Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 9

Periodically, Twitter will surface posts for me that bemoan modern architecture and advocate for good old-fashioned traditional architecture. Sometimes these posts will share a modern building with a disparaging comment like, "Imagine wanting this over traditional architecture," and sometimes I will engage because, yeah, I would prefer the modernist building to traditional architecture.

But let's be clear: I don't have an issue with traditional architecture done well, and there are also countless examples of "modern" architecture that I think are truly abysmal. This is not about architectural tribalism. I love Paris and think it is beautiful, but I also think Brazil's equatorial brutalism is equally beautiful. Both feel authentic.

Here's how I would describe my position.

First, focusing on one style or another is not the goal. Many contemporary architects think of " style " as a bad word. It implies a superficial veneer. Great architecture aims to be something deeper and more intentional. It solves problems, responds to specific conditions, and also presents new ideas.

Second, the beauty of art, architecture, and design is that they are never created in a vacuum. They always reflect the current cultural environment. The challenge I have with traditional architecture is that I find it curious to try to speak to a moment in time that no longer exists. I am much more interested in authenticity and what the future might bring.

And third, movements take time. It's easy to romanticize the past as being better than our current environment. Whether we're talking about Impressionist painters or architecture free of ornament (in the case of modernism), it is intellectually easier to think the old ways were better. But history has shown us that posterity will almost certainly come to see things differently.

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Cover photo by laura adai

How quickly things can change. In 2024, the Toronto Census Metropolitan Area was the fastest-growing region in Canada and the US. Then, last year, it lost around 1,000 people and dropped to 443rd place. See above chart. The obvious explanation is Canada's concerted effort to reduce temporary workers and international students. But actually, Toronto is still one of the top regions when it comes to net international migration, adding 53,000 people in 2025. The real story, according to recent analysis from the Centre for Urban Research and Land Development at TMU, is that Toronto has simply gotten too expensive, driving massive domestic out-migration. Last year, Toronto lost 77,500 people this way, wiping out its natural growth and its net international migration gains. This is our regular reminder that we need to be far better at delivering attainable housing at scale.

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Cover photo by Frank Huang

Chart from The Globe and Mail

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is being hosted across 16 different cities in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The city hosting the most games is Dallas, with 9 matches. Supposedly, this is because the city has a nice stadium with a retractable roof and capacity for 70,649 people, and Dallas is a fairly central location for a tournament being hosted across North America.

But here's another way of looking at the stadiums. The School of Cities at the University of Toronto recently published a study called " Transit-Oriented Stadiums ." What they did was look at how well connected each stadium is to its host city by public transit. More specifically, they looked at how many people live within a 60-minute public transit isochrone polygon.

Dallas Stadium (AT&T Stadium) is in Arlington, Texas, and it has about 100,000 residents within a 60-minute transit trip:

Now, here's Toronto. BMO Field has a much smaller capacity (43,036 people), but over 2 million residents live within a 60-minute transit trip:

Mexico City's transit catchment reaches over 2.1 million people, despite its stadium being out of the core of the city:

And Vancouver takes the top spot with over 2.3 million people:

These diagrams highlight a striking divide in land-use patterns. The two key factors are stadium placement and transit investment. Obviously, if you flipped the script and mapped the number of residents within a 60-minute drive, then Dallas Stadium would perform quite differently. But bringing 70,000 people to one location via cars will never match the spatial efficiency of public transit.

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Cover photo by Ronin

Diagrams from the School of Cities at the University of Toronto