Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 118

One of the many differences between Canada and the US is that our roads are less deadly. A new study by the US Insurance Institute of Highway Safety and the Canadian Traffic Injury Research Foundation found that between 2010 and 2020, total road deaths in the US rose 18%, while in Canada they declined 22%.

This "crash gap" also widens when you look at deaths per vehicle mile driven (as opposed to per capita), which should, in theory, normalize the fact that Americans tend to drive more on average than Canadians. So why might this be? Both countries are broadly car-oriented, at least compared to the rest of the world.

The study presents a number of possible explanations: Canada has stricter drunk driving laws, Canada uses more traffic cameras, Canadians are relatively poorer and therefore drive less, Canada has higher gas taxes (which discourage driving), and the list goes.

But my unproven theory is that a lot of this gap can be explained by differences in the built environment. Solutions like traffic cameras are, to give just one example, what you do when you've failed to design the road you actually want. They're patches, not fixes.

The root problem is the design of the road itself, which is why New Yorkers are only about a third as likely to die from a transportation-related accident compared to the average American. Why? Because it's an urban place designed around non-car mobility.

Conversely, this is also why the top 20 most deadly metro areas in the US for pedestrians are in the south, as opposed to in older northern cities. And it's because these tend to be newer car-oriented metros.

So when it comes to Canada vs. the US, I suspect that much of the gap can be explained by differences in the physical environment and higher transit usage north of the border. It probably also explains why Canada is safer than the US, but not safer than Europe when it comes to transportation-related fatalities. We're simply not urban enough.

The simple takeaway is that the more you optimize your environment for cars, the more dangerous you make it for humans.

That said, this is likely to change with the continued adoption of autonomous vehicles. We can (and should) debate whether it's prudent to plan our cities around them, but I think there's little doubt that we'll see road safety increase dramatically .

Chart via CityLab

The last time I shared Bullpen & Batory Consulting's Land Insights report for the Greater Toronto Area was back in Q3-2024 . And at that time, the average high-density land trade across the GTA was being reported at roughly $98 per buildable square foot. However, I ended my post by saying this:

So even though prices and transaction volumes are down (which is what one would totally expect right now), it still doesn't feel like this data accurately reflects what's going on in the market today. I think the reality is worse.

Following that post, a few friends in the industry reached out and said, "The reality is much worse!" Yup. But now reality is starting to become more visible in Bullpen's data. For Q2-2025, they are now reporting an average land price of $52 per buildable square foot across the GTA.

This was gleaned from 15 sales recorded last quarter and represents the lowest quarterly figure since Bullpen and Batory started tracking sales in 2017. But even at these lower prices, it's extremely difficult to accurately value development land. All we can say with certainty is that land prices are trending lower and that lower more accurately reflects the current market.

Last year, I wrote that development value has shifted from land to the build . That's still very much the case, but now you're seeing it in the above chart in a meaningful way.

If you'd like to receive their free quarterly GTA Land Insights Report, subscribe over here .

Cover photo by Viktoriya Beshovishka on Unsplash

I was lollygagging on Bloor last night while waiting for my take-out sushi to be prepared when I happened to notice the above building at 1639 Bloor Street West.

What stood out to me was that it’s six storeys, has no stepbacks, is brick all around, and is more or less the kind of infill housing that Toronto is now trying to encourage along its major streets . Except, this building is old. The internet tells me it was built in 1954 (and houses 46 apartments). Which made me immediately wonder: did we used to know how to build this housing typology and then simply forget? Or was this the work of a cowboy developer who somehow managed to slip it through the cracks?

Either way, I decided to walk the perimeter and take a closer look. The first thing I noticed was a row of garbage bins along the building’s east elevation, with about a dozen or so cameras keeping a close eye on them. If anyone in building management is wondering why a handsome man in a black t-shirt and stylish Birkenstocks was so curious about garbage bins — don’t worry. I was just trying to determine if you had a Type-G loading bay hidden around the back. I can now confirm: no such loading facility.

Looking at Toronto’s maps , the site is approximately 30 meters wide by 40 meters deep — so roughly the equivalent of five lots, given the prevailing lot fabric in the area. The building itself appears to have a footprint of about 660 square metres (~7,100 square feet). If I multiply this by six floors and then by an efficiency ratio of 0.80, I get a very rough gross rentable area of 31,000 square feet. Divide this by 46 apartments and you end up with an average suite size of ~741 square feet.

Imagine that: assemble five lots on Bloor, employ an all-brick façade on all elevations, and build to an average suite size that is probably close to 200 square feet larger than some of the city’s most recent downtown developments. The math would never math today.