Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 689

I get that real estate developers don't always have the best of reputations. We build buildings that cast shadows. We invest in (or gentrify) neighborhoods. And yes, like every other for-profit business, the goal is to make a bit of money along the way.

But believe it or not, there are developers out there who care deeply about the work that they do. They care about their craft. And they want to do the right thing.

Perhaps the best way for me to start to explain what I'm getting at here is to quote the late Steve Jobs. An obsessive perfectionist, Jobs was known for focusing on every little detail in the projects that he worked on. Here's an excerpt from an interview he did for Playboy back in 1985 :

" We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through. "

As a developer and a fake architect , this paragraph really resonates with me. But here's the thing. One of the differences between making a beautiful chest of drawers (or a computer) and making a beautiful building, is that buildings have an inordinate amount of rules that tell you what you can build where and then how you need to build.

Some of these rules, of course, make a lot of sense. Life safety is no joke. But some of these rules also make no sense. And sometimes these rules -- that don't make sense -- prevent you from putting what I would metaphorically consider to be that beautiful piece of wood on the back.

The beautiful piece of wood isn't about money. In fact, it's going to cost you more compared to just using a piece of plywood. It's about giving a shit and caring about your craft, even if nobody else does. It's so you can sleep well at night.

Photo by Michał Kubalczyk on Unsplash

With laneway suites permitted as-of-right across the entirety of Toronto, the City is now looking to other forms of accessory dwelling units and other ways to increase the supply of rental housing. The next frontier is likely to be something that the City is broadly referring to as garden suites. And the timing is likely to be as early as next summer. Here's how they're defining it (taken from this recent report ):

Garden Suites are sometimes referred to by other names, such as “coach houses”, “tiny
homes”, and even “granny flats”. However they are all effectively the same idea – a
detached accessory dwelling unit generally located in the rear yard of a detached
house, semi-detached house, townhouse, or other low-rise dwelling. It is generally
smaller in scale, functioning as a separate rental housing unit. Garden Suites are similar
in form and function to Laneway Suites, which are currently permitted across the City in
all low-rise residential zones in the city-wide Zoning By-law, 569-2013. To avoid any
confusion between these terms, the City is considering all types of detached-accessory dwelling-unit to be a Garden Suite, for the purpose of this review, with the exception of a
Laneway Suite, which is already permitted and defined within the Zoning By-law.

The above report will be going to Planning and Housing Committee on December 8, 2020. The goals are to kickstart the public consultation process and to come up with the necessary recommendations to permit garden suites by the second quarter of 2021. Like laneway suites, they are expected to be as-of-right. That means straight to building permit. No variances (and contentious Committee of Adjustment meetings) required.

This is great news and I'm looking forward to seeing garden suites become a reality in 2021. For more information about what's happening on December 8th, click here .

Art Basel Miami Beach was cancelled this year for obvious reasons. It had originally been scheduled to kick off on December 3rd. But Design Miami is still hosting some physical exhibitions and naturally a lot of online programming. They also partnered up with Dezeen (and others) to host a series of online talks as part of the festival. Here is one about Latin American architecture and its symbiotic relationship with Miami. For some, Miami is known as "the capital of Latin America." This talk explores that idea, but also how the relationship really runs both ways. It's with architects Tatiana Bilbao and Carlos Zapata, and developer Joseph Schwarzkopf.

https://youtu.be/e5kK33AvhxE

If you can't see the video, click here .