Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 276

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.

Paris is the first city in France to implement some form of residential rent control. The first came in 2014 (enacted in the market in 2015), but this was later removed in 2017. The second came in 2019, and this current program remains in place until November 2026, at which time it will be reviewed.

But given that it has already been in place for a number of years, people have started to analyze it's effectiveness. Here is a study by Atelier Parisien d'Urbanisme (APUR) that was published this month.

The report is in French, but I can tell you that, what they did, was compare the Paris region to 8 other cities in France -- all of which do not have the same rent controls. They were: Aix-en-Provence, Grenoble, Marseille, Nantes, Nice, Strasbourg, Toulon, et Toulouse. These were allegedly chosen because their housing markets are thought to be similar to that of Paris'.

What they found was that from July 2019 to July 2023, legislated controls in Paris lowered rents by approximately 4.2%, compared to where they would have been without any market intervention.

At the same time, they noticed that these same controls seemed to become more effective over time. From July 2019 to June 2020, they lowered rents by 2.5%, but from July 2022 to June 2023, they lowered rents by 5.9%.

Finally, they also found that the controls seemed to impact smaller places the most. For apartments between 8 and 18 m2, rents were 10.2% lower than expected during July 2019 and July 2023.

This is all interesting stuff, but in many ways, it is expected. Rent controls are intended to depress rental growth. That's the whole point. And based on this data from APUR, it is working in Paris.

But the really tough questions pertain to the possible knock-on effects. If rents are 4.2% lower, but operating costs are now growing faster than rents, then this is a problem for the housing market. You're on an unsustainable path.

And if lower rents mean that fewer developers are going to build new housing, then this is also a problem, because less supply will eventually translate into more upward pressure on rents. I don't know for sure that this is happening in Paris, right now, but these are crucial considerations.

It's never as simple as just looking at rents and thinking lower is better for long-term affordability.

There is an ongoing architecture/development joke that the way you design a building is by first starting with the parking. Once you've figured out how the parking will work, you can then move on to, you know, the secondary stuff, like figuring out how actual humans will occupy your development. I'm calling it a joke, but there's obviously some truth to this. Parking is almost always a challenge, especially if you're developing in a city that still has parking minimums.

Previously, I've talked about the benefits of "unwrapped" above-grade parking . This is generally counter to how most cities like to think about parking. But for a few reasons, it can make a lot of sense. However, to be clear, I'm not advocating for more parking. My point was simply that -- if you absolutely have to build parking -- then maybe you should look at spaces that give you some flexibility in the future.

At the same time, there's another more nuanced thing to consider: how big are your actual parking spaces? Here in Toronto, a standard parking space is 2.6m wide x 5.6m deep (about ~157 sf). This is larger than some apartments . But these minimum dimensions can vary greatly by municipality. Oftentimes you'll hear planners say, "well, people here like their big cars." The problem with this is that these dimensions will dramatically change your parking design.

So today I thought it would be interesting to gather a few data points from all of you. What are the minimum parking space dimensions in your city? Please leave a comment below so that everyone can see. As far as I know, there isn't a globally accepted set of dimensions for parking spaces. Perhaps because some places like big cars and other places don't care. But maybe there should be.