Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 296

I have written about Bright Moments before. They are a digital art company exploring the intersection of NFTs and real-world experiences. It started as a popup gallery in Venice Beach California, where artists could show new work and where collectors could buy IRL. They then created their own pixel art collection called CryptoVenetians. It included 1,000 different people-centered NFTs by artist QianQian . Since then, they have gone on to host events and create new CryptoCitizen collections in New York, Berlin, London, Mexico City, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires. And this week they were in Paris.

(I don't know why they skipped over Toronto!)

https://twitter.com/seth/status/1761302227216376000?s=20

Their end goal is to create a complete collection of 10,000 NFTs, most of which are tied to a specific city. (The only one that isn't is their CryptoGalacticans collection.) What's obviously great about this approach is that it's a way to promote digital art and onboard new users into the crypto space. They are literally going around the world, throwing parties, and saying "look how cool and fun this whole crypto thing is." At the same time, it also links the digital and the physical, which I believe is fundamental. We're social beings and web3 will never change that.

The other interesting thing about Bright Moments is that they are structured as a decentralized autonomous organization (or DOA). That's like a company, except that governance is distributed to its tokenholders and it's all managed on a blockchain. But it still operates as a company and it can raise money like one too. In 2021, Union Square Ventures invested 500 ETH into the DOA through a blockchain transaction that would naturally be public if you cared to look it up. Based on today's spot price of about CA$4k per ETH, that was a CA$2 million investment.

In the case of Bright Moments, its tokenholders are the people who own a CryptoCitizen . These are the people who get to vote on how the organization is run. They can also earn money if they do things like host a community dinner or organize a local meetup, with the idea being that, as an organization, you want to encourage this sort of bottom-up participation and innovation. I find it fascinating to watch this new governance and entity structure emerge, and it will only continue to evolve.

I've been following Bright Moments more or less since they dropped the CryptoVenetians. I thought about jumping in then, but I figured I would wait to see if there would be a CryptoTorontonian. That would obviously be my number one choice. But once they announced their final list of cities, and Toronto wasn't on it, I grumpily decided I would instead wait for a CryptoParisian. And since this week was Paris, it was time.

I now hold CryptoParisian #112:

I like that it has the Pont Neuf and that the human is wearing sunglasses.

This means that I now have a small ownership stake in the Bright Moments DOA. So presumably I'll soon have a say in important and serious matters! It also means that when they launch their final CryptoCitizen collection in Venice, Italy this spring (nice work going full circle here), there is a chance I might get airdropped a CryptoVenetian. It's a random process, so whatever. I also know that it's easy to look at this pixelated Parisian and think, "WTF, Brandon." But something new is building here. And I'm sure that all of the folks who were in Paris this week can testify to that.

I am not a transportation engineer, but sometimes I like to, you know, pretend. And lately, I've been thinking about how to better design the Toronto intersection of Dundas, Dupont, Annette, and Old Weston (which I touched on briefly over here ). It's a weird 5-point intersection that is often cited as one of the most confusing in the city. And so there's a lot that could be done.

Here's what it looks like today:

The centerpiece is the Dundas-Dupont Traffic Island, which is actually a city-owned park. It's not the most generous green space, but the real problem with this park is that it's very much an island. There's really only one pedestrian access point -- its north end. For the most part, you need to be unlawful in your movements on and off it.

This is a fairly common occurrence in cities. The island is, almost certainly, a remnant space. It was never explicitly designed; it is just what was left over after they figured out how to connect all of these streets and negotiate the intersection's grade changes.

The other signal, that these are remnant spaces, is the paint markings on the street. Their main job is to tell cars where to go. But they're also unproductive spaces. Nobody is intended to actually occupy them. So what they really say is, "we have too much road and we didn't know what to do; so we just painted them."

If you watch the below video of Claire Weisz (founder of WXY Studio ) explaining the work that she has done in New York City, you'll see remarkable similarities to what I'm talking about here. This sort of thing happens all the time, especially at messy intersections where multiple streets converge. The objective was to connect the streets and the rest became a byproduct.

https://youtu.be/FsDaZH-RpWA?si=DYwICeahXk9pxOqr

But when properly designed, these spaces actually become better for everyone: drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians. And this Toronto intersection strikes me as a perfect candidate. So if my local Councillor Gord Perks is reading this post, I would ask him to do what he can within the city to encourage this kind of positive change.

And not just here, but wherever there is a street that sucks.

Like many cities these days, Boston has a program in place to incentivize the conversion of office buildings to residential. Here is generally how it works:

• City to provide an average tax abatement of up to 75% of the fair market assessed residential value for up to 29 years.

• City to fast track the development review process (only 1 community meeting). Zoning would be considered as-of-right.

• Construction must start before October 2025.

• Per the city's inclusionary zoning policies, 17% of all newly created residential suites must be restricted to households making up to 60% of AMI (Area Median Income), and another 3% of the suites must be reserved for voucher holders.

• Projects cannot be ground-up construction. Adaptive re-use only. Though additional height/FAR is a possibility.

• Program is not intended to create micro-units (I'm not sure how firm this restriction is).

• Any ground-floor retail and public uses must be maintained.

• Transaction charge of 2% on any future gross sale of the property.

And here is one example project that is using the program. It is interesting to look at how different cities are approaching this vacancy problem.