Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 132

I hope all of you had a great longish Canada Day weekend. I say longish, because maybe you took off Monday, or maybe you didn't. Either way, yesterday was Canada Day. I love Canada Day. Every year I take out my giant flag and bring it with me wherever possible in celebration of this place.

This past Saturday I took it to Electric Island . And what I will say is that I saw a noticeable uptick in house and techno fans wearing Canadiana. Everything from Blue Jays hats to t-shirts saying things about the direction of elbows. This is not at all surprising. We know what happened this year. And the result is that Canadian patriotism is surging.

According to Leger and the National Post, 83% of people surveyed in June 2025 said they're proud to be Canadian. And according to Angus Reid, who polled people in February of this year, nearly 60% of Canadians said they have a "deep emotional attachment" to country. This is what happens someone punches you in the face. You get your back up and seek out solidarity.

But when channelled correctly, this can be a positive thing. What we need it to do is to continue to shake us out of complacency. The status quo puts us at risk and accepts mediocrity. We need to diversify our economy (away from the US), build with the greatest of urgency , and think of ourselves as an emerging global superpower .

Happy (belated) Canada Day, everyone.

Cover photo by Mvrkle on Unsplash

Okay, so I haven't been (yet). But if you're an urbanist in search of a new city to check out, consider Pontevedra in northwestern Spain. Pontevedra is famous for its car-free city center. Starting in 1999, then-mayor Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores began making some radical changes to prioritize pedestrians and turnaround a city in decline. They'd still be considered radical today, so I can only imagine what they felt like back in the 90s.

The historic center of the city, which covers an area of about 300,000 m2 (or about 74 acres), was fully pedestrianized. The area surrounding it was also converted to a low-traffic zone, bringing the total size of the pedestrian-oriented area to more than 1.3 million m2 (or about 321 acres). To put this into perspective, High Park in Toronto is just under 400 acres.

The result is that vehicular traffic dropped by ~92% in the historic center and ~53% in the city as a whole. Today, walking accounts for over 65% of all trips and the average resident walks about 5 km per day (roughly equivalent to 6,000 to 7,500 steps). On top of this, over two-thirds of children now walk to school. And the city hasn't reported a single pedestrian death from cars in over a decade!

But how has the city performed economically since the change? Some 15,000 people have moved to the city since it became car-free and the total inventory of shops and restaurants has increased . It has also been reported that foot traffic went up (possibly by as much as 30%) and that retail vacancies dropped significantly. This is supported by research showing that well-designed pedestrianized areas do often drive higher retail sales.

Did you hear that Kensington Market?

The One Canadian Economy Act , which received Royal Assent on June 26, 2025, has two components to it: the Building Canada Act and the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act. Today, I'd like to talk about the first one.

The intent of the act is to expedite the delivery of "nation-building projects." Projects that will strengthen Canada's autonomy, resilience, and security, and turn the country into a global superpower (my words, not theirs).

The government states that this might include things like highways, railways, ports, airports, oil pipelines, critical minerals, mines, nuclear facilities, and electricity transmission systems.

At a high level, the streamlining is intended to work like this:

• Projects first need to qualify as a nation-building project.

• Then, the federal government approves the project right from the outset.

• Following this a single conditions document will be issued by a new Federal Major Projects Office. This is intended to replace the current process of multiple sets of comments, conditions, and federal permits.

Overall, the target is to reduce average approval timelines from ~5 years to ~2 years.

What I particularly like about this sequence is that projects get "approved" right at the start. This is intended to immediately change the conversation from whether we should build to how do we build , which is an important distinction.

As someone who manages projects for a living, I can tell you that decisive and clear direction is critical to moving projects forward. Uncertainty and indecision kill momentum and motivation within teams. You need to be able to say, "this project is going, and going fast, so focus on figuring it out and making it happen!"

Ultimately, everything comes down to execution. But at least we're taking positive steps toward becoming a country that once again builds — and builds big.

Photo: Gordie Howe International Bridge