Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 220

Let's check in on office utilization (in Toronto). The last time we talked about this was in April . At that time, the average weekly utilization figure was 63%. The peak day -- Wednesday -- was 73%. And the low day -- Friday -- was 40%. Today, well as of September 15 , these numbers are now 69%, 79%, and 39%, respectively (see above chart). So we continue to climb. The only slight downward trend is Fridays. People don't like coming into the office on Fridays. Still, the average is up 6% over the span of about 6 months. This makes you continue to wonder: When does this level off? I also don't know what this index looked like before 2020. Are we back, or not yet?

The City of Toronto is proposing to turn Dupont Street -- between Dundas Street West and Davenport Road -- into a "complete street."

Here's the area in question:

It's 4.7 kilometers long.

And here's how the city thinks about complete streets :

“Complete streets” are streets that are designed to be safe for all users: people who walk, bicycle, take transit or drive, and people of varying ages and levels of ability. They also consider other uses like sidewalk cafés, street furniture, street trees, utilities, and stormwater management.

Right now, the city is in the public consultation phase. If you'd like to provide your feedback, you can do that here . You have until October 30th. The online tool is also pretty neat. You can drop comments on specific areas of the street. And already the map has been totally filled up.

This is an important and busy artery in midtown. I use it all the time as a pedestrian, cyclist, and driver. It's not the best street, though. Yesterday it took me 45 minutes to drive from one end of it to the other. Along with better street design, this part of the city could use better transit.

I'm looking forward to seeing how Dupont ultimately gets designed.

The morning I attended the release of Venturon's 2024 Sustainable Proptech Report. What's great is that it includes a list of all the (known) companies that are active in this space in Canada. It also summarizes venture funding by region. Interesting to see Alberta punching above its weight and coming in second behind Ontario. It has roughly half the population of Quebec.

As part of the event, the following companies also gave short presentations:

• Panergy -- they make a prefabricated insulated wall system

• Darabase -- they are creating an advertising ecosystem around augmented reality; one that will allow building owners to monetize in a new digital world

• Axe Buildings -- they make simple, prefabricated homes; they are optimizing for speed and price, not quality

• QEA Tech -- they use drones with thermal cameras to tell you where your building envelope is leaking and wasting energy

I don't know anything about these companies other than what I heard this morning, but all are working on important problems. Darabase is perhaps the most future oriented in that it appears to rely on AR / spatial computing becoming a thing. I believe this will happen, and so I found it particularly interesting.

The 2024 report is available online, here .