Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 907

This Planetizen article (2014) by Brent Toderian surfaced over the weekend. It is about tall buildings and why we should be focused more on how they are designed, as opposed to just how tall they are. Brent talks about this in terms of "density done well."

One of the things that is often misunderstood when it comes to tall buildings is the relationship between height and density. It is often assumed that the two are perfectly correlated; but they're not, which is why I like this quote from the above article:

“Height and density have a relationship, one that can be over-simplified or mischaracterized, but they aren’t the same thing - you can have density without height, and yes, you can have height without density.” -Brent Toderian

Part of the challenge is that density is a more nuanced metric. Height, on the other hand, is a lot easier to understand. How tall is this building? Oh, it is x storeys tall. But that's only one piece of the puzzle.

Photo by  Erwan Hesry  on  Unsplash

I went snowboarding today. As always it was a lot of fun. If only Toronto had mountains.

Here is a Canadian video about snowboarding from 1985 that, I think, does an excellent job demonstrating how resistant to change we humans can sometimes be.

The video sure sounds silly today, but it probably didn’t in 1985. It aired on the CBC.

I am writing this post on my iPad and there doesn’t appear to be a way to embed the video. The Tumblr app isn’t great. So all you’re getting today is a link .

Today, Urbanation released its Q4-2018 market highlights report for the Greater Toronto Area. 

The general media will pick up these numbers and tell you that there’s been a precipitous decline in the number of new condominium sales. But the reality is that 20,028 units were sold in 2018, which is actually in-line with 10-year averages for this region. 2017 was a particularly frenetic, and unsustainable, year.

The average pre-construction sold price for a new condominium in the former City of Toronto (the core) was $1,117 psf last year, and $921 psf across the broader region. These numbers represent significant double digit increases from the year prior. But again, what I don’t think many people appreciate is that the cost environment has also changed dramatically over the last few years.

Construction costs are way up, as are development charges and a myriad of other pro forma line items. The above numbers are simply a result of cost-plus pricing. Here’s where costs are at and here’s where we need to be to make the project feasible. Margins haven’t increased; in fact, they’ve probably been squeezed for many developers.

I think this is an important topic that deserves more transparency and visibility. So I’m hoping to work with a developer friend of mine and publish something more substantial in the coming months.