Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 281

On Monday morning, I flew on Delta from Salt Lake City to Toronto, which in this direction takes just over 3 hours. And it was my first time ever experiencing reasonably reliable wi-fi on a flight. Maybe this is already common for the people who fly in the front of planes, but for me, I've never had the wi-fi work so well.

Usually it goes like this: I try and connect, everything is painfully slow, and so I get frustrated and move on. But this time around, I was able to check all of my emails, download fairly large PDFs, mark them up on my iPad, and write yesterday's blog post. It was pretty great, and it allowed me to land in Toronto with far less anxiety around my work backlog.

But it also got me thinking about what this means for travel and work. If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that I greatly prefer working in an office with my team. I think proximity matters.

At the same time, I recognize that technology is empowering new kinds of remote work, that we are all becoming more globally connected, and that, in the future, most of us are likely to travel more, rather than less. This will be for both work and for fun.

While solid in-flight wi-fi may not seem like that big of a deal, in my mind it's a game changer. People will become more mobile if they can sit on flights and actually be productive (and maybe Apple Vision Pro helps with this). It is another step in what feels like an ongoing untethering of work.

This is the battle that is now playing out across Toronto — and many other cities — as we look to intensify our existing communities; even in the ones sitting on higher-order transit. Cities rightly want to see it happen. But local ratepayers do not.

From the Globe and Mail:

“This project is in no way gentle intensification,” said the architect Terry Montgomery, representing the powerful local group the Annex Residents Association. “It will set a dangerous precedent for all areas in the city which currently [are zoned for] low-scale residential-buildings.”

It’s not clear whether that legal argument is true. At the meeting, City of Toronto planning manager David Driedger and director Oren Tamir – who, to their great credit, were supporting the development – said it would not set a precedent.

But if it did, why would that be “dangerous”? It is commonsensical. The Lowther site has two subway stations within an eight-minute walk. Toronto’s Line 1 and Line 2 intersect right here. This is one of the best-located, best-connected places in all of Canada.

Alex Bozikovic is, of course, right. This is commonsensical. 

If our goals are to create more homes, improve housing affordability, reduce traffic congestion, and make us overall a more sustainable city, then there’s no better place to build than on top of transit within our already built-up areas.

Shot on iPhone and a Fujifilm X-T3