Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1123

Below is a piece by Michael Salter from the Globe and Mail. It’s all about Toronto’s HOT, HOT housing market. Michael’s message: Here are the real reasons why home prices are skyrocketing and why they are going to  remain  high.

Did you find yourself agreeing with this article or did you notice that something was off? If you noticed something, it may be because this article was originally published on Friday, July 15, 1988. And by that time, the North American dream of home ownership had already died in Toronto.

Here’s the header I cut out from above:

Thank you to Tamsin McMahon for tweeting this out last weekend.

My friend Bruce of getrefm.com  (real estate financial modeling) just introduced me to a new real estate startup called Envelope . Basically it’s 3D mapping software that allows you to quickly visualize the zoning envelope for a particular site. It’s similar to what Flux.io was initially trying to do .

Now, I think this is very cool, but my first reaction was: What if the zoning is out of date? What if approvals/entitlements are done a site-specific basis? This isn’t the case in every city, but I’ve heard some people in Toronto argue that this city basically has no zoning code. (We can debate that one in the comments, I’m sure.)

That being said, there are still many design guidelines in this city that shape built form and I could see a tool like this being incredibly useful. They’re still in private beta but I would like to try it out. Hopefully they’ll see this blog post and let me have an early peek.

Image: envelope.city

The private residence below is located on a quiet street in the village of Pliezhausen – about 30 km south of Stuttgart. Designed by Steimle Architekten , the house is 376 square meters and sits on a 658 square meter property. Its insulated concrete shell is 50 cm thick. All photos by Brigida González .