Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 942

The Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University recently published this overview of the “socioeconomic factors affecting demand for housing in Chicago.”

Here is the change in population in the City of Chicago from 1950 to 2016:

And here is a comparison between Chicago and the five biggest cities in the US. Note the “ sun and sprawl ” phenomenon. Also note that the list below is for city proper boundaries.

One particularly interesting set of stats is the decline of children (population under the age of 18) in the city:

Since 2010, the city has lost over 40,000 children and teenagers. 

But, if you break it down by neighborhood market type, it is the low-cost and moderate-cost neighborhoods that lost the population. The high-cost neighborhoods were up.

The study posits that the old trend of moving to the suburbs after you have kids may not be for everyone – provided, of course, that you have the means. And it goes beyond Chicago. DC is predicting a 25% increase in K-12 students within the District.

For the rest of the charts, click here .

I worked late this evening, which is pretty typical these days. After I got home, I flipped on the Raptors vs. Celtics and sat down to write something about cities, as is the case every day.

But the game was too close and too good to resist. The Raptors turned things around in Q3 and ultimately went on to spank the Celtics with a 10-0 run in the last few minutes of the game. It was sweet, particularly because Toronto and Boston are likely to end up at the top of the eastern conference this season.

So needless to say, I spent more time watching basketball and less time writing about cities. But that’s okay because I am pretty excited about this year’s Raptors. Here are a few Kawhi Leonard highlights.

BIG just announced its first project in South America. It is a 33 storey residential building in Quito, Ecuador. When completed, it will be the tallest building in the city. The developer is  Uribe and Schwarzkopf . 

Here are a couple of other images:

The building is made up of “concrete boxes” that, when rotated, create terraces for the apartments. On one corner of the building the apartments are “through-units”, meaning they have two exposures. In this case, it is north and south.

While different, we are starting to see some similarities across BIG’s projects, which isn’t meant as a criticism. I am thinking of Telus Sky, Vancouver House, and even KING Toronto. 

They are, at least partially, about expressing the individual apartments and creating opportunities for outdoor spaces. This also serves to break down the overall scale of the building.

What do you think of the project?

Images: BIG