This afternoon I walked Trent University’s campus with my father on our way back from the cottage. It is embarrassing that it has taken this long. Trent University straddles the Otonabee River in Peterborough, Ontario. It admitted its first students in 1964 and by the… Read More
Swarm recently released version 5.0 of its mobile app. Blog post here. Instead of gamification (leaderboards and so on), the emphasis is now on lifelogging – a more personal collection of all the places you’ve been. Here’s what that looks like: The most notable change… Read More
I’m taking next week off so that I can respond to emails from various places in Ontario and Quebec instead of from my desk. The out of office messages really fly at this time of year, so it’s usually a pretty good time to try… Read More
A reader recently shared an article with me called: Why Seattle builds apartments, but Vancouver, BC, builds condos. Thanks for that. It’s a good summary of the differences between these two markets and why over the last five years less than 4% of all new… Read More
Marcus Gee of the Globe and Mail recently published “a made-up story about Toronto that never appeared, but should.” It goes like this: Toronto city hall is pressing a prominent developer to put up a taller building. Mayor John Tory is telling Big City Condo Corp.… Read More
The Economist recently published an article called: How and why road-pricing will happen. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that there’s been lots of talk and support over the years on this blog for dynamic road pricing. It’s politically unpopular, but it’s an incredibly… Read More
Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures recently gave a talk at the 2017 Blockstack Summit about “Decentralization and the Knowledge Age.” He starts by talking about motivation and coordination. The state, he argues, is good at coordination, but not so good at motivation. The market, on… Read More
Jackson, Wyoming is one of my favorite places on the planet. (Here is a ski/snowboard video that my friends and I made a few years ago in Jackson.) Earlier this year, Eagle Point Hotel Partners and the Brooklyn-based design firm Studio Tack completed a renovation… Read More
My friends at the architecture practice Valente Rodgers told me something fascinating about the Hong Kong real estate market last night. Both partners worked as architects in Hong Kong for a number of years. In Hong Kong, you’re allowed to deduct certain projecting windows from… Read More
We have a cultural bias toward homeownership in this country. Other countries have it too. We believe that homeownership is what you should aspire to. In 2011, Statistics Canada pegged the homeownership rate at 69%. 9.2 million households out of a total of 13.3 million.… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 