This article by Ryan Petersen is a good history lesson on how shipping containers came to be. Here is an excerpt: The idea for containerization came from a trucker, not a shipper. Malcolm McLean started out hauling empty tobacco barrels with his family in North… Read More
For the last year or so the City of Toronto has been doing a review of parking requirements for new developments. This would include things like how much car and bike parking needs to be provided for each residential unit in a new building. More… Read More
New Zealand has been in the news lately for sweeping housing legislation that effectively abolishes single-family zoning throughout most of Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch. But before I get into how this will all work, here’s a bit of background from an article that… Read More
Paris just announced plans to become a “100% cycling city.” A follow-up to plan vélo 2015-2020, which saw a doubling of the city’s bike lanes, plan vélo 2021-2026 includes 130 km of new bike lanes and 52 km of pandemic bike lanes that will now… Read More
Most of us have felt the effects of supply chain disruption during this pandemic. When we were building Mackay Laneway House this past winter, it was right when lumber prices were peaking. We had no choice but to just absorb the cost premiums and move… Read More
This is a great 30 minute talk by Horace Dediu that is structured around his 10 commandments of micromobility. If you can’t see the embedded video above, click here. What I think that many of you will appreciate about the talk is that he focuses… Read More
McKinsey published a report last month on the future of electric vehicles and what that will mean for the industry. Many countries, cities, and companies have set some sort of electrification target for 2030. The US is targeting 50% EVs by 2030. Several countries have… Read More
A Pigovian tax is a tax on market activities that produce some kind of negative externality for society. The basic idea behind the tax is to try and use it to correct something that is happening, but that isn’t all that desirable. Examples of negative… Read More
Building height and density are not one and the same. You can have tall buildings configured in a low-density way (think post-war towers in the park). And you can have low/mid-rise buildings configured in a high-density way (think Paris and Barcelona). This is one of… Read More
Back in 2017, the City of Buffalo introduced something known as the “Green Code.” It was the first overhaul of its zoning code in over 60 years. I wrote about it here. One of most notable changes as part of the Green Code was the… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 