Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 595

https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1436294488163508227?s=20

I watched a bit of the English leadership debate the other night. Eventually I got frustrated and went to bed, but I understand that housing affordability and overall affordability were important topics.

What is clear, to anyone who cares to look, is that in most big cities we are not building enough new housing. According to the above Economist article (linked in the above tweet ), the "rich world" has seen new housing production drop by about 50% (relative to population) since the 1960s.

There are many reasons for this. But part of the problem is bureaucracy. Things move exceedingly slow. And another part of the problem is community opposition. Urban sprawl can be easier to swallow because there's an out-of-sight-out-of-mind phenomenon at work. Stuff may be happening, but it's not happening in my backyard.

But now that so much of what we do is centered around intensifying existing neighborhoods , we are faced with a battle between the incumbents (existing residents) and the future residents of a community that don't have nearly as much say -- if any at all.

What I like about the Economist article is their line of thinking for how to address this dynamic, which, at the end of the day, is rooted in what I will call expected selfishness.

The approach is around aligning incentives. How could we better structure the delivery of new housing so that more stakeholders stand to directly benefit? Because as we have seen with laneway housing here in Toronto , homeowners will gladly build in their backyard when they stand to benefit directly.

Slate just published a new thought piece on the evolution of the grocery store. It starts with the first "self-service" Piggly Wiggly in Memphis (an innovative approach at that time) and ends with the important functions that grocery stores serve today and will likely serve in the future.

The shopping experience has become increasingly omnichannel (i.e. online & in-store), which means that grocery stores are in the midst of transforming from simple retail stores to hybrid retail and last-mile distribution hubs. (Related post here .)

All of this is central to how we think about this real estate asset class and we are to happy share it publicly in this new thought piece . Slate plans to publish more of these and so, if you're interested, I would encourage you to subscribe at the bottom of the page.

Full disclosure: I am personally long Slate Grocery REIT.

https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1435641373487685639?s=20

Since the summer, I have been using the lunch line at Jimmy the Greek (in First Canadian Place ) as a crude measure for the reopening of the CBD in downtown Toronto. It is partially a joke. Those of you who know me will know I am a fan of Jimmy the Greek (and large filling lunches in general). But at the same time, it is a probably a fairly decent (but again crude) proxy for the utilization rate of the offices that sit above and around Jimmy. Pre-COVID the lunch lines were always long and there was usually nowhere to sit. In the spring of this year, I was often the only person there, single-handedly keeping Jimmy alive. But things picked up throughout the summer months and there was a significant spike this week, following Labor Day (see above tweet). This was the spike that many/most of us were predicting and it showed through in the Jimmy the Greek Reopening Index.