Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 275

Today, Rad Marketing and Blackline hosted their second annual " Ballin' Out For Charity " basketball tournament. And it was a fantastic event. My sore lower back proves it. It's always fun getting so many Toronto real estate people into one room (or onto a giant court at the University of Toronto). But more important is the fact that it was for a good cause. This year's tournament raised money for the MLSE Foundation (which you can learn more about here ). And last year's tournament raised over $70,000 for the Daily Bread Food Bank.

I'm looking forward to this becoming an industry staple. Everyone involved in the organizing of this event should be very proud of what they accomplished. Great job.

This is a telling map from Jens von Bergmann . It shows the changes in population density across Toronto from 1971 to 2021 (measured in people per hectare). What is obvious is the spikiness of our city. We have been very effective at adding lots of people downtown, along the central waterfront, and in certain other pockets. But at the same time, we have let our older inner city neighborhoods move in the opposite direction and lose people.

The irony of this outcome is that we have long created policies that refer to these areas as being "stable" neighborhoods. The idea was that they weren't supposed to change, at least not too much. But what this data shows is the opposite. By restricting growth, we actually created the right conditions for them to lose people as demographics changed and household sizes got smaller, among other things. We created unstable neighborhoods.

Thankfully, we have started to change course and allow some intensification . We're not there yet, but I do believe that the next 50-year map will look quite different than the one you see here.

Montreal is, in many ways, a city of winding exterior stairs. If you've been there, then you know. The city is overwhelmingly a city of low-rise apartments (less than five storeys). And with these, comes lots of exterior circulation. But this tradition doesn't just apply to older buildings. Here is a contemporary tall-building example which follows a similar approach.

Designed by MSDL Architects , the project, called The Laurent & Clark , consists of two tower volumes. They read as two separate towers, but they're connected and share egress paths. On the east side is a conventional "scissor stair" tucked behind two elevators. And on the other end, connected by an open-air corridor, is an exterior exit stair that runs all the way up the tower.

Here is a circulation diagram via Azure :

This is novel (at least in this part of the world). The suites in the west tower are all dual aspect; meaning, they have windows on both ends.

They also have direct elevator access (see cores above), which means a lot less non-revenue generating circulation space. I mean, if you think about it, the open-air corridor on the north side of the west tower is akin to building a simple balcony. Extend the slab and add a guard rail. And so you could argue that this portion of the building has a near 100% efficiency factor.

However, the downside is that you need more elevators. Here, it looks like they have 6 for their 356 suites. That's an overall ratio of just under 60 suites per elevator, which is lower (i.e. better) than what you'd typically find in a conventional tower. The crude rule of thumb is 1 elevator for every 100 suites. That said, these direct-access suites would be premium.

But perhaps the most important takeaway is this: If cold and snowy Montreal is cool with open-air corridors and exterior exit stairs, then maybe your city should be as well.