November 22, 2018

Embracing our cities

This is a great TED talk by Edward Glaeser about why it is time to embrace our cities. If you can’t see it below, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILDwnzQNlGc&w=560&h=315]

The talk was filmed in 2012 – right around the time that Triumph of the City was released – but the video was published at the beginning of this year.

It is also a good add-on to yesterday’s post about transportation costs and cities. I love how passionate Glaeser gets about these topics.

September 26, 2018

Amazon and retail

This is an excellent talk by NYU professor Scott Galloway about Amazon, online grocery, and many other aspects of the retail landscape. The bits about Amazon’s scale and reach are fascinating. There is about 30 minutes of him speaking quickly and then another 15 minutes of Q&A. If you can’t see it below, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HyiY_m_YxI&w=560&h=315]

This morning I presented and sat on a panel at BILD called “bringing laneway suites to Toronto.” The other participants were Councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon, George Pantazis (Planner at the City of Toronto), Mike Collins-Williams (Director, Policy at OHBA), and Andrew Sorbara (co-founder of Lanescape).

Here is a photo that Mike took of me while I was talking about my failed laneway house:

For those of you wondering if/when this will happen in Toronto, here are the key takeaways from this morning: The city is already drafting laneway suite policies specific to Toronto & East York (not the other parts of the city) and they are due to report back to council in Q2-2018. Nothing is 100% certain at this stage, but there’s lots of optimism.

Councillor McMahon delivered this morning’s opening remarks and I was impressed by her deep commitment to laneway suites. I was also impressed by her stance on NIMBYISM, saying that education is important and that we can’t let NIMBYs stop what makes sense for the greater city.