Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 745

Just look at these deep cantilevered balconies and this board-formed concrete. Let's also not forget the fine-grain retail and small mid-block laneway.

Designed by Woods Bagot for Komplete Construction , the "Short Lane" project was completed in the Surry Hills neighborhood of Sydney in 2018. It has 22 suites -- each with both north and south exposure -- and is about 1,900 square meters in total. So the average suite size looks to be somewhere in the range of 80 square meters.

Here's a peak inside:

And here are those cantilevered balconies again:

I have no idea what the entitlement process is in Sydney for a project like this. If you do, please share it in the comments below. But this is undoubtedly an attractive scale and type of infill housing, something that I think should be encouraged and allowed as-of-right. No multi-year rezoning process. No complicated site plan process. Just cool infill housing.

Photos: Woods Bagot

The submission documents for 1200 Bay Street -- the supertall being designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Quadrangle Architects -- are now publicly available through the City of Toronto's development applications website. I went through the plans today out of curiosity. Below are the typical residential floors. The three tranches shown here are floors 19-46, 48-79, and 81-84. Note the side elevator core and the east-west shear walls -- both of which I was expecting to see.

And here are some of the main project stats:

• Site area after laneway widening: 890.1 square meters

• Total gross floor area (residential & non-residential): 54, 898 square meters

• Floor space index: 61.67

• Building height (excluding mechanical penthouse): 324 meters

• Number of residential suites: 332

• Vehicular parking spaces proposed: 0

• Bicycle parking spaces proposed: 673

As a rule and out of professional courtesy, I do not comment on other people's projects on this blog (other than to occasionally point out awesome and ambitious projects). But I do enjoy going through drawing sets to see what others are doing and to see what I might learn. And I am similarly happy to collaborate with others who may want to learn from what we are doing.

If you'd like to download a copy of the submission package, you can do that by entering the address over here .

Supposedly there are more than 14,000 airplanes parked around the world right now. And according to the latest numbers from IATA , this is expected to translate into an $84 billion loss for global commercial airlines in 2020. The industry is not expected to return to profitability until 2022. As a point of comparison, net profits were about $26.4 billion last year.

Some more numbers from IATA:

Here is something else from the Journal . The number of airline routes has doubled over the past two decades. That has included the number of city-to-city routes. IATA is predicting that by the end of this year we will see these urban routes decline by about 20% compared to last year. And who knows when they will return. Perhaps in 2022, along with profitability.

The reason I point this out is because if you follow the work and writing of planner Joe Berridge, you will know that he often cites airports as being a key piece of infrastructure for global cities . At one point, having a deep harbor was everything you needed in order to bring in goods and people. But today a solid airport is paramount.

Will the loss of this city-to-city connectivity have an impact on some cities?