Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1170

Given the option, I will buy online as opposed to offline. About the only thing I consistently buy in-person is groceries. Food shopping remains a persistently in-store activity for most of the market. Though some European countries seem to have much higher online food shopping rates .

It is for reasons like this that Amazon opened a new small-format grocery store this past Monday called Amazon Go. The big game changer – which is currently making the rounds on the internet – is the fact that there are no check out counters. You simply check-in with their app when you walk into the store and then leave with whatever you want. Your phone will automatically charge you for whatever you picked up.

Finally! Grocery store check outs suck. (The store is currently in beta and will not open to the general public until 2017.)

But perhaps even more meaningful is all the data that Amazon will be collecting about our grocery shopping habits. This will scare some of you, I’m sure. But I can tell you that there are a slew of things that I buy regularly. And I bet that if you analyzed the data, the purchases would happen at fairly regular intervals: bananas every x days, orange juice every y days, etc.

So once Amazon Go learns what I like to buy, I am sure that it will then start to try and sell it to me online, along with some sort of subscription. If it can assure me that the produce is fresh and the expiry dates are far out (if they’re not, I want to be able to take a picture and get a refund), then there’s probably a good chance that I, as well as others, could be converted to online food shoppers.

I just got home from the Citywide Laneway Suites Consultation meeting that was held this evening at the Evergreen Brick Works here in Toronto. (I guess I do find time to go to public meetings .) 

For those of you who are interested in laneway housing , or an equivalent housing typology, here are a couple of takeaways from the event.

There’s political support . Councillor McMahon and Councillor Bailao were there voicing their support for laneway suites. Both see it as an opportunity to diversify the housing stock and increase the supply of affordable ground-related housing in the city.

Laneway suites (in the context of this current groundswell) are being thought of as secondary suites – exactly like basement suites. This is a smart approach that gets around a number of the hurdles that laneway houses currently face in the city.

Because of this, the idea is that both the main house and the laneway house will remain under the same ownership. No property severances. No selling off the back lot.

Other than this, nothing was really put forward in the way of guidelines. The whole point of these public meetings is to solicit community feedback and then roll that into a set of laneway suite design guidelines that will allow these homes to be built “as of right.”

Obviously there are a number of questions around building height; minimum lot size; window orientation (laneway and/or backyard?); maximum number of secondary suites on a property (would both a basement and a laneway suite be allowed?); and so on.

The next step is a report that will get submitted to the city in the new year. So if you haven’t already, please complete this Lanescape survey . We’ll see where all of this goes, but right now you can certainly feel the momentum.

I also don’t think this is a Toronto-specific topic. Many other cities have adopted similar policies and I am certain that many more will do the same in the future. 

I spent this morning drafting the third post in my BARED blog series. First one, here . Second one, here . If any of you would like to be featured next, or know of someone who you think should be featured next, please send me an email or tweet .

At this point, I need to move onto other things today. But I did want to mention a post that Ev Williams (Blogger, Twitter, Medium…) recently penned where he talks about keeping technology in check and the drain of being always connected.

Here are two interesting excerpts:

“I’ve spent the last 20 years breathing and building the internet. So I have a good sense for the benefits of always-available instant access and all it entails. I also have a strong appreciation for the drain being constantly connected can cause on your health and sense of well-being.”

“Building companies requires a ton of work — and I love work. But I’ve also found that working 24/7 no longer produces the best work product or the best life experience (not that it ever did).”

This really resonates with me, as I am sure it does for many of you. I like being always connected. I like waking up every morning and writing a blog post. I like saying yes to things . And I, like Ev, love work. 

But it can be draining when your ambition seems to exceed your body’s ability to keep on going. And when that happens, you no longer produce your best work, which is the whole point. 

So in the end, I think we all need these little checks and balances. Exercise is number one for me. It is well worth the time it takes. What do you do for balance?