As most of you know, laneway suites (a form of accessory dwelling unit) are permitted “as-of right” across the City of Toronto. This has led to an explosion of new laneway housing. One framing contractor that I know recently told me that he is now… Read More
Here are some interesting figures from a recent Statistics Canada article about Canada’s national net worth. In the first quarter of this year, Canada’s national net worth increased by over $1 trillion or 7.7% to reach nearly $15 trillion. This is, as I understand it,… Read More
A friend of mine circulated this tweet storm over the weekend. It is an explanation of how NYC’s housing market works using the example of oranges. The author ends by saying that, “it is a parody and an exaggeration, but I promise you it’s not… Read More
Here are two charts from a recent blog post by Ryerson University’s Centre for Urban Research and Land Development. The charts compare residential building permits issued for ground-related housing vs. apartment suites. Over the last two quarters (Q4 2020 and Q1 2021), the Greater Golden… Read More
Let’s talk some more about floor plan designs and the economic constraints that form part of the decision making process. There continues to be a narrative out there that for-profit developers only want to construct small apartments (a form of social engineering perhaps) and that… Read More
I came across the above floor plan over the weekend. I reshared it on Twitter and there was then a pretty good discussion about what people like and don’t like. I mean, who doesn’t like looking at floor plans? The suite is 790 square feet… Read More
This is a chart from Abundant Housing LA (a YIMBY group), via City Observatory, showing the relationship between median household income and single-family zoning across the 88 cities that make up L.A. County. On average, about 80% of the land in the County is zoned… Read More
Back in 2008, Dasha Zhukova and Roman Abramovich hired starchitect Rem Koolhaas and founded a new contemporary art museum in Moscow called the Garage Museum. Supposedly this was the first philanthropic institution in Russia dedicated solely to contemporary art. (Here’s a short video in case… Read More
The National Association of Realtors in the US has a “Community and Transportation Preference Survey” that it conducts usually every two years. Last year (2020), wasn’t supposed to be a survey year, but given the pandemic, they decided to run it in June and see… Read More
Inclusionary zoning has been on my mind this week and so I thought I would revisit some of my old posts on the topic. I wrote about it here, here, here, here, here, and probably in a bunch of other places that I am forgetting… Read More
