Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 608

I was recently having a discussion on Twitter about midrise buildings and architect Dermot Sweeny raised the important distinction between creating "spines" and creating "districts."

What he was referring to with "spines" was the way in which Toronto is intensifying its "Avenues" with midrise buildings. It is a kind of linear form of intensification which almost always means that each building must transition in some way to the low-rise housing that typically abuts our Avenues. This is far less relevant in districts.

We have started to increase housing supply in our "Neighborhoods" through things like laneway houses and garden suites, but in most cases, we are arguably not creating urban districts.

This is of course a touchy subject. But I think it's an important discussion to be having for a number reasons:

• Increasing housing supply is a good thing

• Angular planes and other transition measures make housing more expensive

• Urban places are, I would argue, better defined through districts rather than spines

• Mixed-use (employment) becomes more viable with districts

• Transit infrastructure is better utilized with radial density around its stations

Can you think of any others?

Photo: Old Montrêal (Shot on iPhone)

These are photos from the terrace of a restaurant in Old Montreal called Boris Bistro . It's not new -- it's been around since 1999 -- but that doesn't change the fact that its outdoor space is absolutely magical.

The terrace sits behind an old stone facade on McGill Street that is held up with a three-storey steel structure. Hello façadism! I have tried to figure out the vintage of the original building through a cursory look online, but I came up with nothing. (Drop it in comment section below if you happen to know.)

What we were told at the restaurant was that the original building burnt down, leaving just the facade and then an open space behind it. The size of the trees on the terrace do suggest that it's been this way for a long time.

There's an office building beside it that looks to be of a 90s vintage (465 McGill Street) and this open space was apparently a place for office workers to go smoke. But now the ground floor of the office building and the terrace function as one large contiguous space.

The result is what you see above. Magic.

Montréal has been city building for a lot longer than Toronto. Some 400 years depending on how you calculate it. This history has created one of the most beautiful built environments anywhere in the world.

I saw a headline yesterday that the CDC was now reporting that vaccinated people can spread COVID just as easily as unvaccinated people. I then thought to myself, "this is not a good headline if you're trying to encourage people to get vaccinated."

What I guess this is saying is that vaccinated people who end up contracting COVID ("breakthrough" cases) have similar viral loads to people who are unvaccinated. So it makes sense that they would then be able to transmit the virus to others.

But the more important point remains that vaccinated people are less likely to spread the virus to others because they are less likely to actually get it in the first place.

Yes, the vaccines are not 100% effective. But supposedly the latest hospital data suggests that vaccines remain 87% effective at preventing hospitalization. This, of course, means that some vaccinated people will still get sick and that, yes, they might transmit it to others.

But for the vast majority of people that shouldn't be the case.

Update: My point is that clear and consistent messaging is important.