Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 208

Crypto Citizens are a collection of 10,000 NFTs that were minted between 2021 and 2024, starting first in Venice, California and ending in Venice, Italy. Each of their 10 locations has a sub-collection of 1,000 pieces and I am the owner of CryptoParisian #112 , because, well, Paris was the next best city for me after they egregiously skipped over Toronto.

This is one of the most ambitious projects in the NFT art community and, now that they've completed their world tour, they've just released a documentary called Venice to Venice . It is currently being screened in private venues around the world, but eventually there will be a world premiere at a film festival. This is when I presume they will land in Toronto!

If you'd like to watch the trailer and/or mint it, click here .

Photo: Seth Goldstein

I first wrote about Manhattan's proposed congestion charge back in 2018. Naturally, some people supported it and some people opposed it. Four years later, it was reported that the charge was still being considered for the area of the island south of 60th Street, and that it could generate an additional $1 billion in revenue for the city's transportation authority. But then in June of this year, right before the charge was set to come into effect on June 30, 2024, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said "nah, let's pause this indefinitely." And at that point, it felt mostly dead.

Nope: A revised tolling plan has just been announced -- the charge has been reduced from $15 to $9 -- and Hochul is now trying to jam it through before Trump takes office in January. Trump opposes the charge and has branded it the "most regressive tax known to womankind", so there's a real deadline here. This could get interesting. Do you think it will actually happen, some 6 years later? (In reality, the timeline is far longer. Congestion pricing also looked promising during the Bloomberg era, but then similarly died. And I'm sure there were even earlier proposals.)

Ontario's goal is to build 1.5 million new homes by 2031. It is widely understood that we need a lot more housing. But it's a bit of a curious thing, because we do actually have homes available right now. There are developers with standing condominium inventory; landlords with vacant apartments; and many other options. So what is it that we need exactly? A more precise description would be that we need a diverse mixture of more attainable housing.

For this to happen, we're going to need to make some structural changes to the way we deliver new homes. The above image is taken from a recent report by Environmental Defence and Robert Eisenberg (in collaboration with LGA Architectural Partners and SvN Architects + Planners). The report is called the Mid-Rise Manual and it's a comprehensive look at we can and should be doing to unlock more of this housing type.

What I love about this image (and the report) is that it speaks to a very different kind of city than the one we have grown accustomed to in North America. Instead of towers in a sea of low-rise houses, it shows a diversity of building types -- in a way where you could also imagine a diversity of individual home types. This is unequivocally where cities like Toronto and others are headed. It's just a question of how soon we follow the manual.

Click here to download a copy of the report. (There's also a summary report of key takeaways if you're looking for something quick to read.)