Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1195

I’m in Muskoka right now, with very little time to write. 

I had about an hour before dinner, but I decided that a far more responsible thing to do would be to jump in the lake for what will likely be the last lake swim of the year. It might be the end of September, but it still feels like summer.

Here’s what that looked like:

If you’re searching for something more city related, check out these high resolution maps of Canada according to our trails, roads, streets, and highways. My good friend Peter just sent them over to me. Thanks Peter.

Regular scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.

Polygraph (visually-driven essays) has a great piece called, The Entire History of Kickstarter Projects, Broken Down by City . What they did was look at 88,475 Kickstarter projects to map the various creative communities across the US.

Here’s a snapshot (you may need to zoom in):

In general, Kickstarter in the US sees a high concentration of music projects (24%) and film & video projects (19%). But where it gets interesting is to see which cities over-represent in certain categories.

New York = film & video, theater, and dance

Los Angeles = film & video (not surprisingly 45% of all projects)

San Francisco = design and tech

Chicago = theater

Detroit = music

Nashville = music (76% of all projects!)

They also measured the size of each project (number of backers) and created these neat bubble diagrams:

Above is New York. Red is music. Orange is film. And yellow is theater.

I also like their explanation for why they did this project:

Pretty much all existing attempts to map creative communities use census and jobs data. But creative efforts are often side-hustles. They’re garage/basement/cottage industries that will not appear in a census.

It’s true. This data should be a much better capture of each city’s creative soul.

Last night I participated in an excellent dinner discussion with a group of planners, architects, city officials, and politicians from Amsterdam. They were visiting Toronto to see first hand what rapid intensification has done to this city. And I very much appreciated the invite. Thank you.

My message was that intensification has created a far more vibrant and exciting city compared to 15 or so years ago. It’s hard to know what exactly could be correlated with intensification, but we have certainly seen an explosion of culture, innovation, and pride in this city – among many other things. (It could be all Drake’s doing.)

However, the counter argument at the dinner table was that Toronto is letting unfettered development produce unremarkable architecture. We are simply building glass tower after glass tower. And I know that, for many of you, this will ring true. I hear it all the time, including in the comments of this blog.

Now, I will be the first to admit that there has been a lot of shit built in this city. No argument there. Some people have no taste. But at the same time, I think it’s myopic to assume that it’s strictly because of profit-motivated developers. 

Oftentimes the perception is that development projects are awash in cash. There’s tons of money in which to do the right thing. Developers just need to stop being so greedy and start being more creative.

The reality is that developers operate within a market. There are real limits to what people will pay for new space. And when, for instance, land prices go through the roof (an input), municipal fees jump (cost of doing business), and approvals drag (time value of money), guess where everyone starts looking for savings? In the build.

I say this not to justify building crap. If I had it my way, everything would be beautiful. I champion design whenever possible. I say it simply to shed light on the process. Because when we all understand the factors at a play, I believe we all become more effective at finding solutions.