Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 97

A few weeks ago, my wife told me about an app called Yuka . What it does is scan the barcodes of food products and cosmetics and then give you a health rating out of 100. You can also drill deeper if you'd like to better understand why a particular food item is healthy — or not healthy.

Since then, a few things have happened:

• I've told as many people as possible about it. (I have my parents scanning at the grocery store.)

• Grocery shopping takes a lot longer. (I have a colleague who has been mistaken for a store employee while using the app.)

• We've made meaningful changes to the food we buy.

And it's not like we weren't trying to shop healthy before.

It works a lot like France's Nutri-Score , except you have to do a bit more work. As soon as I see a low score, I no longer want the product and I move on to an alternative or I eschew it altogether. I can only imagine the positive impact that an app like this will have on our health and on the broader food landscape as our individual decisions compound over time.

It also feels like a perfect use case for augmented reality and spatial computing . Right now, I have to juggle my phone in one hand and a basket in the other. But imagine a world where I can just pick up a package of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and my glasses will automatically tell me they're a 0/100. That world is coming.

If you care about the food you put into your body, I would highly recommend downloading Yuka on your phone . Ignorance is bliss until you're no longer ignorant.

Data centers require electricity.

And as we have talked about before , total electricity consumption by US data centers is forecasted to reach somewhere between 6.7 - 12% of total consumption by 2028 (figure from the US Department of Energy). Last year, Goldman Sachs also estimated that data center power demand would grow 160% by 2030.

I kind of wonder if these numbers might be understated — given our current AI bubble — but whatever the case may be, we're going to need a lot more electricity going forward. There's no such thing as a wealthy, low-energy nation.

Given all of this, I'm struggling to understand why the US would move to cancel what would have been the largest solar project in North America. Esmeralda 7, which was to be located on 62,300 acres of federal land to the north-west of Las Vegas, was expected to be a 6.2 gigawatt project — enough to power nearly 2 million homes.

Instead, the Department of the Interior seems to be determined to accelerate fossil fuel projects, and help China maintain its clear dominance in renewables. I guess that makes sense in some world if you think renewal energy projects are a " scam ."

Cover photo by American Public Power Association on Unsplash

In the second quarter of this year, Canada saw its population grow by about 0.1% compared to the first quarter. This is not zero, but it's close to it — the slowest second-quarter growth since 1946 (excluding the pandemic in 2020).

Since World War II, Canada has generally been pro-immigration . It started as being explicitly Eurocentric, but later we adopted a point system which granted admission based on skills, education, and language ability rather than race or nationality. In other words, it became a meritocracy, and multiculturalism became policy.

This approach served the country well, fueling economic prosperity and creating Canada's only truly global city: Toronto. Immigrants are good for the economy , and Toronto is majority foreign born. They are more likely to start a business, more likely to obtain a patent, and their children tend to outperform native-born children academically.

It is also not lost on me that I wouldn't have been born in Toronto, and I wouldn't have the life that I have today if it weren't for these immigration policies.

Of course, in recent years, public opinion on immigration shifted dramatically. There was, and is, a real sense that it was too much of a good thing . Canada wasn't keeping up when it came to housing, healthcare, and overall public infrastructure. So the federal government responded, and now the expectation is that population growth in Canada should stay at or near zero until around 2028.

Because remember, Canada has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. In 2024, it dropped to 1.25 children per woman , placing us firmly in the "ultra-low fertility" category, alongside Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, and others. Without immigration, we shrink. And we all know what that has meant for countries like Japan, which has had periods of prolonged economic stagnation.

So sooner or later, Canada will need to get back into the business of competing for talent and welcoming the smartest and most ambitious people from around the world to our cities. This is where we want the world to be starting their new businesses. In the meantime, it also wouldn't hurt if we started having more sex and making more babies.

Looking ahead, if 2028 does end up being the year when immigration ramps back up, it will actually align with what I am predicting to be the start of a severe housing shortage — at least in cities like Toronto and Vancouver. That means we need to act now to start delivering more affordable urban housing at scale.

All through history, the success of global cities has hinged on their ability to take in a large number of immigrants and make them economically productive. It's what made cities like Toronto and New York what they are today. But in order for this to happen, people need a place to live.

Cover photo by Ankush Nath Sehgal on Unsplash