Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1363

St. Lawrence by Ralph Sobanski on 500px

I have an announcement to make on Architect This City today.

Next week I’m joining the development team at  CAPREIT (TSE: CAR.UN ) here in Toronto. CAPREIT is one of Canada’s largest residential landlords. They are a growth-oriented real estate investment trust with over 41,839 residential units in major urban centers across both Canada and Ireland.

They also happen to be headquartered in the St. Lawrence Market area, which means I now live and work in the same neighborhood. As we discussed here , location matters a lot.

So here’s to a new chapter. I’m looking forward to diving into the multi-family business. Change is good.

Earlier today a friend of mine sent me this Fast Company article talking about bitcoin and the future of home buying . I’m really glad he did. Both because I wasn’t yet sure what I was going to write about today and because this is a topic that I’m deeply interested in.

I recently heard Brad Burnham (venture capitalist at Union Square Ventures) say in a talk that if you’re thinking about Bitcoin just as a currency, then you’re thinking about it in the wrong way. If you take nothing else away from today’s post, I think you should remember that. Bitcoin, and the underlying block chain architecture, have the potential to be very transformative.

The Fast Company article was written by Matt Weiss of IDEO (the powerhouse design and innovation firm). Here’s an introductory snippet:

Insert block chains: a relatively new and promising technology that could transform the way we digitally exchange value, similarly to how Internet protocols, like TCP/IP, transformed the way we exchanged information. For example, to transfer ownership of a home today, there are countless check of authenticity and intermediaries involved to insure the transfer is legitimate. By using a distributed database (a.k.a. “a block chain,” the same technology behind Bitcoin) to prove authenticity, we could legitimately transfer ownership immediately without the need of a middleman. In fact, when we think about block-chain technology and the industries it could disrupt, real estate tops the list. While Trulia, Redfin, Angie’s List and others have brought some transparency to the opaque world of home buying and home ownership, most of our experiences in this industry are fraught with incomplete, inaccurate, and asymmetric information.

Following this, he goes on to talk about what it might be like – each step of the way – to buy a house using the block chain technology. There are even mockups of what the app could look like. I highly recommend you give it a read if you’re interested or involved in this space.

The real estate industry hasn’t seen a lot of innovation. It remains an opaque market with lots of information asymmetries. I have no doubt that will one day change; it’s just a question of when. Perhaps it’ll be the block chain that makes that happen.

Image: IDEO via Fast Company

Today is my 32nd birthday. It felt like a beautiful summer day here in Toronto and so I mostly took the day off from anything too serious.

At 1:00pm though,  I did participate in a Jane’s Walk  taking place right around the corner from me. As part of that, I spoke briefly about why I think Toronto should remove the eastern portion of the Gardiner Expressway and replace it with a surface boulevard.

Given what the other speakers had to say and given some of what I heard at the event, this is definitely not a universal position. In fact, one person commended me on taking a “courageous stance.”

A number of people seemed to support Quadrangle Architect’s Green Ribbon proposal  and/or the notion that, whatever is done, the Gardiner Expressway must remain in operation.

At the same time, quite a few of the people I spoke to seemed unsure of any position and instead came to the walk simply to learn more about the options. Hopefully by the end of it they were closer to one.

If I have one piece of constructive feedback on the walk it’s that it wasn’t interactive enough. It’s fine to standup and talk for 5 minutes, but it would have been great to also have a discussion and debate. At the very least, I would have liked to see where most people stand. Hopefully you will all share that in the comment section of this post.

I continue to believe that removing the Gardiner East is the right city building decision. But I also respect anyone who is willing to take a firm stance. Toronto City Council has already punted this decision before. It’s now time to make a decision and own it.