Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 958

Benedict Evans just published a great post on his blog about  “Tesla, software and disruption.” I recommend a full read. In it, he tries to answer whether Tesla is really “the new iPhone” and if it will be as disruptive to the car landscape as some/many people think.

In his line of thinking, electric (as opposed to an ICE vehicle) feels a lot more like a sustaining innovation, rather than a disruptive innovation. In other words, it something that incumbents will be able to incorporate. So it will not change the “basis of competition.”

The more critical aspect is instead autonomy. Here are two snippets from the piece:

All of this takes us to autonomy. Electric is compelling but will probably be a commodity, whereas Tesla’s improvements on top of electric may not be commodities but are not necessarily decisive. Autonomy changes the world in profound ways ( I wrote about this here ), and it’s a fundamentally new technology that doesn’t look at all like a commodity. And Tesla is doing this, too. Sort of.

In this competition, Tesla’s thesis is that the data it can collect from its cars will give it a crucial advantage. The only reason that anyone is interested in autonomy today is that the emergence of machine learning (ML) in the last 5 years probably gives us a way to make it work. Machine learning, in turn, is about extracting patterns from large amounts of data, and then matching things against those patterns. So how much data do you have?

But even if we are to all agree that autonomy is the “disruptive innovation”, it is not yet clear who will get there first. Maybe it is Tesla. Maybe it is Waymo . Regardless, many or most people seem to agree that it will arrive in 202x.

Image: Tesla

I have a friend visiting from Detroit this weekend. We went to architecture school together at Penn. But unlike me, he decided to become a full fledged architect.

Not surprisingly, he wants to see some new Toronto architecture while he’s here. I say new because he has seen the classics. So I mapped out a short bike route this morning. It’s more or less a downtown loop that starts in the St. Lawrence.

First we head west to the  Queen Richmond Centre West by Allied Properties REIT (developer) and Sweeny&Co (architect). After that I’d like to show him the main drag of King West and point out two buildings by Saucier + Perrotte Architects and CORE Architects . I don’t think Unzipped Toronto is open yet.

Next it is north to One Spadina Crescent – home of the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. This is one of if not my favorite new building in the city right now.

After that I figure we’ll cruise east along the Bloor bike lanes and look up at 1 Bloor East . Then it is back south to check out the River City collection by Urban Capital (developer) and Saucier + Perrotte Architects (they are getting good face time on this tour).

Then we’ll do what every good new Toronto architecture bike tour should do and end with a drink on a rooftop patio somewhere. Maybe we’ll check out the Broadview Hotel. I like the neon in the lobby bar.

If I missed anything critical, let me know.

Photo by Tiffany Nutt on Unsplash

There are a number of affordable housing plans being thrown around in Toronto right now given that we have a municipal election coming up this fall. 

From what I have read, the plans are largely centered around surplus and/or available public land and possibly some subsidies. 

These subsidies are very important because the money has to come from somewhere. This is often overlooked.

In light of these debates, I thought I would share a short Bloomberg video that my friend Evgeny shared with me this morning all the way from Tokyo.

The video is about how Singapore fixed its housing problem. If you can’t see it embedded below, click here .

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cjPgNBNeLU?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

It strikes me as being very Singaporean.