Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 730

Back in March, SPUR Regional Strategy published a report called: " What It Will Really Take to Create an Affordable Bay Area ." Much of its focus is on all of the housing that the San Francisco Bay Area should have been building over the years and all of the housing that it will need to start building in order to prevent things from getting worse.

Here are a few stats to put things into perspective. Since 2000, the Bay Area has added about 1 million people (about a 15% increase). From 2011 to 2017, the Bay Area also added some 658,000 jobs, but only created about 140,000 new housing units. That's 4.7 jobs for every new house built. SPUR further estimates that over the last 20 years, there has been a shortfall of almost 700,000 new housing units.

If you look at the above chart showing residential building permits issued between 1980 and 2018, you can see that the Bay Area was actually more prolific in the 1980s -- peaking at nearly 50,000 units per year. Those levels have yet to happen again, despite the region growing in population. (If you looked at new housing units per capita or some other normalized metric, the supply decline would be even more pronounced.)

Part of the reason for this is that the supply of housing in the 1980s had a higher percentage of low-rise single-family homes. We could get into a discussion about sustainability, but that's not the topic of today's post. The reality is that this housing typology was easier, faster, and cheaper to build as compared to today's urban infill housing. We have made it very difficult to build.

To download a copy of the SPUR report, click here .

https://youtu.be/RQLoZKaCQfA

Italian techno DJ Deborah De Luca recently released this live set with Mixmag . Naturally she was playing by herself on a rooftop. Even if you don't like techno, you may find this set interesting because of its setting. It was filmed in Vele di Scampia, which is a housing complex in northern Naples and the suburb where she grew up. But Vele is also one of the most notorious public housing projects in Italy and the world -- known for its decaying brutalist architecture, its drugs and crime, and its role in housing the Camorra crime syndicate .

Built between 1962 and 1975, the "Sails of Scampia" were designed by Italian architect Franz Di Salvo and inspired by the work and thinking of architect Le Corbusier. Obviously this is a recipe that has been tried out all over the world and the results here are not entirely unique ( see also Pruitt-Igoe ). The complex was based on two building types: towers and tents. The towers are what you might imagine and the tents are what create the "sails" that today define the complex.

The apartments were designed to be simple. But the idea was to connect them with elaborate exterior common spaces that simulate, in a way, the many alleys and courtyards of Naples. (Does this sound like a co-living project?) There are many possible explanations for what went wrong. Perhaps the best place to look for answers is the book Gomorrah written by Robert Saviano .

But what I always wonder is to what extent was the architecture and the approach to urban design responsible for these outcomes? In other words, how much of this is a result of built form and how much of this is a result of socioeconomic factors, such as poor management, high unemployment, and a lack of policing in the area? According to Wikipedia, Scampia had an unemployment rate of about 50% as of 2004.

Le Vele initially consisted of seven buildings, but four of them have already been demolished. In the next few years two more will come down, leaving only one. Supposedly the plan is to keep this last building and refurbish it so that the history of Le Vele isn't lost entirely. Some, including Robert Saviano , are questioning why the state would ever want to commemorate such a horrible place. But if it is repositioned and if it proves to be successful, it may actually help to answer some of my questions.

In the meantime, we'll just have to enjoy Deborah's set.

Netflix has a new docuseries out about Latin American street food. I watched two episodes of it last night. The first was about a chef from Buenos Aires, Argentina and the second was about a chef -- named Dona Suzana -- from Salvador, Brazil. Even if you aren't necessarily into food shows, it's a good way to remind yourself just how much you probably miss traveling right now.

The story of Dona Suzana is an interesting one. Before opening her restaurant, she was doing laundry in order to make ends meet. Then at one point, the City of Salvador came to her community in order to undertake a large construction project. They needed someone to cook food for the construction workers and so they asked her if she would do it.

Since she had always dreamed of being a chef, she jumped at the opportunity and took out a loan to buy everything she needed in order to fit out her kitchen. She cooked for the workers and everyone loved the food. But she never ended up getting paid. They stiffed her.

That turned her off cooking for a bit and it was not until a trio of graffiti artists were working in her community and looking for a place to eat that she tried her hand at it again. They offered to pay her in advance and persuaded her to make them something. She agreed and the food was a huge hit.

In fact, the group of artists loved the food so much that they made her a sign with the name "RéRestaurante" (titled this way because Dona has a stutter) and began sharing photos of her dishes on social media. All of a sudden she had people showing up at her door. And today she has people from all around the world showing up at her door.

This is a wonderful success story. But I think it also says something about land use policies. As far as I can tell from the episode, she setup her restaurant at her place of residence -- a community along the waterfront where her husband fishes and where she uses his catches for her renowned dishes.

Here in Toronto, we are operating in an environment where if you try and setup a coffee shop in a residential "Neighbourhood" -- like, for example, Contra at 1028 Shaw Street -- you might spend a few years fighting with your neighbors and battling it out at LPAT hearings in order to get the appropriate permissions.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that we should do away with all zoning (or maybe I am). But I would like to draw your attention to this contrast. Because one has to wonder whether RéRestaurante Dona Suzana would exist today and be known around the world had the barriers to entry not been so low for her. Of course, had there been more rules, maybe she wouldn't have gotten stiffed the first time around.

Either way, I am currently in the market for some dende oil .

Photo by Milo Miloezger on Unsplash