My internet friend Bobby Fijan is one of the founders of a mission-driven company called The American Housing Corporation. It was founded in 2024. They opened their first factory in Austin in 2025, and they're now actively working on their first collection of modular homes.

The mission is both simple and awesome: The American middle class can no longer afford a family-oriented starter home in the cities they love. This has people leaving cities, abstaining from having kids, and forgoing economic opportunity.

To correct this, they're going back to what they refer to as "the original American urban home" — the rowhome. And they're working to perfect it through vertical integration and a modular approach where prefabricated components are built in a factory and then shipped flat-packed to the site.

They're obviously not the first company to try to reduce the cost of new housing through prefabrication, but they believe that total vertical integration will make them different. And boy, would I like to see them succeed.

If we truly want to bring down the cost of new housing, we need to (1) stop taxing it like we want less of it and (2) think of it in every possible way as a repeatable product and not as a custom prototype.

Good luck, team!

Photos from The American Housing Corporation

I recently came across this for-sale listing from Fantastic Frank for a 3-room apartment in Berlin's new Am Tacheles district. Naturally, I thought to myself, "Hey, this is a beautiful apartment — now let me go all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century and better understand the history of the development site."

Am Tacheles has been called the most controversial real estate project in Berlin's modern history. Previously developed in 1908 as a high-end shopping arcade intended to rival the great galleries of Paris, the Friedrichstraßenpassage, as it was known, was an ambitious undertaking located in the city's historic Jewish quarter.

But only about six months after opening, the project went bankrupt. The existing building then went on to live numerous lives, ranging from an AEG showroom to a building used to house French war prisoners, before ultimately being co-opted by artists in 1990 as a way to save it from demolition.

It was at this point that it was given the name Tacheles, which is a Yiddish word meaning "to speak straight." Supposedly, this was a reference to the area's history as a thriving Jewish quarter and a message about political honesty (it is located in the former East Berlin, where that wasn't a thing).

For the next two decades, the site became a global symbol of Berlin's "poor but sexy" identity. The ownership vacuum created by the fall of the Berlin Wall meant that nobody really knew who owned what. This was a disaster for clear property rights and capital investment, but fortuitous for squatters who needed cheap (okay, free) space to experiment with art and techno music.

In my view, this was ultimately a net positive for the city. It created an urban vitality that nobody could have predicted, demonstrating the potential of people and cities when allowed to experiment and take risks.

But then, basically, two things happened: (1) people eventually figured out who owned what, and (2) the development potential of the site became increasingly valuable. This is the quintessential urban cycle. First, the artists and creatives come in to take advantage of cheap space. They then make the area cool. And then developers like me come in to monetize it, completing the cycle.

Fast forward to today, and Am Tacheles (they kept the name) is a new master-planned community designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron and one of the most desirable (and thus expensive) areas in Berlin. It's also quite a bit tidier there these days, though they did preserve some of the graffiti.

Returning to our 3-room apartment listing, the asking price is €1,825,000 + €90,000 (for what I believe is a parking space). At 113 sqm, this works out to ~€16,947 per sqm or about C$2,529 per sqft (for comparison to Toronto prices). As I understand it, this is well above the average new construction home prices in the area and city.

What is clear is that Berlin is no longer poor. It's global-city rich. But is it still sexy?

Cover photo and floor from Fantastic Frank

Historic Tacheles photo via Wikipedia

Am Tacheless photo and stairwell section from H&dM

Between 2010 and 2025, the Métropole du Grand Paris added nearly 160 kilometres of new or extended transit lines and opened 200 new transit stations across the region. These numbers include all modes of transport, including RER, metro, tram, cable cars, and BRT. On top of this, a further 199 new stations are scheduled to open between 2026 and 2032 (a shorter time period), meaning there's an argument to be made that Paris is getting better and faster at delivering transit.

Imagine that.

This, as we have talked about before, is a remarkable achievement and one that is reshaping the Métropole — particularly outside of Paris proper. Take a look. Here's a recent study and map from Apur that shows how these completed and upcoming lines have impacted, and are expected to impact, transit access in the region:

The coloured areas represent access to transit within a 15-minute walk (assuming you're able to walk at a reasonable 4 km/hr). The lightest blue areas are lines/catchment areas that existed in 2010. The medium blue represents lines/areas that came online between 2010 and 2025. And the darkest blue represents lines/areas that are scheduled to come online between 2026 and 2032.

If you're familiar with Paris, you'll be able to tell that the majority of the recent transit expansion has happened outside of the boundaries of Paris. This is important because prior to 2010, all of Paris was already well-served by transit (seriously, 100% of the population was/is within walking distance of at least one transit line).

However, this is not the case in the rest of the Métropole. In 2010, about 56% of the population (outside of Paris proper) had access to at least one line, with 23% having access to two. As of 2025, this number has increased to 66%. And by 2032, with the opening of the lines currently underway, it is expected that 80% of the population within the entire Métropole will be transit-connected.

It's hard to overstate the importance of these changes. The Paris region has long been criticized for the divide that exists between its historic centre and its surrounding suburbs and cities. Historically, this has been a socio-economic divide, and a built form divide. But this divide is now being erased. New infrastructure is stitching the region together, tightening its geography, and encouraging the development of new economic centres.

Forget the Paris you know. The growth and change are now happening along its edges. Welcome to the new Greater Paris Metropolis.

P.S. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Métropole du Grand Paris (created on January 1, 2016), Apur recently published a book called Atlas de la Métropole du Grand Paris. I haven't been able to find a site that will ship to Toronto, but if you're in Paris, you can order or pick one up at the following bookstores.

Cover photo by Ally Griffin on Unsplash

Maps and charts from Apur