Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 635

Since the beginning of this year, the London School of Economics has been running a debate series called, Cities in the 2020s: How are cities responding to profound global change? The next event is about localizing transport and it's scheduled for May 20, 2021. If you'd like to attend, click here . It's free and open to all. The one thing I would add is that I am getting the strong sense right now -- as cities, other than Toronto, begin to reopen -- that people are starting to remember just how much more fruitful in-person interactions are compared to being on screen. There's no comparison. In fact, earlier today I had in-person work interaction that resulted in a positive outcome that I am certain would not have happened otherwise. And as an ENTJ (business school made me take these personality tests), I find that I derive a lot of my energy from being around other people. As long as these sorts of things remain true, I believe that we will stay tethered to our cities and reliant on things like mass transit.

Fred Wilson wrote a great post last month about leadership. In it, he compares what he calls visionary leadership to operational leadership. Here's a snippet:

I like to keep things simple and in my simple mind, leadership comes in two flavors, visionary leadership and operational leadership. Founders are almost always visionaries (if they aren’t, run in the opposite direction) and hired CEOs are almost always operators.

The post goes on to explain the dynamics between these two types of leadership. Vision, he argues, needs to come from the top. You need someone setting direction at a high level. Operational leadership doesn't have to be this way, and often isn't. You can hire for it.

In some special cases, you have leaders who are both. Another snippet:

Leaders who can provide both operational and visionary leadership are a rare but special breed. When you find one, get on their bus and stay on it for as long as you can. It will be an incredible trip.

I have seen all of this play out in the real estate development space.

There are people who are great at identifying new sites (land) and coming up with fresh and innovative ideas, but it is clear that they need an operator or two around them. There's nothing wrong with this pairing.

Development is also a very long and slow game and you need people who can operate -- deeply in the weeds -- over extended periods of time. Persistence and tenacity are crucial. Patience I guess, too.

If this topic is of interest to you, I recommend you check out the rest of Fred's post .

Witold Rybczynski makes an interesting comparison between military and civilian (city) planning in a recent blog post called, " The Fog of Life ." Here's an excerpt:

Good military planning, as I understand it, is based on preparing for “what if,” that is, developing different scenarios. What if this happens, or that happens? City planning is different, more like advocacy, that is, what should happen. This advocacy is based on certainties: open space is good, density is good—or bad, depending. The problem is that what planners think should happen—separation of pedestrians and cars, superblocks, megastructures—often runs into trouble when it hits the fog of life.

These are two very different perspectives. "What if" planning responses assume that a thing has already happened. You're not working to affect a particular outcome, you're responding to one that already exists. Does this necessarily make this approach more reactive than proactive?

Either way, what should happen implies that the thing isn't currently happening, but that it should -- presumably because the thing is nice and desirable. It could also imply that the thing is sort of happening, but just isn't happening quite enough.

Let's use the example of 3-bedroom condominiums and apartments, which is a topic of discussion that has been circling in Toronto for as long as I've been in the business. Developers here, are generally encouraged or mandated to build a certain number of larger family-sized suites in every new housing project. Oftentimes this number is 10% of the total unit count.

The reasoning behind this is sound. Cities should be inclusive and they should work for the young, the old, the single, and for families, among others. The problem is that, for a variety of reasons, the market, when left to do its own thing, tends to build more small units than large units. At least that's the case here in Toronto. (I've talked about some of the reasons why in previous posts.)

There is a view that if only developers built more large units that more families would choose to live in apartments. It's an issue of supply and availability, and also a question of design. You need to design for families too. This you could say is a "what if" approach. Families want to live in multi-family buildings; so let's build more and better family-sized housing.

But is this really the case or is there some advocacy going on here? All things being equal, does the market want low-rise or does it prefer higher density? It's a fascinating set of questions, but unfortunately all things aren't equal. It's not just a question of availability and design, it's also a question of economics. Large family-sized units cost money.

I suppose this is the fog of life.