Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1295

The Neptis Foundation here in Toronto just recently published a fantastic report looking at the regional economic structure of the Greater Golden Horseshoe area. It’s called Planning for Prosperity .

In it they identity the polycentric nature of employment in the Toronto region by way of downtown Toronto and three suburban “megazones.” Here’s one of their maps showing overall employment density and the megazones (light blue circles):

Here’s a snippet to give you an idea of the scale of these megazones:

“The Airport megazone, one of the three employment megazones outside Downtown Toronto, is the second largest concentration of employment in Canada, after Downtown Toronto. It represents almost 300,000 jobs, more than the central business districts of Montreal, Vancouver, or Calgary individually.”

And here’s a chart showing the hard numbers:

Downtown Toronto dominates in terms of employment. But it’s also fascinating to see how much more efficiently it provides that employment. It has the smallest physical area of all the employment zones (2,540 hectares or 6,276 acres) and the lowest percentage of car trips (29%).

But the big takeaway from their report is that we have not been focused enough on employment in our planning. Instead, we seem to be thinking residentially. Here’s a final snippet:

“This study shows that the Growth Plan and The Big Move, which are currently under review, do not address the challenges and opportunities of a globalizing regional economy or the reality of a transforming economic landscape.

The Growth Plan’s focus has largely been on managing residential growth rather than non-residential and employment-related development. Indeed, the Growth Plan is based on shockingly little hard evidence on the evolving economy of the region. Plans for city-regions a fraction of the size of the GGH typically involve more economic research, analysis, and evidence.”

Clearly we need to be looking at both the residential and non-residential sides of the equation as we grow the region. To read the full report, click here .

In 1960, real estate investment trusts were created in the U.S. with the goal of democratizing real estate ownership. Here’s how Yale professor Robert Schiller described it :

“REITs were created by law in 1960 to democratize the real estate market and make it possible for a broad base of investors to participate in this huge asset class. That was absolutely the right thing to do, because portfolio theory tells us people should diversify across major asset classes, and real estate is one of them.”

But a lot of things have changed since 1960. We now have the internet. 

And one of the things that the internet is very good at is creating peer-to-peer networks that connect supply and demand without the same kind of intermediaries. This could be people who have MP3s with people who want MP3s or it could be people who have real estate with people who are looking to invest in real estate.

So with the advent of crowdfunding in both the U.S. and Canada, I think we are at the dawn of another era of real estate democratization. Already we have seen the first crowdfunded real estate development project and it happened at a much smaller and local scale than is usually the case with REITs.

Similarly, we are also seeing companies emerge – such as HomeUnion in the U.S. – that allow people to build their own rental portfolios by directly investing, either fully or partially, in real estate. Again, there are differences here compared to how REITs typically operate.

When I was in grad school at Penn and Sam Zell used to come in and talk to the students, he used always mention how when he started out in real estate (1960s) the industry was disproportionately controlled by a small number of players. That’s been changing ever since and it looks like that trend will only continue.

Lately I’ve been reading about and interested in the idea that the more grateful you are, the happier you can actually become. It’s similar to the idea that positivity can lead to better outcomes in your life. Believe something and you make it true.

It turns out that some people could have genetic tendencies towards more positivity and gratefulness. But there’s no reason why you couldn’t train yourself to be more like that.

I’ve thought about adding to my daily discipline and introducing a bit of gratefulness here on Architect This City. But it’s hard to do that without regularly sounding braggadocious.

In any event, I’ve also thought about how this same idea could apply to cities. I mean, when was the last time you were grateful and appreciative of the city you call home? Sometimes, or maybe most of the time, it’s easier to just complain about what we don’t like.

But if being grateful about your own life can make you happier, I think being grateful about your own city could do the same. I did a bit of that in this post a few months ago . But I try and do it far more often than that. I’m a big fan of my city.