This past weekend we went to check out Fashion Art Toronto. I’ll be honest and say that I had never heard of it before we bought tickets. Even though technically, it is the longest running fashion week in the city because of Toronto Fashion Week… Read More
Monthly archives of “April 2023”
What are the opportunity costs of not building new housing?
The stated policy goal of inclusionary zoning is to to produce more affordable housing. We can debate who ultimately pays for this below-market housing, and we have many times before on the blog, but for the purposes of this post let’s just focus on its… Read More
Timing matters in development
Early on in my career, I worked on a new office development where the decision was made to start construction having only pre-leased 25% of the building. (It may have actually been closer to 22% if my memory serves me correctly.) Our big constraint at… Read More
Singapore increases property stamp duty for foreigners to 60%
Singapore isn’t exactly saying that foreigners can’t buy homes there, but it did just increase the stamp duty on purchases by foreigners to 60%. So it is saying that maybe you shouldn’t do it, unless you want to pay a lot of tax. On the… Read More
Junction House just got its placemaking art
Today was a fantastic day for the development manic meter. This was finally installed at Junction House: If you happen to find yourself in the area, check it out at 2720 Dundas Street West. And if you’d like to know a little bit about how… Read More
It’s decision time on fourplexes in Toronto
We talk a lot about “missing middle” housing on this blog and, most recently, we’ve been talking about Toronto’s proposed amendments to allow fourplexes across the city and to do away with density maximums (among other things). Well, it’s now time to make a decision.… Read More
Measuring downtown recoveries using mobile phone data
The School of Cities at the University of Toronto and the Institute for Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley have been using mobile phone data to track the recovery of 62 downtowns across North America. This work has been being published at downtownrecovery.com,… Read More
IKEA has just hired photographer Annie Leibovitz to document normal people doing normal things in their homes
Last year, IKEA went around the world interviewing some 37,000 people in 37 countries about what it takes to “make us feel at home.” And one of the things that they discovered was that nearly 50% of people do not feel like their home reality… Read More
Wealthiest cities in the world
According to this annual survey by Henley & Partners (first chart from Bloomberg), these are the top 10 wealthiest cities in the world when you count the number of high-net-worth individuals (i.e. people with investable wealth greater than US$1 million): However, if you instead count… Read More
Why so few people drive in Tokyo
Daniel Knowles, who is a correspondent for the Economist, recently authored a book called Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It. I haven’t read it, yet, but I did just read this excerpt about Tokyo, and it was jam-packed with… Read More