Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 160

Yesterday, Austin City Council voted 10-1 in favor of a building code amendment that will allow single-stair apartment buildings up to five storeys and with 4 homes per floor. This is progress. Austin now joins Seattle, New York, and possibly other US cities in allowing this building type, which is a type that is widespread outside of North America. Paris, for instance, allows single-stair buildings up to 50m .

In all of these newly allowable cases, there's usually a requirement to sprinkler the building and cap the number of homes per floor, among other life safety requirements. What I'm not clear on, though, is how flexible these new codes are in allowing larger apartment buildings.

In my opinion, it's better (and hopefully more accurate) to think about unit maximums on a per stair basis as opposed to a per floor basis . Because that's how you create larger point-access block buildings: you cluster multiple blocks together, each with its own exit stair. Is that allowed in these building codes? I'm not exactly sure, but one would hope.

Regardless of this important detail, I continue to be impressed by Austin's willingness to drive positive change in its housing market. It makes you wonder: What the hell is taking Toronto so long? Single-stair buildings up to 6 storeys should already be permissible. We should be leading.

Cover photo by Clark Van Der Beken on Unsplash

Just in case you're looking for an opportunity to read some more about tariffs, Howard Marks has a new memo out titled " Nobody Knows (Yet Again) ." In it, he talks about comparative advantage, how global trade has benefited Americans, and what this could mean for the future.

Here's an excerpt that I found interesting specifically because I've also been thinking about the parallels with Brexit:

I consider the tariff developments thus far to be what soccer fans call an “own goal” – a goal scored for the other side when a player accidentally puts the ball into his own team’s net. In this way, they’re highly analogous to Brexit, and we know how that turned out. Brexit cost the British mightily in terms of GDP, morale, and alliances, and it harmed their reputation for governance and stability. All of this damage was self-inflicted.

In the memo, he also provides an important history lesson:

To cite one more factor that has made the world a better place, I describe the behavior of the U.S. in the post-World War II period as “generosity toward the rest of the world stemming from enlightened self-interest.” Under the Marshall Plan, we gave (not loaned) billions of dollars with which Western Europe rebuilt. Likewise, between 1945 and 1952, General Douglas MacArthur oversaw the reconstruction of Japan and the strengthening of its economy. Since then, the U.S. has (a) distributed extensive foreign aid, (b) invested heavily in healthcare in developing nations, (c) created programs that bring foreign students to the U.S. and vice versa, and (d) beamed positive messages to people throughout the world. These are all instances of generosity. In each “transaction,” we gave more than we directly got, and a cynic might say we acted like suckers.

Yes, these things can be described as largesse, but as the National Archive puts it, the Marshall Plan “provided markets for American goods, created reliable trading partners, and supported the development of stable democratic governments in Western Europe.” That’s a pretty good payoff. People in other countries received lots of freebies, but certainly these programs helped the U.S. by restraining communism, bringing nations into defensive alignment with the U.S., and contributing to the U.S.’s position as the world’s most prosperous nation. I have no interest in seeing the U.S. turn isolationist.

Unfortunately, greater isolation will almost certainly be one of the consequences of Trump's tariffs. It doesn't matter that many of them have now been paused; the damage has been done. We've seen this spastic movie before. In fact, they could all go to zero tomorrow, and there would still be damage.

This is an enormous change to the world order.

Cover photo by taro ohtani on Unsplash

Reece Martin is perhaps best known for his YouTube channel focused on transit. He has over 330,000 subscribers, and I have mentioned him a few times over the years on this blog. But he has since retired from YouTube and he now has a new blog called " Next Toronto ," which you should all subscribe to. I just did that today.

In his latest post, he makes " the case for a 24-hour Toronto " and compares our city to various other global cities around the world including New York and Tokyo. This post really resonates with me and I agree with his view that there's something quintessentially urban about things being open all the time, or at the very least open late.

According to ChatGPT, Toronto is a "semi 24-hour city." Its deficiencies:

Here's how I generally think about it.

Step 1 is reasonable daytime hours. As a North American, I still find it frustrating how some/many restaurants in Europe close between lunch and dinner. Call me spoiled, but what if I got held up at work and couldn't eat during the generally accepted time? Or if I went to the gym in the morning and now I suddenly have a dire caloric deficit?

Step 2 is staying open kind of late, including on Sundays. A few weeks ago I was driving around the suburbs of Toronto — on a Sunday — and I decided to take advantage of this rare occurrence to stop in at what's called an enclosed shopping mall. So I got all the way there, pulled confidently on one of the front doors, and then realized it had closed 2 hours ago.

Step 3 is the rarified big leagues; you're a "24-hour city." Reece gives the example of Apple's Fifth Avenue store, which, in case you forgot, never closes. I don't typically shop for consumer electronics at 3AM, but I might. And there's something oddly comforting about knowing I could. This isn't possible in all cities, but it is in New York. That says something.

Cover photo by Jan Weber on Unsplash