Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 354

Back when everyone wanted to buy and trade crypto, my friend Evgeny started a marketplace for NFT photography called Sloika . This, to me, felt like an obviously good idea, both in general and for him specifically. Evgeny had previously cofounded the photo company 500px , and so Sloika was initially conceived of as 500px, but for web3. This is a good story.

I have collected a number of photos via Sloika and, in general, I continue to regularly collect NFTs. Of course today, relatively few people want to trade and collect NFTs. The market is largely dead. What is obvious is that there was a giant NFT bubble and it popped in 2022, along with some other asset bubbles.

But does this necessarily mean that NFTs and NFT art are bad ideas?

When I think of bubbles I often think of something that Fred Wilson wrote on his blog. His argument was that bubbles tend to be directionally right; it's the magnitude that we get wrong. A good example of this is the dot com bubble. Yes, it was a massive bubble. But it was directionally right. The internet was going to matter -- a lot it turns out.

Even if we go back to " tulip mania " during the Dutch Golden Age -- which is often brought up as the pinnacle of dumb bubbles -- one could argue that it was still directionally right. Today, tulips remain the most sold flower in the US . So we still love them; we just got a little too excited back in the 17the century.

When it comes to NFT art, I like to think in terms of these questions:

• Will humans continue to appreciate art? (Seems obvious.)

• Will humans continue to want to collect things? (This is arguably a fundamental human instinct.)

• Will provenance and authenticity continue to matter in art? (Blockchain technologies are really good at this.)

Perhaps the only question that remains is whether people will want to collect digital art. But even this feels fairly obvious to me. The challenge, I think, is that the display side of the market needs to be more built out. Because alongside the instinct to collect things is the instinct to display them. That's why NFTs initially took off as profile pics on social media.

So as a start, I think more, better, and cheaper displays would be a big help. There's something very different about projecting an NFT in your living room versus having it live in a crypto wallet on your phone or computer. You need to really experience it, just as you would a conventional piece of art. And like all art, context matters.

I haven't yet invested in a dedicated NFT display, but I plan to do that in the near future. And I'm looking forward to displaying my collection of NFTs, including the one at the top of this post. It's a drone shot of the west side of Toronto in the middle of winter, and it was gifted to me by Evgeny. Thank you for that. It's an honor to have it as part of my art collection.

Photo: Six Bling (via SuperRare)

It is very disappointing to hear that Paul Calandra -- Ontario's new Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing -- is talking about "use-it-or-lose-it" zoning policies and that mayors are coming out in support of it . This is a terrible idea.

On the surface, it may seem like this would force/incentivize developers to build more housing sooner. But what it fails to recognize is this: just because a developer wants to build, it doesn't mean that they are able to build.

This current market environment is a perfect example. It is likely that the Greater Toronto Area will see dozens of new condominium launches this fall. These are developers who will be spending millions of at-risk dollars to bring their projects to the market in the hopes of pre-selling homes and then obtaining construction financing.

However, it is highly probable that not all of these projects will actually start construction in the short-term. And if/when that happens, it will not be because these developers are just squatting on entitled land; it will be because they can't get financing. In other words, the market isn't there.

This will not be a good day for anybody. So I fail to see how it makes sense to penalize developers who happen to find themselves in this unfortunate situation. It's as if our only solution to the current housing crisis is to make it more expensive to build new housing.

For another post that I wrote on this topic, click here .

IKEA opened its first permanent showroom in 1953. And by 1965, it had opened a 500,000 sf flagship store on the outskirts of Stockholm.

Supposedly , the inspiration for this new store was Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum in New York. Inspired by its continuous looping design, IKEA wanted to create a real-life version of its well-known catalog. This led to the current maze-like design where you wander through staged living spaces and get excited to buy lots of things.

However, as IKEA began to open in more urban locations it actually started doing away with this prototypical design. The thinking, which seems perfectly reasonable, was that mazes weren't appropriate for smaller and more urban locations. These customers would want to pop in, quickly get what they need, and then leave.

But it turns out they were wrong. Their customers are telling them the opposite: they still want mazes . In other words, they want a curated experience that helps them figure out what to buy. According to IKEA: "People buy more when they are shown more." Sounds right. And so IKEA is now working to make its urban stores more, you know, maze-like.

The company has already done this in cities like Vienna and Paris, and apparently it consistently leads to higher sales. It's a good reminder that (1) humans are still humans regardless of where they live and (2) if you want people to visit and linger in your physical store, it's good practice to curate experiences.

P.S. I love IKEA.