Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 387

The winners of this year's Architizer A+ Awards are out.

Now in its 11th year, the A+ Awards are intended to "honor the world's best architecture and spaces." And supposedly, it is also the world's largest (119 categories) and most democratic architectural awards program. I don't know, I read that here .

I went through the list of winners this evening (okay, I skimmed this Urban Toronto article ), and I'm now excited to report that 13 Canadian projects/firms won an award -- either a Jury Award, a Popular Choice Award, or a Special Mention.

I'm also excited to announce that one of the winners is our One Delisle project. It is the Jury Winner for best unbuilt multi-unit housing project (over 10 floors). Awesome!

If you'd like to see the full list of winners, click here .

Today, June 1, is an important day for crypto and Hong Kong. The city just lifted its crypto ban and is once again allowing retail trading.

Now, there's a lot of speculation about what this will ultimately mean for the city and for Asia, given that Beijing is a crypto hater (all crypto transactions have been banned in China since 2021).

Some think that this could be a leading indicator for a softening Chinese position on crypto; while the cynics think that this reinstatement could be short lived given that Beijing remains a hater.

Whatever the outcome, I think it is noteworthy that Hong Kong is trying to reestablish itself as a global hub for digital assets and that it believes crypto is here to stay.

It is also a good reminder that, even though the herd has moved onto AI, there's still important work happening beneath many of the mainstream headlines.

My own conviction and activities around crypto haven't changed over the last year, and so I'm happy to see cities like Hong Kong working to reassert themselves in this space.

https://youtu.be/sJFn20hzccI

The City of Vancouver recently published this video talking about missing middle housing. For those of you who are following this trend (and reading this blog), there won't be a lot that is new in the video (although Uytae Lee is great). But I'm sharing it here, anyway, for three reasons. One, it's an example of Toronto being ahead of Vancouver, which wasn't the case with laneway housing. Vancouver started allowing these first. Two, it is further evidence that this shift toward intensifying low-rise residential neighbourhoods is really happening -- and gaining momentum -- all across North America. And three, the City of Vancouver is about to bring forward new multiplex housing policies. So now is a good time to get involved and say things .