Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 489

One of the things that you need to do when you're constructing a building is arrange for new utility connections. Sometimes there's enough capacity to support what you're building and sometimes the capacities need to be upgraded (which usually becomes the responsibility of the developer).

But according to this recent Financial Times article , some new applicants in west London are now being told that there won't be "sufficient electrical capacity for a new connection" until, oh I don't know, maybe 2035. And it could affect all new housing projects with 25 or more units.

This is a pretty wild piece of news. And it certainly won't be good for overall housing supply. The three west London boroughs that are being impacted by this capacity issue were responsible for about 5,000 new homes between 2019-2020. That's about 11% of London's total housing supply.

So what and who is to blame for this? The Greater London Authority is saying that data centers are at least partially responsible. Too many new data centers in the area with high electrical loads.

I don't know exactly what is going on here (maybe some of you do), but now feels like a good time to turn our attention to solar power. I recently visited a large 3,000 panel rooftop installation here in the Greater Toronto Area, and so naturally there is a blog post in the works. Stay tuned.

It is obvious that Toronto needs to find new ways to increase housing supply. And I have written before about how I think our major streets are a good place to look.

The above proposal by Naama Blonder of Smart Density is one way to start thinking about how we could do that. Dubbed the "mini mid-rise", the idea here was to show how a single lot might be intensified with a small multi-unit building.

This is a great idea. It was one of five projects that just won the Ontario Association of Architects' annual design challenge . But for it to have a chance at working, we're going to need to remove all of the friction associated with building this kind of housing.

These would need to be permissible as-of-right. No rezoning. No site plan control. Just straight to building permit.

We would also need to eliminate all parking requirements (which we are thankfully doing). The market will very quickly correct if these homes cannot be rented without parking.

We would need to ensure that these homes can be built without any cooperation from the adjacent neighbors. Because that cooperation may not always be there.

We would need to ensure that there are no funny code requirements that might serve as an additional obstacle.

And we will probably also need to look at subsidies and other incentives so that these homes are economically feasible to build. This might include development charge waivers and/or tax abatements.

None of this is, of course, impossible. It's just a question of how bad we want this to happen.

Image via Smart Density

Here in Canada, there is often a belief that Americans tend to be more mobile than Canadians. Don't like the cold weather? Just move south. Taxes too high? Just move south. Housing too expensive? Just move south.

But just how mobile is mobile? A new study by the US Census Bureau and Harvard University found that by age 26, more than 2/3 of young adults in the US actually just live where they grew up, with 80% living within 100 miles, and 90% living within 500 miles.

Migration distances were also found to be impacted by both race and parental income (though these two things likely exhibit a relationship on their own). If you are a young white or Asian adult, the "radius of economic opportunity" tends to grow and you're more likely to live further away from where you grew up.

The most popular destinations overall are New York, Los Angeles, Washington, and Denver (in this order). And while New York and Los Angeles remain at the top regardless of who you are, San Antonio and Phoenix are top destinations for Hispanics, and San Francisco is a top destination for Asians.

Regardless, home appears to be a pretty sticky place.

But what about Canadians? Are we less mobile? Looking at net domestic migration rates, Canada saw 254,143 interprovincial migrants between 2018-2019, whereas the US saw just over a million between 2020-2021. So on a per capita basis, Canada's rate is actually higher.

Statistics Canada also estimated earlier this year that as of July 1, 2016, somewhere around 4 million Canadians were living abroad -- or about 11% of citizens. This is a much higher percentage compared to Americans .

Of those living abroad, roughly half are believed to have received their citizenship through descent, meaning they were born abroad to Canadian parents. About 1/3 are Canadian citizens by birth. And about 15% are naturalized citizens.

So it turns out that Canadians are in fact pretty mobile. We also seem to like going further afield.