Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 821

There is something happening in many North American cities right now. We are starting to question the supremacy of zoning for only single-family homes.

This past summer, the state of Oregon passed policy requiring cities of 25,000 people or more to allow duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes within their single-family home neighborhoods. Minneapolis is poised to do something similar with its Minneapolis 2040 plan (though it has been contentious ). And, of course, here in Toronto we recently rolled out laneway suites all across the city . Small scale multi-family dwellings are also already permissible in some areas (though few are being built).

Some are calling this a YIMBY movement. But however you want to define it, it's an acknowledgement that, if the goal is to built up instead of out , perhaps it's time we look at the parts of our cities with the lowest population densities. I would also add that following my recent post on Paris vs. Vancouver , many seemed to gravitate (in the comments) toward the Parisian model -- even if it did result in over 50,000 people per square kilometer. Density, it would appear, is okay.

While positive, it remains to be seen whether these policy changes will result in a meaningful increase in housing supply. And a lot of that will come down to the details. As I have said before on the blog, the math can be challenging on these sorts of smaller projects , which is why you have smart people proposing things like an " inverse density " rule to help encourage more smaller scale development.

But as the saying goes, sometimes you need to crawl before you can walk. And, if nothing else, there's certainly symbolic value to what seems to be taking hold across North America right now.

I am a big fan of lights on buildings. Here is a photo of the Massey Tower (by MOD Developments and Hariri Pontarini Architects ) that I quickly took on my walk home from the office this evening:

It's not a very good photo and it's not doing the project justice. So here's another shot of the mechanical penthouse lighting from their Instagram.

I've been noticing this lighting for a while now, and every time I see it I think to myself, "That's really well done." It's simple, elegant, and it reinforces the overall architectural intent of the building.

We are entering that time of the year, at least here in Toronto, where most of us will leave work and it will already be dark out. So the lighting on our buildings and in our public spaces can serve a particularly important function.

Lighting can, of course, be done poorly. And we do need to be mindful of migratory birds during the spring and fall . Artificial light disorients them at night.

But we all know how important lighting is to our interior spaces. The same is true for our urban spaces.

Applications to American business schools, including MBA programs, have fallen for five straight years according to this recent WSJ article .

Compared to last year, business school applications to US schools are down about 9.1%; whereas they have been rising in other parts of the world. If you look at the change in applications from international students, the drop is even more significant -- about 13.7%.

Here are two charts from the WSJ:

There are a couple of possible explanations for this. Tech is/has been hot. I would imagine that space has been absorbing many people who would have historically gone to do an MBA.

But perhaps more significantly, stricter immigration policies are making it harder for international students to come to the US. At the same time, top tier alternatives are emerging around the world, such as in China.

China exports more business school students than any other country and they are by far the largest international student base in the US . But the numbers are coming down. At the peak in 2015, the US issued nearly 275,000 student visas to people from China. By 2017, that number had more than halved to 112,817.

Out of curiosity, I decided to look up the class profile for the most recent Rotman MBA cohort (my alma mater). 70% of the class was born outside of Canada. That's not surprising.

Charts: WSJ