I went to bed last night watching President Biden’s address to the Canadian Parliament (full transcript, here.). And I woke up this morning to this Globe and Mail article about Canadian competitiveness. In it, Tony Keller talks about some of the things that are broken… Read More
Brian Potter, of Construction Physics, recently tried to determine which cities build skyscrapers the fastest. Here’s how he went about that: Here are the results: And here’s one thing he had to say about them: Interestingly enough, the huge outlier in slow construction isn’t the… Read More
A lack of affordable housing certainly feels like a global phenomenon. Companies are trying to 3D-print homes for under $100k. Berlin froze apartment rents back in 2019 because things were getting too expensive. And today, Hong Kong is working on building some sort of “light… Read More
The Prohibition on the Purchase of Residential Property by Non-Canadians Act — which came into effect in January of this year and bans foreigners from buying residential real estate in the country for two years — is weird. We can debate whether banning foreigners from… Read More
The founder and Editor-in-Chief of Monocle Magazine, Tyler Brûle, recently had a nice trip to Ottawa: If you’ve never been to Ottawa, don’t bother. Of all the G7 capitals, it’s one that hardly conjures up much in the way of attractive images. Don’t believe me?… Read More
Here’s the thing about housing: The delegates insisted on one hand that “housing is for living not speculation”, but on the other, emphasised the critical importance of real estate to China’s economic growth. In other words, things are complicated. We want housing to be affordable… Read More
We have spoken over the years — here, here, and here — about the centralizing and decentralizing forces that play out within our cities. Agglomeration economies, for example, are a centralizing force. There are real economic benefits to people and firms clustering together in cities.… Read More
Regular readers of this blog will know that I am huge fan of the YouTube channel Never Too Small. I have seen most of their episodes and I like to tell people about it even when it is only remotely related to the conversation at… Read More
Here in Canada, there is often a belief that Americans tend to be more mobile than Canadians. Don’t like the cold weather? Just move south. Taxes too high? Just move south. Housing too expensive? Just move south. But just how mobile is mobile? A new… Read More
The Quebec City-Windsor corridor is the most densely populated region in Canada. The last time I checked Wikipedia, it was reported to house about 18 million people, or about half of Canada’s entire population. So it is not surprising that there have been numerous high-speed… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 