Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 490

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Okay, so maybe this isn't an entirely definitive guide. But the intent is to make this post a kind of working post. As new ideas emerge (from my end or from your ends ), I will endeavor to update it, so that maybe one day it will become a bit more definitive. I also think it's important to keep it a little crazy. Because housing affordability is clearly a tough problem to solve, so unless we start thinking differently and acting boldly, we may not get there.

Here goes.

• Encourage new housing at all scales (low, mid, high)

• "Upzone" all major streets and transit station areas

• Allow multi-unit dwellings in low-rise neighborhoods and ensure that any applicable codes and/or policies are not creating unnecessary obstacles to building at this scale

• Work to make the largest possible housing scale permissible on an as-of-right basis -- that is, remove the rezoning process wherever possible and allow builders to go right to a building permit (a lengthy rezoning process can cost millions)

• Avoid the use of inclusionary zoning policies that do not provide an equal offset or subsidy (such as a density bonus)

• Ensure that any development charges and levies are commensurate with the burdens created by new housing and that existing property owners are funding their fair share through property taxes

• Identify the areas that are NOT seeing new housing and then create incentives to make development feasible

• Search for underutilized land and other opportunities to add new housing -- no land parcel should be considered too small

• Incentivize small-scale prototypes as a way to test out new ideas and foster innovation -- specifically with respect to climate change and construction productivity

• Eliminate all parking minimums - no ifs, ands, or buts

• Depoliticize the planning process as much as possible -- local politicians are not generally incentivized to encourage new housing

• Eliminate the ability for individuals to block or significantly delay new housing

• Ensure that there are enough staff to expeditiously review and process development and building permit applications -- if builders are hiring "expediters" in the hopes of moving these things along, it means something is broken

• Put in place strict response and issuance timelines for building permits

• Bonus city staff (and anyone else who touches housing supply) based on the number of housing units approved and permitted each year

• Design smaller and more urban-friendly garbage trucks so that less space is lost in every new housing development

• Reduce/eliminate complex urban design guidelines, such as Toronto's widely used 45-degree angular plane guideline

What is missing from this list? And/or what did I get wrong?

Last updated: July 25, 2022

Back in 2014, Amsterdam became the first city to have what is called a "night mayor." The role of a night mayor is what the name suggests. They are intended to be the chief executive officer of a city's nighttime economy. And so it was and it continues to be recognition that the night can be an important economic development tool.

This seemed to work out well for Amsterdam, which is why many other cities quickly followed suit with their own night mayor elections. During this time, a number of us here in Toronto also started advocating for our own nighttime CEO. (FYI, here is a link to the current night mayor of Amsterdam.)

But fast forward to today and the tone seems to have changed in Amsterdam. The city's daytime mayor, Femke Halsema, is now actively concerned about over-tourism and, in particular, the way that some tourists behave when they check-in to Amsterdam.

Here's an excerpt from a recent interview that she did with Bloomberg:

We have to tackle two problems. The first problem is what I’d call the London problem: Our city is becoming too expensive. That is also part of being an international city and having many expats living here. But it has consequences for the middle classes. It’s very difficult to find a house in Amsterdam except for the highest incomes, so our middle class — teachers, police officers, people working in health care — are leaving the city. We’re very alert about it. For a city to survive in the long run you need social stability and people from middle or lower classes to also feel at home.

Our second problem is the Venice problem: The people who live here become estranged especially in the city center, because it’s no longer part of their city. We have to find a new balance, in being a home for people from Amsterdam and at the same time welcoming international visitors and tourists.

More specifically, the Venice problem seems to be a problem of behavior:

It’s not a form of tourism we welcome or don’t welcome — it’s a form of behavior. What we do not welcome is people who come here on a vacation from morals. They express a form of behavior they would not express at home. People coming here to lose their morals is a problem for us.

It is for this reason that the city is hoping to relocate its red light district to outside of the city center . The intention is not to get rid of it, or for the city to turn its back on its long history of tolerance, but it does want to move it somewhere else in the hopes that Amsterdam will become more associated with culture than hedonism.

But does moving it actually change any behaviors? If one were to develop a purpose-built "erotic center" from the ground up, is it even possible to make it more integrated with the broader city (minimize the Venice problem) and, to use the mayor's words, make it more chic than what currently exists?

These are all exceedingly tough city building questions that can't really be untangled from questions of morality.

For the full Bloomberg interview with mayor Halsema, click here .

Photo by Azhar J on Unsplash

In 1973, 580,000 mobile homes (or manufactured home as they are now called) shipped in the United States. This represented about 50% of the number of single-family housing starts that year, and about 22% of total housing starts. So they represented a significant chunk of the overall housing supply.

But following the collapse of the US housing market in 1974, an interesting thing happened. Manufactured homes never managed to reclaim their position in the stack. See above chart. Brian Potter, author of Construction Physics, puts forward a number of possible explanations for this, over here .

Some have speculated that it was the result of new code changes that ended up increasing costs. Some have speculated that it was because of a new requirement to include a steel chassis on the bottom of every home, which also increased costs, but more importantly stigmatized manufactured homes. It made them seem transient, whereas previously they were installed on permanent foundations.

There are also some theories that manufactured home production was harder hit during the economic downturn given that they had more fixed plant costs (compared to site-built homes with their variable labor costs).

But Brian's current working theory is that it comes down to capital flows. Manufactured homes tend to cater to lower-income buyers and so supply, as the argument goes, has largely depended on "lax lending" practices being made available to them.

I'm not so sure that this is the only reason though. For one thing, multi-family housing starts have followed a somewhat similar trajectory to manufactured homes. We've certainly seen an increase in supply over the last decade, but we've never gotten back to that early 1970's peak.

And so I wonder: How much of this is actually just the result of the single-family home hegemony? This is arguably what the market has historically wanted (look at the split pre-1973 in the above chart), and so perhaps we simply refocused our attention there and worked to make this housing type as accessible as possible to the masses.

Chart via Brian Potter