productions elsewhere in the world. The venue is a secret, so the show starts today with you having to try and figure out where it is in the core of Toronto. When you buy your tickets , you’ll also have to let them know if you’re a guest of the Capulets (Juliet’s family) or a guest of the Montagues (Romeo’s family). 

Enjoy :)

Photo by Brxxto on Unsplash

The New York Times just published a piece called “ a generation of architects making its mark at dizzying speed .” It’s a current list, albeit not an exhaustive one, of notable architects and their projects. 

Included on this list is One Spadina, home of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at the University of Toronto, which was designed by Nader Tehrani and the Boston practice NADAAA .

Some of the best architecture in the city is being built on this campus.

One thing you’ll notice about this summary of architects is the emphasis on age. Architecture is a slow process. This is true for buildings in general. So historically it has been the case that architects usually don’t hit their stride until later in their career.

The youngest architect on the list is Bjarke Ingels at 42. An outlier for sure. He saw tremendous success in his 30s, and even in his 20s with the firm PLOT. I think great storytelling had a lot to do with this.

Tehrani is 53. And the author rightly points out that Frank Gehry didn’t become Frank Gehry until he renovated his own house at the age of 48.

This morning I saw this tweet about Toronto streetcar advertising. The author has a “big problem” with public transit being fully wrapped in ads and so she decided to tweet her local Councillor to see if these could be somehow limited in size.

My first thought was: I wonder how many people would accept higher fares in exchange for fewer/no advertising. Is this something people care about? Because personally, I’ll take the lower fares in exchange for someone trying to monetize my attention. I mean, every social network I use is already selling my attention off as their product.

But then this got me thinking about what the actual numbers look like. So let’s look at some of those for not only Toronto, but also for Hong Kong, since many people view that as the gold standard as far transit authorities go.

For the year ending December 31, 2016 , the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) posted a total operating revenue of $1.204 billion. This represents about 41% of total revenue – the rest comes from subsidies.

If you drill down into operating revenue, advertising makes up $28 million or about 2.33% of total operating revenue. So a pretty small number. If you tried to shift this number over to “passenger services” revenue (transit fares), it actually wouldn’t increase fares by that much. But presumably fares are already at some profit maximizing number.

Switching to Hong Kong’s MTR Corporation, their numbers have to be unpacked a little differently because the group has a number of diverse business lines , including property development.

For the year ending December 31, 2016, total revenue from  Hong Kong Transport Operations  was HK$17.655 billion (almost all fare revenue). Advertising falls within the  Hong Kong Station Commercial Businesses  group and that company posted revenues of HK$5.544 billion for the same time period.

To try and create some sort of comparison, I’m ignoring all of the other segments within MTR.

Within Station Commercial Businesses, advertising revenue alone makes up HK$1.09 billion or about 20% of that group’s total revenue. The rest comes from station retail rent (the biggest chunk), telecom, and some miscellaneous station income. 

If you add up Transport Operations and Station Commercial Businesses, total revenue was HK$23,199 billion for the year ending 2016. Advertising comprises about 4.70% of this – so more than double that of Toronto.

It’s also worth noting that MTR’s station retail rental revenue is about 3.4x that of its advertising revenue. In the case of Toronto, the TTC actually makes more money off advertising than it does from “Property Rental.” I’ve always thought this was a missed opportunity. Transit and land use go hand in hand.

In any event, I’m far less fussed about advertising on transit. But what are your thoughts? Let me know in the comment section below.

Photo by Tomo Nogi on Unsplash