Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 406

So Sunday came and went and Parisians voted overwhelmingly to ban shared electric scooters in the capital. Of those who voted, 89.03% were against them . And this, to be honest, is not all that surprising. Also not surprising is the low voter turnout (7.46% of 1.3 million registered voters).

But I do think it raises important questions about this "democratic" process -- and not just because I happen to like electric scooters. One problem is that there's an inherent bias. And this same phenomenon can be found in community meetings for new developments.

If you're upset about something (and you have the time), then you are probably more intrinsically motivated to participate. In other words, if you think that electric scooters are a horrible nuisance, then you're more likely to take the time to say something about them. But if you think electric scooters are just, like, fine, then you're probably less motivated to go out and vote.

Maybe this doesn't matter. Maybe the turnout percentage itself is the answer you're looking for. Only 7.46% of registered voters cared enough about electric scooters to voice an opinion. So if the rest actually liked them, it's their problem for not voting.

But if you think that this percentage should be higher to be more representative, then one solution is to try and reduce the barriers to participation. And I think there's an argument to be made that something as dumb as a Twitter poll, open only to Parisians, might have been more inclusive.

This is an oversimplification that won't apply to all markets, but typically the decision tree for urban parking looks something like this:

• Do I need to build parking?

• If no, great. That's ideal!

• If yes, how many levels of below-grade will I need?

• If below-grade parking doesn't work because it's either too expensive or because the soil is bad, try above-grade parking.

• And if above grade, how can I "wrap it" with occupiable space or, at the very least, treat it in such a way that it doesn't look ugly and the city doesn't get mad at me?

What I'm getting at with this is that above-grade parking is generally frowned upon. It is done in lots of places, like in Miami where you can't go underground, but if you ask your average urbanist they will probably tell you that above-grade parking is ugly and that said ugliness should be mitigated to the fullest extent possible.

But here's a counter argument. Let's assume that we believe any one of the following:

• We should design new buildings to be adaptable (i.e. easily convertible to other uses in the future)

• We should design and build in a way that reduces carbon to a minimum

• Lower construction costs are good for end-users of space

• In the future, people will be less, as opposed to more, reliant on privately owned cars

In this case, the ideal solution is actually "unwrapped" above-grade parking. It's less intensive to build, and both below-grade parking and wrapped above-grade parking result in large windowless spaces with very little utility other than for storing inanimate objects. Your options are parking, self-storage, and maybe a large gym for people who don't like natural light.

Judging by the above poll , which was still in progress at the time of writing this post, this is not how most people think about urban parking. But I think it's time we start changing the discussion.

"Your local self-inflicted housing criss ouroboros" tweeted this chart out over the weekend, showing the number of new rental suites completed in Toronto since 1900. The data is from Open Data Toronto and it does not include any condominiums. It also only includes apartment buildings with 10 or more suites (which would be most of the supply anyway).

This chart is a good example of what we spoke about yesterday : "If you want to negatively impact new supply, cap rental growth." And that's exactly what was done in the 1970s. But in reality, the changes were more broad than this. The 1970s saw a philosophical shift in the way Canada thought about new housing .

Housing became rightly viewed as a basic human right. But because of this, the policy landscape shifted away from facilitating the private sector, to intervening and regulating the private sector. This included tax changes which negatively impacted new housing development and, yes, rent controls .

Ironically, but not unexpectedly, this dramatically lowered the overall supply of new rental housing. To the point where we had effectively shut off the taps by the late 1990s. Thankfully, the condominium sector stepped in and started meaningfully delivering new housing -- both for sale and for rent (via individual private investors).

The supply of new condominiums in Toronto is not shown above, but there is no question that this (shadow rentals) has formed the vast majority of our new rental stock over the last two decades. But in my view, this shift was largely the result of policy decisions. We decided that we didn't want the private sector building so many new purpose-built rentals, and so we told them to stop.

It then listened remarkably well.