Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 994

The National Center of Health Statistics just released this update on births and birth rates for the United States in 2017. The provisional number of births last year was 3,853,472, which represents a 2% reduction from 2016 and the lowest number in 30 years. The general fertility rate was 60.2 births per 1,000 women aged 15-44, which represents a 3% reduction from 2016. Also a record low.

Here is a chart from the report showing birth rates for selected age ranges from 1990 to 2016 (the 2017 numbers are provisional):

Many of the age ranges have remained stable. Notable are the decline in the teenage (15-19) birth rate and the increase in births to women aged 40-44. The teenage birth rate declined 7% from 2016 and has averaged a decline of nearly 8% a year since 2007. And the birth rate for women aged 40-44 has generally been rising since 1982.

I am sure that you can all think of many explanations for the above phenomena without even diving into the report. I find all of this relevant because demographics obviously impact the real estate business and how we build cities.

On Friday evening, here in Toronto at the Aka Khan Museum, this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize was awarded to Indian architect, Balkrishna Doshi. He is 90 and will receive US$100,000, as well as the honor of being the first Indian to receive architecture’s Nobel Prize. This year was also the first year it was awarded in Canada.

Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail sat down with Doshi while he was in Toronto. Article here . Doshi also lectured at the Daniels Faculty at the University of Toronto earlier in the week. 

Some of you will probably recognize the name because of his collaborations with Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn. But as Alex quoted in his article, this year’s prize is about, “expanding the scope of architecture’s usefulness.” Doshi’s architecture is less about objects and more about the public good it creates.

For more on Doshi, check here .

On a related note, I was happy to see worlds collide in my Instagram feed this morning with this photo from the event . It’s a picture of Jeanne Gang , Meg Graham, and Andre D’Elia of Studio Gang and Superkul, respectively. 

We are thrilled to be working on projects here Toronto with both firms.

Photo via The Pritzker Architecture Prize

Dezeen, the architecture and design magazine, has a documentary out called Elevation - How Drones Will Change Cities . It premiered in Hong Kong in March and is supposed to be widely available this month. I’m not exactly sure when that is happening, but below is a trailer. If you can’t see it below click here .

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSlep5XCpaw&w=560&h=315]

Included in the trailer is footage of a delivery drone concept by design consultancy PriestmanGoode called Dragonfly. Norman Foster also talks about the development of “aerial highways.” It’s 2018 and we were promised flying cars by this point. But flying drones, similar to what’s in the above trailer, seem more probable right now.