Some of you might remember that I grew up going to a French school here in Toronto. My mom had rightly decided that I should be able to speak both of Canada's official languages. But truthfully, I never really loved it as a kid. I started midway through elementary school and so I always felt a little insecure about my French abilities. Which is partially why in the fall of 2023, I decided to enroll in night classes at Alliance Française. I've been doing it ever since and I can feel my French getting markedly better. There's also something deeply nostalgic about being in a French class.

Generally speaking, the classes are pretty relaxed (sometimes we learn grammar and sometimes we just talk about delicious cheeses), but at the end of last year I decided to register for the DELF exam. DELF stands for Diplôme d'études en langue française and it's a diploma for non-native speakers of French offered by France's Ministry of Education. It's offered at various proficiency levels and I registered for level B2, which France describes in the following way:

One of the reasons why I registered for this particular level is that it will soon become the minimum level of language proficiency required to become a French citizen. Currently you need the equivalent of B1, but starting January 1, 2026, I understand it will jump up to B2. I, of course, don't know if I will ever need this, move to France, and/or seek to become a citizen, but it became a goal. I told myself that I wanted the diploma that proves one's French is good enough to be an actual citizen. I guess it was a way to conquer my childhood insecurities.

So I'm happy to report that I ended up taking the exam in early March and that last week I received my passing grade. I scored just under 90%. (My weakest section was the handwritten essay.) After I got the news, I came home to the below book sitting on the kitchen counter with a bow and thoughtful handwritten note from Bianca — in French I would add — congratulating me on achieving this goal. One of the first things I said was, "wait, when did you buy this? How did you get it so quickly?" And she responded with, "I ordered it a long time ago, because I knew you'd pass."

The book is called Paris Haussmann and it's a comprehensive look at Haussmann's 19th century plans for the city. It covers every scale, from the city's boulevards (morphological scale) down to individual floor plans for each building type (typological scale). It's a truly extraordinary book and it's also highly relevant to one of the things that Globizen is focused on right now, which is the building of infill housing on Toronto's major streets. The urban context isn't exactly the same, of course, but there's a lot to be learned from this human-scaled building type. So even if you aren't trying to overcome some childhood insecurity related to the French, I highly recommend you check out this book.

Cover photo via Pavillon de l'arsenal

We've spoken before about Saudi Arabia's "The Line" project. At first, I wasn't sure if it was real, but it is, and it's now under construction. We then spoke about whether a 170-kilometer line is an optimal urban form for a city, and the answer, according to this study, is that it's not. The problem with a line is that it actually maximizes the average distance between inhabitants. This makes sense because you could have two people living and working 170 kilometers apart.

On the other hand, if you maintain the same built-up area and take the opposite kind of geometry -- a circle -- you actually minimize the average distance between inhabitants. It's for this reason that older cities (the ones that weren't masterplanned) have tended to grow radially and not linearly (unless there were geographic features forcing it to grow in a certain way). So there is a strong argument to be made that The Line is a suboptimal plan for a new city.

But here's what's interesting: many cities already follow a somewhat similar approach. They don't do it as absolutely as The Line, but they do it in the way that they zone for higher densities and a mix of uses only on their main corridors. Example:

This creates a similar kind of effect when it comes to walkability, ability to support higher-order transit, and overall agglomeration economies. All of the urban activity gets concentrated along one corridor, maximizing the distance between people. In extreme examples, you also get inhabitants that are forced into different mobility options. The corridor is supposed to be transit-oriented, but all of the surrounding areas are really only conducive to driving. This creates a mismatch that is less an ideal for everyone.

Some of you might remember that I grew up going to a French school here in Toronto. My mom had rightly decided that I should be able to speak both of Canada's official languages. But truthfully, I never really loved it as a kid. I started midway through elementary school and so I always felt a little insecure about my French abilities. Which is partially why in the fall of 2023, I decided to enroll in night classes at Alliance Française. I've been doing it ever since and I can feel my French getting markedly better. There's also something deeply nostalgic about being in a French class.

Generally speaking, the classes are pretty relaxed (sometimes we learn grammar and sometimes we just talk about delicious cheeses), but at the end of last year I decided to register for the DELF exam. DELF stands for Diplôme d'études en langue française and it's a diploma for non-native speakers of French offered by France's Ministry of Education. It's offered at various proficiency levels and I registered for level B2, which France describes in the following way:

One of the reasons why I registered for this particular level is that it will soon become the minimum level of language proficiency required to become a French citizen. Currently you need the equivalent of B1, but starting January 1, 2026, I understand it will jump up to B2. I, of course, don't know if I will ever need this, move to France, and/or seek to become a citizen, but it became a goal. I told myself that I wanted the diploma that proves one's French is good enough to be an actual citizen. I guess it was a way to conquer my childhood insecurities.

So I'm happy to report that I ended up taking the exam in early March and that last week I received my passing grade. I scored just under 90%. (My weakest section was the handwritten essay.) After I got the news, I came home to the below book sitting on the kitchen counter with a bow and thoughtful handwritten note from Bianca — in French I would add — congratulating me on achieving this goal. One of the first things I said was, "wait, when did you buy this? How did you get it so quickly?" And she responded with, "I ordered it a long time ago, because I knew you'd pass."

The book is called Paris Haussmann and it's a comprehensive look at Haussmann's 19th century plans for the city. It covers every scale, from the city's boulevards (morphological scale) down to individual floor plans for each building type (typological scale). It's a truly extraordinary book and it's also highly relevant to one of the things that Globizen is focused on right now, which is the building of infill housing on Toronto's major streets. The urban context isn't exactly the same, of course, but there's a lot to be learned from this human-scaled building type. So even if you aren't trying to overcome some childhood insecurity related to the French, I highly recommend you check out this book.

Cover photo via Pavillon de l'arsenal

We've spoken before about Saudi Arabia's "The Line" project. At first, I wasn't sure if it was real, but it is, and it's now under construction. We then spoke about whether a 170-kilometer line is an optimal urban form for a city, and the answer, according to this study, is that it's not. The problem with a line is that it actually maximizes the average distance between inhabitants. This makes sense because you could have two people living and working 170 kilometers apart.

On the other hand, if you maintain the same built-up area and take the opposite kind of geometry -- a circle -- you actually minimize the average distance between inhabitants. It's for this reason that older cities (the ones that weren't masterplanned) have tended to grow radially and not linearly (unless there were geographic features forcing it to grow in a certain way). So there is a strong argument to be made that The Line is a suboptimal plan for a new city.

But here's what's interesting: many cities already follow a somewhat similar approach. They don't do it as absolutely as The Line, but they do it in the way that they zone for higher densities and a mix of uses only on their main corridors. Example:

This creates a similar kind of effect when it comes to walkability, ability to support higher-order transit, and overall agglomeration economies. All of the urban activity gets concentrated along one corridor, maximizing the distance between people. In extreme examples, you also get inhabitants that are forced into different mobility options. The corridor is supposed to be transit-oriented, but all of the surrounding areas are really only conducive to driving. This creates a mismatch that is less an ideal for everyone.