Two weeks ago I gave a brief presentation at The Laneway Project’s inaugural summit here in Toronto. I then wrote about it here on ATC.

At the time, I wasn’t sure if the event was being filmed or not, but it turns out it was. So here is my presentation from the event. It’s just over 7 minutes. Click here if you can’t see it below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdMNC1BtUz8]

If you’d like to see the other 5 presentations and the Q&A session, click here. 

Following the event, I was also interviewed by a radio show out of Calgary called Space + Place. If you are really into laneways and would like to listen to that as well, go here.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: I continue to be amazed by how much interest there is — both here in Toronto and elsewhere — in laneways. They may be overlooked today, but that’s going to change. It’s inevitable.

I was reading Wendy Waters’ All About Cities blog this morning and I came across the following charts showing employment growth across Canadian cities. The first chart shows total employment growth over the last year and the second chart shows employment growth over the past 10 years.

What is immediately obvious from these charts is that Calgary and Edmonton–both resource driven economies–have and are leading Canada in terms of employment growth.

Toronto isn’t that far behind though, particularly if you exclude manufacturing from the equation (see second chart). The decline of manufacturing in the Greater Toronto Area really represents a structural change in the economy.

I wanted to post these charts because, for all the talk about the rise of the information and digital age, Canada’s economy is still very much based on natural resources. We extract and sell. And we have one of the largest proven oil reserves in the world.

Now, I’m not opposed to this business model, but there’s lots of evidence out there to suggest that resource dependency ultimately hurts innovation and productivity–which makes sense. If we didn’t have resources, we’d be forced to figure out other ways to make money.

So while it’s great to see our cities growing, let’s not take it for granted.