The City of Victoria, BC did a good thing last week: It passed its “Missing Middle Housing Initiative“, which means that up 6 dwelling units (their language not mine) will soon be permissible on every single-family lot in the city, and up to 12 dwelling… Read More
What do you get when you have some of the most stringent affordable housing requirements in the United States? You might think that you get lots and lots of affordable housing, but that is not the case in San Francisco. Paradoxically, you still get some… Read More
This is an interesting article about the neighborhood-based social network, Nextdoor, and how it has become a tool for housing politics: Overall, activists both for and against more housing regard Nextdoor as an increasingly influential and even critical tool in the fight, which conflicts with… Read More
One natural response to yesterday’s post about (housing) affordability vs. beauty is to think that I put forward a false dichotomy. Why can’t we have both? Why does it need to be a zero-sum game? Surely there’s a middle ground. Our cities should be both… Read More
There’s lots of data out there to suggest that there is a correlation between urban density and housing unaffordability. Take Hong Kong. It is very dense, and also one of the most expensive housing markets in the world. But I think the real question is:… Read More
The most expensive home in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood is currently under contract and is expected to close in the next few months (at least according to the WSJ). It is a 4,270 square-foot penthouse, with a 500 square-foot terrace, that occupies the full top floor… Read More
Architectural Digest has just published the perfect article for gratuitous self-promotion. It is a list of “the 12 best design districts around the world”, and it includes The Junction, here in Toronto: Located in a tree-lined historic area of the city, The Junction gets its… Read More
I dislike the term residential unit. It makes a home sound like some sort of widget. When have you ever heard someone say, “unit sweet unit”? Never. And yet this is generally what we use to refer to housing that comes in an apartment form… Read More
Lloyd Alter of Treehugger recently wrote about this infill housing project in Paris. Designed by Mobile Architectural Office (MAO), it is a 6-storey building with 6 residential suites (two of which are 3-storey triplex suites) and 1 ground floor non-residential space. Building section: But here’s… Read More
Here’s the thing about housing: The delegates insisted on one hand that “housing is for living not speculation”, but on the other, emphasised the critical importance of real estate to China’s economic growth. In other words, things are complicated. We want housing to be affordable… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 