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

I must say, I’m really happy to be back blogging on WordPress (now with a self-hosted setup). One of the things I set up over the long weekend was a new “Places” page that links to specific cities and locations that I’ve written about over the last 13 years.

All I did was ask AI to tell me which places I have written about the most (Toronto was the undisputed number one). Then I created a bunch of corresponding post categories and batch-edited any posts that had these locations either in the title of the post or in a tag.

Now, if you’re interested in Marrakech but not Montréal, there’s an easy way to filter. Here’s what the Places page looks like:

This is one of the things I missed the most: the ability to easily search, sort, and go back to old posts . That was surprisingly difficult on Paragraph, and it felt to me like my posts were going into a black hole, never to be found again. Reading old posts and revisiting them with new thoughts is a big part of this writing journey.

I’m also excited to add to the Places page. Each one of the covers is a photo I took, and if I didn’t have any photos of the place, it didn’t get added to the page. We have some trips planned at the end of this summer and over the winter, including a bucket-list location for our 16th annual ski and snowboard trip , so stay tuned for more photos and places.

Forty years ago, The Economist introduced its now-famous Big Mac Index. It was based on the simple idea that a Big Mac is a damn near perfect universal commodity, and so if you methodically compare its price across countries, it should give you an approximation of the purchasing power parity across a basket of currencies.

For example, a Big Mac currently costs US$6.22 in the US (as of July 2026 and according to The Economist ). But in Switzerland, it works out to US$9.04, and in Taiwan, it’s US$2.42. This suggests that the Swiss franc is overvalued and that the Taiwan dollar is undervalued because, in theory, their currencies should adjust over time to correct such a large variation.

Now, I’m not an economist, but supposedly there is some directional validity to this line of thinking. However, it’s not entirely accurate. If you look at the various inputs that make up the price of a Big Mac, there are over 60 ingredients, including local real estate prices, the cost of labour, and utility costs.

Some countries may also have tariffs on certain ingredients, which would drive up the price for local consumers (yes, that’s how tariffs work), and some countries may have a higher willingness to pay for American fast food. If there’s a higher perceived value, McDonald’s can simply charge more.

So, the fact that a Big Mac costs significantly more in Switzerland does say something about the CHF, but it’s also an indicator that retail rents are somewhere around 3x what they are in Taiwan, among many other factors.

Now let’s consider a product that, unlike the Big Mac, can vary a great deal across countries: housing. A new home requires far more than 60 ingredients, but it similarly reflects local cost structures, including material inputs, labour rates, and any tariffs and taxes that might be levied on the product.

Every input, from time to development charges, gets factored into its end price, which is why, when a politician claims that something like inclusionary zoning represents a “ no-cost affordable housing ” solution, I wonder if they’re simply unclear on the economics or if they’re trying to deliberately misrepresent the situation.

At McDonald’s, the equivalent policy would be to require that every time someone buys a Big Mac, the restaurant must simultaneously offer 20% of a new Big Mac to another customer, below the cost of production. It should be obvious that this practice would require the original customer to pay more for that same Big Mac.

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Images from The Economist

When I first started writing this blog in 2013, I started on Tumblr. Then about 6 years ago, I decided that Tumblr wasn’t the right platform for a written blog like mine, and so I moved to WordPress (specifically WordPress.com — not a self-hosted setup). About two years ago, I packed up and moved this blog once again, this time to Paragraph . I was trying to shift more of my online activity onchain, and I liked the idea of my posts being permanently stored on a blockchain like Arweave.

But it turns out that Paragraph wasn’t the best fit for me. I’m still long crypto and I have it set up to syndicate my posts to the old site , but I found the platform more restrictive than my old WordPress setup, and its recent update also pivots the product to much more of an AI-focused media platform (with more credits to buy), and that’s not how I like to write. I just want to open a blank post editor, write my own words (sometimes post photos), and then hit publish.

So, I’ve decided to return this blog to WordPress, but using a self-hosted setup (with Hostinger) and with my email newsletter being once again sent out by Mailchimp. To be honest, I really questioned this decision. Should I just use Substack like seemingly everyone else? Isn’t WordPress kind of old school? It’s certainly not the easiest to set up (I still have a bunch of housekeeping to do) and Mailchimp is going to again cost me hundreds of dollars per month given the size of my mailing list, but I decided it’s the best decision for me for two main reasons.

One, I want a site that is as simple and timeless as possible. I’ve been writing basically every day for 13 years and in my mind I’m going to continue writing for at least the next decade. Two, I want to be able to customize my site and my email newsletter as I see fit. This blog is a personal blog, but it is also intended to be the top of the marketing funnel for everything that I’m working on with Globizen . The simple idea is that someone discovers me through my writing, maybe something resonates, and then that leads them to one of our projects or to book a stay at Parkview Mountain House .

When you write every day, it’s easy to fall into a routine. Most days it’s a real commitment (okay, slog) to find the time to get something out into the world. But whenever I do a big reboot of the blog, I feel reinvigorated. It’s a time when I take the time to think about what I’m doing every day and then adjust as needed.

Going forward, you can expect to find the same content focused on real estate, cities, and design. But I’d also like to write more personal posts, more travel posts, and get back into sharing my photography. AI muted my desire to take photos, and as much as I think AI is wonderful, I’m feeling a bit of fatigue around it. Part of this return to WordPress is about getting back to basics: a very simple landing page with authentic words, photos, and links.

The only changes you should notice today are formatting ones, both at brandondonnelly.com and in your inbox. It’ll probably also take me another week or two to fully settle in with the new setup, but regardless, emails will continue to get sent out at 6 AM ET. Onward.