Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 144

Tunnels can be used for all sorts of fun purposes. You could, for example, build one under a major urban highway in an attempt to relieve traffic congestion.

Alternatively, you could build a tunnel for bicycles; one that stitches together two disconnected parts of a city and creates a new modern parking facility for 1,240 bicycles. And on May 22, Zurich unveiled exactly this.

Here's a video (I have no idea what the guy is saying but hopefully it's positive).

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The new tunnel — called the Stadttunnell — is only 440 meters long. But it runs under Zurich's main train station and connects District 4 and 5. Previously, this was a more awkward and dangerous connection given the train station.

What's also interesting about this tunnel is that it was started in the 1980s as part of a planned urban highway. But when that was scrapped, the tunnel sat dormant. Now it's back and it shows a massive commitment to sustainable mobility. The project cost 38.6 million Swiss francs.

I'd love to check in a year from now to see how well used it is, and how many people park their bikes here. Thankfully, there's a bike counter .

Cover photo from Stadt Zürich

I have vivid memories of being in a broker meeting many years ago talking about development land in Vancouver. Our team's comment was that it felt expensive. I mean, Toronto was expensive, and Vancouver was even more. Why? It has one-third the GDP of Toronto. The response we got was something like this: "Yeah, Vancouver may seem pricy, but you just need to get into the market. Then in 5 years you'll be happy you did."

Well it's been more than 5 years and now this is the market :

The market for development sites is being tested by a roughly 50-per-cent drop in value since 2022, according to Mark Goodman. The principal of Goodman Commercial Inc. said Broadway Plan sites, for example, were selling for about $200 per square foot buildable three years ago. Sellers can now expect closer to $100 per square foot buildable, he told BIV. Goodman currently has three Broadway Plan listings.

Of course, Toronto is in a similar situation today. If there's no market for new condominiums and apartment rents aren't growing, then high-density land values are going to feel the impact. But I do think it's interesting that, in some ways, our response was being anchored by our experience in Toronto. What we know, and have accepted, often becomes a baseline for assessing if something else feels expensive or cheap.

I sometimes see the same thing with long-time developers. They remember what they used to sell and/or rent apartments for, and have a harder time accepting today. But this is a positive thing if it compels greater deal scrutiny. Advice like "you just need to get into the market" is never sound. But if you were to take this approach, I would bet that today is a better time than 5 years ago.

Cover photo by Angie on Unsplash

Google is well aware that traditional search is going to die (or at least go away for the vast majority of use cases). I don't want to search for things if I can just be told the answer.

Here's an example. I was installing new light fixtures in our bedrooms this week and I wanted a refresher on wire colors.

Historically, I would have done a Google Search, which would have then led me to some website or to some lengthy YouTube video that I didn't actually want to watch and that I would have had to scan through to find the salient parts.

But today that feels old school. Instead what I did was take a picture of the ceiling box and ask ChatGPT to just tell me the answers.

Voilà:

It seems almost trite at this point to talk about the virtues of AI. But over the last few months, I have found that — just like that — it has become an integral part of my everyday workflow.

This is true whether I'm playing electrician, planning travel, writing a blog post (and I want an assistant to find me data), or I'm looking to brainstorm around something business related.

I'm sure the same is true for many of you as well.