Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1134

I spent a bit of time this afternoon photographing 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. For those of you who aren’t familiar, 1111 is a parking garage that’s so well designed that people throw events – like weddings – in it. It was designed by the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron.

I’ve been through the building before, but one thing I missed the last time around was the 5th floor retail space pictured above. Conventional wisdom would tell you that upper level retail doesn’t really work all that well. But here you have a boutique shop with nothing around it besides parking stalls.

What makes this case different? Is it the architecture? The desirability of this particular structure? Or is it that the store has enough of a following that it can draw people up and into it?

The Building Industry and Land Development Association (BILD) announced its February (2017) numbers today for the Greater Toronto Area. Here are some of the highlights:

- At the end of February, there were 324 detached homes available in developer inventories. Ten years ago, this number was was 12,064 (detached only). 

- If you consider all low-rise homes (detached, semi-detached, and towns) the above numbers are 1,001 (2017) and 17,304 (2007), respectively.

- Average price of a new detached house is now $1,469,449. For all ground-related housing – again, including semis and towns – it’s $1,081,013.

- There were more than twice as many condo apartments sold than low-rise homes in February.

- Condo inventory is also dropping and reached a low of 10,342 units.

- Average price of a new condo increased to $652 per square foot and the average unit size decreased to 802 square feet.

Here’s that information in a chart from Altus Group:

The overall story here continues to be about decreasing inventory and increasing prices. There’s also the ongoing shift from low-rise to higher density housing, which I don’t view as a bad thing.

I like this excerpt from City Observatory:

“More broadly, this paper reminds us of the salience of stigma to neighborhood development. Once a neighborhood acquires a reputation in the collective local consciousness for being a place that is risky, declining, crime-ridden or unattractive, it may be difficult or impossible to get a first-mover to take the necessary investment that could turn things around. The collective action problem is that no one individual will move ahead with investment because they fear (rationally) that others won’t, based on an area’s reputation. A big part of overcoming this is some action that changes a neighborhood’s reputation and people’s expectations, so that they’re willing to undertake investment, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

It’s taken from an article called: Getting to critical mass in Detroit . The article itself is a response to some of the criticism circulating around that Detroit’s rebound is lopsided toward downtown. But Joe Cortright argues (rightly) that this is indeed the way to go about it. Concentrate efforts. Establish a critical mass. And then expand from there.

What I like about the above excerpt is that it’s a reminder that optics, storytelling, and identity all have an important role to play in city building. It’s also a reminder that momentum can develop in either direction and that neighborhood reputation’s can get exaggerated.