Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 933

The University of Toronto School of Cities recently looked at the changing economic geography of Fortune 500 companies across the US from 1975 to 2017. Here is a diagram of the results taken from CityLab :

New York sits at the top with 70 corporate headquarters as of 2017. But the San Francisco Bay Area is now the second largest center with 35 headquarters – a testament to tech.

The study does, however, omit service firms, as these weren’t tracked in Fortune’s list back in 1975.

Also noteworthy is the specialization that has taken place across specific cities and regions. Here is another excerpt from CityLab:

America’s headquarters geography reflects the substantial variation and specialization of the U.S. economy. New York leads in finance and business services, consumer services, and goods and materials. But Houston leads in energy, San Jose in tech, and Chicago in retail and wholesale. Chicago also ranks second in consumer services, and goods and materials, and Dallas takes third in energy. Other cities like Nashville and Minneapolis take third in consumer services, and goods and materials, respectively.

The full article can be found, here .

Urbanation released its Q3-2018 condo market results for the Greater Toronto Area earlier this month. 

Here are a few highlights:

- The unsold inventory of new condos in development is currently 33% below the 10-year average of 14,806 units.

- Year-to-date sales of new condominiums decreased to 14,055 units from 25,839 units (same period last year). 2017 was a record year.

- The average price per square foot for new project launches in Q3-2018 was $1,044 psf. This is the first time the average has broken the $1,000 psf mark. 

- This is a significant price increase from last year and it is being driven by low supply, stable demand, and rising development/construction costs (my opinion).

- The average unit size for project launches in Q3-2018 was 714 sf.

- The average opening quarter absorption rate remains above 55%. It has been this way since Q1-2016.

For the full press release, click here .

I had dinner tonight on King Street and I was reminded that this week marks the one year anniversary of the King Street Transit Pilot here in Toronto.

The pilot has certainly had its share of controversy, but the improvements to both transit reliability and ridership are clear. Average travel times (in each direction) have increased by as much as 7 minutes on the route.

Here’s the latest data from July and August of this year. Steve Munro can also tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the King streetcar.

As our city continues to grow, many are naturally concerned about the ability of our infrastructure to handle the additional demands. Where will all the cars go?

But the reality is that we will never be able to accommodate everybody driving around in their own car. Which is why we have to rely on transit and solutions like the King Street Transit Pilot.

What’s your opinion of the pilot now that it has been in place for a year? I almost forget what it was like before we had it.