Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 622

As most of you know, laneway suites (a form of accessory dwelling unit) are permitted "as-of right" across the City of Toronto. This has led to an explosion of new laneway housing. One framing contractor that I know recently told me that he is now doing a new laneway house every month. Incredible considering how out-there they were only 10 years ago .

However, there are a few barriers to participation with the current policies, one of which is that you need to be adjacent to a laneway in order to have an eligible lot. So the City has been working on adapting these policies to suit residential properties without a public lane. These new accessory dwelling units are being referred to as "garden suites."

The draft garden suite regulations are now available online and will be heard at Planning and Housing Committee next week . The recommendations are that these regulations form the basis for further community engagement, and that a final report be brought back to the Committee in Q4 of this year.

This final report is expected to recommend Official Plan policies and Zoning By-law regulations so that garden suites, along with laneway suites, can be as-of-right across the city. This is great news. So if you have a lot without a public lane and you're considering an ADU, now might be a good time to start planning.

The best place to start doing that would be with these draft regulations .

Here are some interesting figures from a recent Statistics Canada article about Canada's national net worth.

In the first quarter of this year, Canada's national net worth increased by over $1 trillion or 7.7% to reach nearly $15 trillion. This is, as I understand it, record-breaking. National net worth is defined as the sum of national wealth and Canada's net foreign asset position, the latter of which is assets that Canada owns abroad, minus the value of any domestic assets owned by foreigners. Most of the increase this past quarter was in national wealth .

Here is a chart that speaks to this (quarterly change in national net worth by component). Again, the light blue is national wealth. It is the biggest bar.

On a per capita basis, which is much easier to contextualize, national net worth rose from $365,184 to $392,496.

The other metric that is up is household savings. We've talked about this before on the blog, but check out this chart. In the first quarter of this year, it was 13.1%. And at the beginning of the pandemic, back in Q2-2020, it was 27.4%. I believe these figures represent the percentage of after-tax disposable income that is saved. Either way, a double digit savings rate is not typical for Canadians.

So what is driving this increase in national wealth? A big part of it is the value of residential real estate, which increased 9.4% in the first quarter. StatsCan is calling this "unprecedented" but I don't know how far back they are looking to make this claim.

Because of this, increases in net worth have been, not surprisingly, unequally felt. For households that own their home, net worth increased by over $730 billion last quarter. For households that rent their home, net worth increased by approximately $43 billion. On a per household basis, this translates into net worth increases of approximately $73,000 and $8,000, respectively.

This is a meaningful spread.

For the full Statistics Canada article, click here .

Google just opened up its first ever retail store. It's in Chelsea in New York City at the base of its offices in a building that the company owns. The space is about 5,000 square feet and it occupies a full city block.

A collaboration with New York-architect, Suchi Reddy , the retail space is deliberately different from what you'll find at an Apple store (though the broad intentions are arguably similar). Instead of sleek, metallic and futuristic, the focus here was on creating a warm and inviting space that feels more like a home. (Note the pale woods.)

The approach is intended to make a statement about the role that technology, or at least Google's technology, should play in our lives. It is about tech servicing humanity and not the other way around.

FastCompany has a good article, here , that explains all of this.

It is interesting to watch these spaces evolve into what we are now calling experiential retail or commerce. If you read the FastCompany article you'll read about the work that Johns Hopkins University is doing on neuroaesthetics, which is the study of how spaces and aesthetics affect our bodies. That is how finely tuned these spaces have become.

And it's kind of what you need to do today. Consider the example of Microsoft's retail stores, which launched in a clear attempt to mimic the successes that Apple has seen with its stores. They even looked somewhat similar. But then last year Microsoft announced that the company would be closing all of its stores.

Why? Part of the problem is that they were too focused on just selling Microsoft products. And that, it would seem, can't really be the main objective anymore. You also need to consider the experience. What story are we telling about our brand with our space, and is it compelling enough to standout?

P.S. The first image at the top of this post is of their Google Translate booth. You walk in. Say something. And Google translates the hell out of it for you.

Photos: Google