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
I came across this poster — related to this development application — over the weekend: And I think it raises a number of important questions: For more context, here’s the proposal and its immediate surroundings: I fully appreciate that there’s little incentive to support new… 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
This data is from 2019, but I imagine that things would look pretty similar today and that it might even be a little more pronounced. The dataset from the above article looked at how many people have cars in a given area (a darker dot… Read More
The central bank tightening and interest rate hikes that we saw last year will come to an end in the first quarter of 2023 as inflation gets under control. This will ultimately lead to a recession but my sense is that it will be more… Read More
I am so tired of sensational headlines: The Ontario Line will zip across the core and up to Eglinton, easing gridlock and alleviating TTC misery. It will also plow through peaceful Toronto neighbourhoods, displacing homes, businesses and everything in its path. I know exactly what… Read More
I tweeted two polls today. The first one is mostly useless: It asked whether developers should build more 3-bedroom apartments/condominiums. And not surprisingly, the vast majority of people voted yes. Of course, the problem with this poll is that it says nothing about the overall… Read More
“On some level, we’re [Toronto] still trying to be a Victorian city.” —Peter Clewes It is not an exaggeration to say that Peter Clewes, of architects-Alliance, is one of the most important architects working in Toronto today. Over the last two decades, Toronto has built… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 