Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 2

One Delisle is really starting to make a mark on the Toronto skyline. So on a semi-regular basis, people now send me photos of the building or mention me on the socials. I love when people do that. Here's a great photo from today from Dion on Twitter.

One of the comments that I used to get was, "Yeah, I don't know, Brandon, the floor plate is still looking pretty square." And I would respond with, "Be patient." For those of you who aren't familiar with the design, the entire tower gradually transforms from a square floor plate to a 16-sided circular floor plate.

Nobody makes this comment anymore.

I also really like Dion's photo because it shows the steel for the "crown" at the top of the building coming together. The height of the crown was something we fought for during rezoning. Studio Gang felt it was crucial for the proportions and slenderness ratio of the building. And we agreed.

I can tell you that it had us measuring the exact height of nearby church windows to see if this crown would shadow them at certain times of the day and year. I'm sure glad we did that.

Please keep the photos coming!

---

Cover photo by me

There is a school of thought that out-of-office messages are only for the unserious. If you're a top-performing executive, owner, or whatever, you need to be available and reachable at all times, and so an OOO message sends completely the wrong signal. It says that you're just not that committed to what you do. Yeah, I always use an OOO message when I'm away.

While I appreciate that school of thought and I know firsthand that when you have your own business you're on 24/7 (because of some unhealthy combination of drive and obsession), I also believe that the following two things are true.

One, we could all die tomorrow and it's important to take some time when you can. In fact, I'd say greater freedom is the objective. As Charlie Munger famously stated: "I did not intend to get rich. I wanted to get independent, I just overshot."

Two, as connected as we all are today, there's no way that when I'm crushing back bowls at high elevations I'm going to be able to respond as quickly as I do when I'm sitting at my desk for 15 hours a day. So I think it's important to let people know, "Hey, if I don't respond to you in 38 seconds, I have not died; you just need to wait a bit longer."

The signal is a recalibration of expectations, not of my level of commitment.

---

Cover photo by Luca Bravo

My sense is that density is a misunderstood characteristic of successful cities. I think most people see it as a bug. They see some of the negative externalities associated with cities, such as traffic congestion, and they assume that the culprit is too many people.

But they are confusing population density with land-use inefficiencies. This, I can only assume, is why some people arrive at the selfish conclusion that their city is full.

There are, of course, many counterexamples to this line of thinking. Paris , Seoul, Barcelona, Singapore, Tokyo, and many others have both high population density and are viewed as being highly livable and desirable cities.

Not all high-density cities are livable, but that's because other ingredients are missing. I will remind you that Tokyo once again placed first in Monocle's annual quality-of-life survey this year.

What I think gets missed are the following three key features of urban density.

One, dense cities dramatically lower the cost of delivering infrastructure over the long term and reduce per capita energy consumption.

Two, cities are wealth-generating machines and density drives "agglomeration economies." Put smart and entrepreneurial people in close proximity to one another, and good things happen.

Three, the only way to create an enormous, well-functioning city like Tokyo is on the backbone of transit . And the only way to make transit viable and convenient for most people is to build density all around it. Density is the unlock that makes it all possible.

Ironically, then, density is what can make cities feel less congested and more livable.

---

Cover photo by Agathe