The City of Toronto just released its 2025 Cycling Year in Review report. You can download it here. At the highest level, Toronto is now considered to be the 7th most bike-friendly city in North America, according to the Copenhagenize Index. Our snowier sibling, Montréal, is number one on the continent. And globally, we're ranked 55th.
Neither of these positions is particularly impressive given our scale and prominence as a global city, but progress is being made. In 2025, City Council approved 33 km of new bikeways, installed 14.11 km, and upgraded 9.02 km. Our infrastructure continues to get better.
What I find particularly noteworthy and telling, though, is the adoption of the city's bike share network. 2025 was another record year, with 7.8 million rides, representing a 13% increase from 2024. We're still not at the level of Montréal, which recorded 13 million rides in 2024, but adoption is growing quickly.
We have gone from around 665,000 rides in 2015 to nearly 8 million in the span of a decade. That's a compounded annual growth rate of approximately 28%! Once again, we are reminded that if you build it, and make it easy and safe, more people will ride bicycles.
In addition to the recently proposed HST rebate for new homes, the federal government and the province of Ontario announced that they will be providing funding to help municipalities reduce their development charges by up to 50% over the next three years. And according to some estimates, these two measures will temporarily cut the cost of building a new home in Ontario by something in the range of 15-20%.
From what I have seen, most, if not all, of these savings are now going to the consumer. As Mike Moffatt points out in this recent Globe and Mail article, developers are passing them along because of competition, because they need to compete with lower-priced resale homes, and because, frankly, it's the only way to try and unstick this market.
What is not so clear, though, is whether this is enough. Moffatt argues that "now that new homes can be sold at prices that make them viable to build, more homes will be built, adding further downward pressure on resale prices." This is certainly one of the policy goals — to get more developers building again. But I don't think we're there quite yet. I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Miami is a popular place these days for a whole host of reasons, namely that it's sunny and warm, it doesn't have state income taxes, and the broader market doesn't seem to think that climate risk will pose an insurmountable challenge in the foreseeable future.
But beneath the surface, there are shifts taking place. HOA fees and insurance premiums are rising (some people have a different view of climate risk), and the city is becoming increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.
Between July 2024 and July 2025, Miami-Dade County lost an estimated 10,115 residents. This was the third-largest absolute population drop of all US counties last year, though it should be noted that this can be largely explained by changing immigration policies and a meaningful decrease in international migration.
There are still plenty of people moving to the city; they just tend to skew richer. According to data from 2023, the average inbound salary was $178,000, and the average outbound salary was $89,000. The net result (via the Miami Herald):
Higher earners are moving here, lower-wage workers are leaving and the population as a whole has started to shrink. That's not good for a community's long-term economic health.
Wealth is a good thing. But is it now too much of a good thing? At the very least, it demonstrates the fragility of finding the elusive equilibrium between being a successful city and remaining affordable and accessible to the middle class.
To paraphrase Jane Jacobs, "The more successful a city is, the more it is under pressure to be something else."
The City of Toronto just released its 2025 Cycling Year in Review report. You can download it here. At the highest level, Toronto is now considered to be the 7th most bike-friendly city in North America, according to the Copenhagenize Index. Our snowier sibling, Montréal, is number one on the continent. And globally, we're ranked 55th.
Neither of these positions is particularly impressive given our scale and prominence as a global city, but progress is being made. In 2025, City Council approved 33 km of new bikeways, installed 14.11 km, and upgraded 9.02 km. Our infrastructure continues to get better.
What I find particularly noteworthy and telling, though, is the adoption of the city's bike share network. 2025 was another record year, with 7.8 million rides, representing a 13% increase from 2024. We're still not at the level of Montréal, which recorded 13 million rides in 2024, but adoption is growing quickly.
We have gone from around 665,000 rides in 2015 to nearly 8 million in the span of a decade. That's a compounded annual growth rate of approximately 28%! Once again, we are reminded that if you build it, and make it easy and safe, more people will ride bicycles.
In addition to the recently proposed HST rebate for new homes, the federal government and the province of Ontario announced that they will be providing funding to help municipalities reduce their development charges by up to 50% over the next three years. And according to some estimates, these two measures will temporarily cut the cost of building a new home in Ontario by something in the range of 15-20%.
From what I have seen, most, if not all, of these savings are now going to the consumer. As Mike Moffatt points out in this recent Globe and Mail article, developers are passing them along because of competition, because they need to compete with lower-priced resale homes, and because, frankly, it's the only way to try and unstick this market.
What is not so clear, though, is whether this is enough. Moffatt argues that "now that new homes can be sold at prices that make them viable to build, more homes will be built, adding further downward pressure on resale prices." This is certainly one of the policy goals — to get more developers building again. But I don't think we're there quite yet. I guess we'll find out soon enough.
Miami is a popular place these days for a whole host of reasons, namely that it's sunny and warm, it doesn't have state income taxes, and the broader market doesn't seem to think that climate risk will pose an insurmountable challenge in the foreseeable future.
But beneath the surface, there are shifts taking place. HOA fees and insurance premiums are rising (some people have a different view of climate risk), and the city is becoming increasingly unaffordable for the middle class.
Between July 2024 and July 2025, Miami-Dade County lost an estimated 10,115 residents. This was the third-largest absolute population drop of all US counties last year, though it should be noted that this can be largely explained by changing immigration policies and a meaningful decrease in international migration.
There are still plenty of people moving to the city; they just tend to skew richer. According to data from 2023, the average inbound salary was $178,000, and the average outbound salary was $89,000. The net result (via the Miami Herald):
Higher earners are moving here, lower-wage workers are leaving and the population as a whole has started to shrink. That's not good for a community's long-term economic health.
Wealth is a good thing. But is it now too much of a good thing? At the very least, it demonstrates the fragility of finding the elusive equilibrium between being a successful city and remaining affordable and accessible to the middle class.
To paraphrase Jane Jacobs, "The more successful a city is, the more it is under pressure to be something else."
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