This recent article by Brookings is a good reminder of the all too important link between land use policies/patterns and GHG emissions. Because electric vehicles are cool and all, but they're still not as efficient as just walking around and/or taking transit.

As has been argued before on this blog, we need to not only electrify our transport network, but we also need to change how we get around. And probably the best way to encourage a modal shift, is to plan and build our cities differently. Something that is simple, but not easy.

It also turns out that people who live in multi-family buildings tend to consume less energy (on a per capita basis) than those in single-family houses. So there are numerous benefits to encouraging denser housing on top of transit and within mixed-used communities.

With all of this in mind, here are some interesting charts from the above Brookings article.

This has become a frequently reported topic, but here's a recent article from Wired talking about tech workers living out the American Dream -- in Canada. The story is pretty simple. Immigrants are smart and work hard. Canada has a system in place that privileges newcomers who are young and smart. And this has become a boon for our largest city and for the country. Here are two excerpts from the article:

But there's a new global winner: Canada, and particularly Toronto. Since 2013, the tech scene there has grown faster than in any other North American city. In 2017, Toronto added more tech jobs than Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington, DC, combined; in 2018 (the most recent year for which numbers are available), the city was second only to the Bay Area in new tech jobs. Toronto is so crammed with immigrants that nearly 50 percent of all residents were born outside the country.

Canada's immigration policy is hardly warm and fuzzy. On the contrary, it's icily calculating. The government loves educated, elite newcomers, because they help propel the economy, says immigration lawyer Peter Rekai, but it wants them young, so they won't drain the public health care system. Their parents are much less welcome.

In the first quarter of this year, international migration accounted for 82.3% of Canada's population growth. And at the beginning of this year, Ottawa was planning for up to 370,000 new permanent residents. It is highly unlikely that we hit that number given our current health crisis, but I have no doubts in my mind that we will hit it in the very near term. And when we do, it will be a good thing for Toronto.

This recent article by Brookings is a good reminder of the all too important link between land use policies/patterns and GHG emissions. Because electric vehicles are cool and all, but they're still not as efficient as just walking around and/or taking transit.

As has been argued before on this blog, we need to not only electrify our transport network, but we also need to change how we get around. And probably the best way to encourage a modal shift, is to plan and build our cities differently. Something that is simple, but not easy.

It also turns out that people who live in multi-family buildings tend to consume less energy (on a per capita basis) than those in single-family houses. So there are numerous benefits to encouraging denser housing on top of transit and within mixed-used communities.

With all of this in mind, here are some interesting charts from the above Brookings article.

This has become a frequently reported topic, but here's a recent article from Wired talking about tech workers living out the American Dream -- in Canada. The story is pretty simple. Immigrants are smart and work hard. Canada has a system in place that privileges newcomers who are young and smart. And this has become a boon for our largest city and for the country. Here are two excerpts from the article:

But there's a new global winner: Canada, and particularly Toronto. Since 2013, the tech scene there has grown faster than in any other North American city. In 2017, Toronto added more tech jobs than Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Washington, DC, combined; in 2018 (the most recent year for which numbers are available), the city was second only to the Bay Area in new tech jobs. Toronto is so crammed with immigrants that nearly 50 percent of all residents were born outside the country.

Canada's immigration policy is hardly warm and fuzzy. On the contrary, it's icily calculating. The government loves educated, elite newcomers, because they help propel the economy, says immigration lawyer Peter Rekai, but it wants them young, so they won't drain the public health care system. Their parents are much less welcome.

In the first quarter of this year, international migration accounted for 82.3% of Canada's population growth. And at the beginning of this year, Ottawa was planning for up to 370,000 new permanent residents. It is highly unlikely that we hit that number given our current health crisis, but I have no doubts in my mind that we will hit it in the very near term. And when we do, it will be a good thing for Toronto.