Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 457

This is an unfortunate distinction :

Of all the world’s housing crises, Hong Kong’s may be the most formidable. The city of 7.3 million leads the world in  housing prices  and  inequality , with  125,100 millionaires  and  1.6 million people living in poverty . Home prices have  rocketed  by 187% over the last decade. In May, the number of public housing applicants hit  245,000,  with an average wait time of 6.1 years — the highest in over two decades.  According to lawmaker Scott Leung , a shortage of 30,000 units in the next five years means that the public housing queue will soon stretch to 6.5 years.

So let's take a look at overall housing supply ( source ):

What this chart tells us is the following:

• For the five-year period from 2017 to 2021, Hong Kong built about 173,900 housing units. That's somewhere around 34,780 per year.

• Of these units, 60,700 were subsidized public rental housing units (~35%) and 25,500 were subsidized sale units (~15%). So overall, about half of Hong Kong's housing supply over the last five years was some form of subsidized housing. That said, the number of public rental housing units has been declining. It was about 70,800 units between 2007 and 2011.

• Looking at private residential units during this same five-year period, about 35,200 of them (20% of total supply) can be classified as "small units." These are units with an area less than 40 square meters and, based on the above chart, they obviously represent a rapidly growing market segment.

• Adding all of this up, we get to 70% of Hong Kong's housing supply being either (1) a subsidized unit or (2) a small unit under 40 square meters.

This is how Hong Kong builds, and it clearly isn't enough to meet demand.

I don't exactly know what "metaverse" means, but what is clear is that nobody really does right now. Here is an excerpt from a recent article by Benedict Evans :

If the narrow definition of ‘metaverse’ is that VR and AR will be the next smartphone, the broad definition is that there’s going to be a whole new internet. Our experience will be 3D, but much of that will be layered onto the real world as we see it through glasses. Games will become a much larger part of daily life - instead of the current split between a few hundred people playing deep and rich AAA PC and console games and several billion playing much lighter-weight smartphone games, Roblox and Fortnite point to a growing middle ground of persistent, open, accessible and expressive environments that are much more about social and identity than games per se, and that can become platforms and ecosystems for developers. Many of these experiences will blur into each other, and digital goods (skins, avatars and other models of self-expression in digital form) will be portable and interchangeable between these worlds, rather like the characters in Wreck-it Raph could pass between games.

Some people, namely Mark Zuckerberg, believe that VR is going to be the next smartphone. But Benedict raises an interesting point: the direction of travel for tech seems to be toward less immersion, rather than greater immersion. We used to have giant computers that filled rooms. Then computers got smaller. And now we just carry one around in our pocket and pull it out when we're standing in a line and bored. Portability and casual usage are what won out. And so is it reasonable to assume that billions of people are going to want to immerse themselves in VR goggles all day?

I don't see it. Here's my working thesis:

• I am an urbanist. I love cities. And I believe that our deep desire to interact meaningfully with other humans is not going to go away. For this reason, I believe in the less immersion over greater immersion argument.

• At the same time, blockchain technologies have made it possible for us to own, collect, and trade digital assets -- everything from digital fashion to digital art. I think this trend is only going to continue.

• And as this trend continues, we are going to continually look for ways to display and experience these elements of our digital identity. So how do we make that happen? This is an important part of the conversation around "the next smartphone."

• My view is that it's going to be some version of augmented reality , and that we are going to end up with a continuous blurring of the line between physical and digital.

But hey, I could be wrong. Time will tell.

Following my recent post about cycling to the office , Richard Witt of BDP Quadrangle suggested that I do a post on the West Toronto Railpath and use the little influence that I have to try and encourage further expansion. I thought this was a reasonable idea and so here I am writing about it today.

For those of you who may not be familiar, the WTR is a multi-use trail that can be used for "human-powered activities" such as biking, running, or unicycling. And as the name suggests, the path runs on an old rail line on the west side of Toronto. Here is the current route map (we're talking about the dark orange line):

And here's what it looks like today:

It's an incredible amenity and piece of infrastructure on the west side of Toronto, but it's probably also a little underrated. I think of part of this has to do with it being somewhat hidden. And I think another part of this has to do with it being too short.

Right now the WTR runs from Cariboo Ave in the north -- which is around the corner from Junction House -- down to Dundas Street West & Sterling Road in the south. But according to the City of Toronto, an expansion phase has already been funded and construction will start next year . This will take its southern terminus down to Queen Street & Sudbury Street:

All of this is, of course, excellent news. But you and I both know that the WTR needs to be further extended to Union Station, then up north, and probably elsewhere too. So I am here today to advocate for that to happen. If we can find a few billion hanging around to rebuild the Gardiner East (ugh), then surely we can scrape together a few more million for this.

Images: Friends of West Toronto Railpath