Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1558

In light of my upcoming trip to Detroit, I thought I’d share a (photography) book that was recently recommended to me called The Ruins of Detroit . It’s by photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. You can check out some of the photos here .

The imagery is absolutely incredible and I really like their description of the project. Here’s a part of it:

"Detroit, industrial capital of the XXth Century, played a fundamental role shaping the modern world. The logic that created the city also destroyed it. Nowadays, unlike anywhere else, the city’s ruins are not isolated details in the urban environment. They have become a natural component of the landscape. Detroit presents all archetypal buildings of an American city in a state of mummification. Its splendid decaying monuments are, no less than the Pyramids of Egypt, the Coliseum of Rome, or the Acropolis in Athens, remnants of the passing of a great Empire."

I particularly like the last line: “…remnants of the passing of a great Empire.” When I look at their pictures, I like to try and imagine what those spaces would have been like teeming with people. Do you think anyone, at the time, could have possibly imagined that those good times were going to end? 

Clearly most did not, because look at the money that was spent on what are beautiful buildings. As derelict as those buildings are today, each one of them was presumably built with economics in mind. Developers were making money, tenants were paying rent and people were occupying the spaces. Now look at them.

There’s something really powerful about witnessing this kind of abandonment, particularly because it feels so recent. It’s one thing to look at relicts like the Coliseum and dismiss it as being eons ago. But this wasn’t that long ago. For me, it’s a stark reminder of how ephemeral things in life can be. Just because you’ve got it today doesn’t mean you’ll have it tomorrow.

The Pan American Games are coming to Toronto in 2 years - 559 days to be exact. While not as high profile as the Olympics, some of you may be surprised to learn that the Pan Am Games will involve three times as many athletes as the Vancouver Olympics did.

However, the big question with these sorts of events is always whether or not they create a lasting economic boon for the host city. History is littered with examples of economic disasters and lingering Olympic debts. I’d love to see a full analysis of what it costs to bid for a game, how much public money has to go up, how much private investment it spurs, and so on.

At the same time, I suspect that some of the positive externalities might be hard to measure. How do you attach a value to the brand equity you get from hosting a major international sporting event? It’s hard, but for many people around the world the 2015 Pan Am Games could be the event that embeds Toronto into their psyche. 

But there is another big benefit to playing host. It creates a real deadline. When cities bid for games they make all sorts of promises about the kinds of things they’re going to build and provide. In the case of Toronto, it accelerated the creation of a new mixed-income neighbourhood called the  West Don Lands  (which will be used to house the athletes during the games).

"Originally, build out of the 32 hectare (80 acres) West Don Lands was planned to unfold in three strategic phases and take between 10 and 12 years, subject to market conditions. With the Pan Am Games, more than half of the community will be in place for the Games in 2015." -Waterfront Toronto

So in effect, we’ve leveraged the games in order to expedite capital projects that were already in the pipeline. I like this, because without a hard and fast deadline, I can almost assure you that these publicly run projects would have fallen behind schedule. Deadlines and goals are good.

Here’s an example why:

When I first started my MBA program at Rotman, we did an interesting organizational behaviour exercise involving origami cranes . The class was split into groups and each group was asked to go away and build paper cranes. If you’ve ever built one of these, you’ll know that they can be tough at first.

But what each group wasn’t aware of was that they were all given different instructions in terms of the number of cranes they were expected to build. Their goals were different. At the end of the exercise, all of the cranes were counted and each group wrote their “production” levels on the board.

What was discovered was that each group more or less built the exact number of cranes that they were asked to build. This is interesting, because presumably every group had the raw ability to produce the same number of paper cranes. All that changed was the motivation.

Returning to the case of the Pan Am Games, the mandate is clear: We need to house 10,000 athletes and officials by the summer of 2015, or else we’ll look utterly incapable in front of the world. We have a deadline. And that’s a good thing.

As many of you know, I recently made the move to a new real estate development firm here in the city called TAS . Well, actually, it was a return for me. I interned here one summer while I was in grad school at Penn. I was always a big fan of the company’s philosophy around city building and so it felt then, as it does now, as a really good fit for me.

As a returning member of the TAS team, I’m excited to announce the launch of our latest condo project called DUKE . It’s located in the Junction (near Dundas & Keele), which is arguably one of the hottest up-and-coming neighbourhoods in Toronto. And, it’s a stone’s throw away from Playa Cabana Cantina , which just so happens to be my favourite Mexican place in the city (although sometimes I think it could be Grand Electric).

In all seriousness though, and with as much bias aside as possible, I think it’s a fantastic project. I obviously wasn’t around for its formative years, but I’m thrilled to be a part of it now. If you’ve read any of my blog posts over at Dirt (thedirt.co) , you’ll know that I’m a huge supporter of more midrise development in Toronto. It’s a European scale of buildings that I think we’re largely missing in our fantastic city.

So if you’re in the Junction area, I would encourage you to pop into our sales office and say hello to the team. We’re located at 2800 Dundas Street West. The tile as you walk in is awesome (I can say this because I didn’t choose it) and I think you’ll find that the design of the place is very much of the Junction. Much of the materials, fixtures and labour that went into the sales office were sourced locally from the hood.

If you do go check it out, let me know what you think by commenting below, tweeting me , or tweeting  @tasdesignbuild .