Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 963

A bunch of people have asked me lately about what they should do if they want to get smarter on land use planning and on the entitlement process for development projects. It was specific to Toronto, but I don’t think my answer is specific to only this city.

I took a few planning classes in graduate school when I was in the US. But I was more focused on architecture and real estate, and so I did not leave school an expert by any means.

I learned about the failures of euclidian zoning and about things like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit , which always seemed like a sensible supply-side tool to get the private sector to invest in affordable housing.

But what I have found most useful is to just read planning staff reports. These are the responses to actual development proposals and they show you how staff interpret the policies that are in place and how staff apply them to real buildings.

I may be in the minority in that I actually find these reports interesting. But regardless, they are a great crash course in planning and development approvals and they can help you manage your entitlement risk.

Last week Sidewalk Toronto held a roundtable discussion here in the city and released some preliminary design ideas and strategies for Quayside. (That’s why Dan Doctoroff was talking on BNN Bloomberg .) 

I went through the full presentation this morning and below are a bunch of slides that I thought you all might find interesting.

Here is the extent of “Quayside” along the waterfront. The current land use permissions allow for about 3 million square feet of space and towers as tall as 50 storeys.

Here is a paving system being explored for the area. It is modular. It may melt snow. And perhaps most interestingly, it would allow for dynamic changes in road use throughout the day. This sort of thing already happens to a lesser degree on streets like Jarvis. This technology could take that much further.

One of their primary goals is to double Toronto’s usable outdoor hours. To do that, they are proposing simple weather shields (pictured below) and weather-responsive systems.

They are spending a lot of time thinking about the ground floor of buildings, which they are calling Stoa. The idea is to create flexible and porous spaces that respond quickly to changing needs and that integrate more seamlessly with the surrounding public realm.

There’s a lot on the potential hierarchy of the street network and how each will function for transit, conventional cars, AVs, cyclists, pedestrians, and so on. I was happy to see “laneways” as a core part of the pedestrian network. They are designed for walking speeds. Access would be restricted for things that move too quickly.

This image ties in the street grid and Stoa.

Finally, the goal is to build the neighborhood entirely out of timber, and more specifically, Canadian timber. If they follow through on this, I think it would really push adoption of this material forward in the city.

I would encourage you to check out the full package, which you can do here . I can’t wait for these projects to get underway along Toronto’s waterfront.

I like this article and photo essay in the Guardian talking about “Hong Kong’s fight to save its neon shimmer.” Neon lights have been a ubiquitous feature of the Hong Kong nightscape since about the middle of the 20th century. They were an outcropping of increasing economic prosperity. And in many ways they really represent the culture of the city – a frenetic free market where entrepreneurs have no choice but to compete for attention. 

But thanks to more restrictive sign ordinances and new technologies (though LED can be made to look pretty similar to neon), there’s growing concern that a fundamental part of Hong Kong’s urban landscape may be disappearing. The article mentions a newish (2017) advocacy group called the Hong Kong Neon Heritage Group , which is trying to raise awareness about the city’s remaining lights.

Love live the neon.

Photo by Sean Foley on Unsplash