The City of Toronto’s Official Plan directs growth to areas of the city that it refers to as Centres, Avenues, Employment Areas, and the Downtown. In other words, these are the areas where most new development is intended to take place. So if you own… Read More
The UK has something called the National Model Design Code. The purpose of this national code is to provide guidance to local authorities and communities on the production of policies that promote successful design. More specifically, it is intended to help people determine what “good… Read More
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… Read More
Nice places to live — however you want to define that — tend to be expensive places to live. There are all sorts of reasons why this might be the case. Perhaps it’s on a body of water, next to a park, or it has… Read More
Toronto’s chief planner Gregg Lintern (who you can follow over here on Twitter) was recently in the Toronto Star talking about the city’s plans to allow more multi-unit dwellings in our low-rise single-family neighborhoods. I was careful to say “more” because they are already permissible… Read More
For the last year or so the City of Toronto has been doing a review of parking requirements for new developments. This would include things like how much car and bike parking needs to be provided for each residential unit in a new building. More… Read More
Vitalik Buterin — who is best known as the cofounder of Ethereum — recently penned this post on his blog where he argues that “crypto cities broadly are an idea whose time has come.” (Credit to Shamez Virani for sending the post to me this… Read More
The City of Toronto is currently reviewing its Official Plan, which is a city planning document that acts as a kind of master guide for land user matters. It is a pretty important document in that it dictates, among other things, what kind of development… Read More
Here is a short video by Dave Amos (of the YouTube channel City Beautiful) about the splitting of Berlin into two. What a fascinating urban case study. I just recently discovered his channel, but he seems to cover some interesting topics, all of which are… Read More
Witold Rybczynski makes an interesting comparison between military and civilian (city) planning in a recent blog post called, “The Fog of Life.” Here’s an excerpt: Good military planning, as I understand it, is based on preparing for “what if,” that is, developing different scenarios. What… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 