Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 485

https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1542649426166136832?s=20&t=ZVvrafj_bkqWIWEBhghtbg

Back in May, I happen to come across a 1912 copy of Michelin's Guide to France . It was exceedingly cool to see and I'd love to find a copy for my own library. (For those of you looking for a reminder on how the Michelin Guide works, click here .)

After returning to Toronto, I then serendipitously learned that our city would be getting its own guidebook this fall, which will be a first for both Toronto and for Canada as a whole. A Michelin-starred restaurant means something to some people, and has generally been proven to drive tourism dollars -- so this is perhaps a big deal.

But there's a lot of opacity around how these guides work and how a restaurant gets awarded one, two, or three stars. Who are these secretive reviewers? And is it really worth the money that governments need to pay to the French tire company? South Korea allegedly spent US$1.8 million back in 2016 to get its guide.

Andrew Weir, who is the executive vice president of Toronto's tourism marketing group, was recently interviewed about all of the behind-the-scene efforts that took place in order to make this upcoming guide happen. If you'd like to have a read, click here .

In my view, all of this is very much an act of city building.

This is a good idea (taken from a recent FT article by Edwin Heathcote):

The hotel lobby is already understood as a kind of public space, the corporate lobby should belong to that same world, a place open to the functions of the city, porous and welcoming. It is no accident that the vast lobbying industry has that name, lobbies are where encounters occur.

Sometimes we do this. Maybe there's a coffee shop or some other activations in your lobby. But more often than not, a "good" corporate lobby is about grandeur and security, which means that they do very little to animate the street.

In the above article, Edwin reminds us that before the invention of the modern office building, the entire city functioned as a kind of dispersed workplace. Places like coffee shops and pubs were, of course, central to this.

While this is still partially the case today -- people continue to like coffee and beer -- it is interesting to think about what more we could be asking of our office lobbies. And I do think it is more.

I had a friend -- who I know from architecture school -- visiting from Detroit for the weekend, so we did a little building tour on Sunday morning.

This is the elevated (and half-finished) CIBC Square Park that spans over the rail lines leading into Union Station. The benches are beautiful. On the right side of the second photo are also fire pits that are in the process of being setup.

This is us nerding out (photo credit to Neat B ).

And this is the view looking down Bay Street from the stairs that lead up to the park. We tried to snoop around inside a little but a security guard asked us to leave.

This is T3 Bayside -- a new timber office building going up on the waterfront. Apparently it is the tallest of its kind in North America at the moment. I am also embarrassed to say that I just learned that T3 stands for timber, transit, and technology, and that it is part of a broader office development strategy that Hines is rolling out.

This is Tridel's Aquavista. I'm looking forward to the ground floor spaces getting leased up in this area. All of the ingredients seem to be here for a vibrant waterfront community.

This is the next Aqua-something project. We all assumed that there must be strict umbrella rules in place.

This is Monde by Moshe Safdie & BDP Quadrangle (architects) and Great Gulf (developer). It kind of reminds me of 56 Leonard Street (New York) from this elevation. I guess I'm not used to seeing it from the south side.

Finally, this is Sherbourne Common, which is both a park and an important piece of stormwater infrastructure. It treats stormwater before it gets discharged into Lake Ontario and it also helps to reduce poop from flowing into Lake Ontario as a result of combined sewer overflows.

It's fun being a tourist in your own city. We should all do it more often. It makes you appreciate what you have.