Jason Segedy, who is the Director of Planning and Urban Development for the city of Akron, Ohio, recently penned a two-part series in the American Conservative about urban revitalization in the Rust Belt. Part two is specifically about the importance of new housing in “cities left… Read More
I was reading Aaron Renn’s post this morning on America’s vacant housing challenge and I was reminded of the stark contrast between what we are experiencing here in Toronto and what the US is experiencing in a lot of its coastal cities, compared to what… Read More
Throughout US history, economic growth has typically spurred an “enormous reallocation of population.” Here is a graph from a recent New York Times article called: What Happened to the American Boomtown? The argument, here, is that restrictions on development have made it so that the most prosperous… Read More
I was listening to The Urbanist (Monocle Radio) last night while I was making dinner and there was a segment on Moscow’s “illegal retail kiosks.” These are small scale retail structures that were built without formal planning permissions and so the city decided to demolish them. … Read More
The Wall Street Journal recently published this article talking about how the young and educated are flocking to high-density urban areas all across the United States. Here’s a set of charts from the article: There are many people who will point out – probably rightly –… Read More
We may not all agree on things like bike lanes and transit, but if there’s one thing that can generally unite a city it’s playoff sports. I love the solidarity that it creates. You may have nothing else in common with the person sitting next… Read More
High speed train by asean leung on 500px https://500px.com/embed.js With the recent talk around downtown Cleveland’s resurgence, I am reminded that for those of us living near the Great Lakes, we are living in one of the most important urban agglomerations in the world: The… Read More
Yesterday Adam Radwanski of the Globe and Mail published an interesting article called, Rust Belt revival: Lessons for southwest Ontario from America’s industrial heartland. The article talks about some of the things that the Rust Belt is doing to revitalize their cities and the lessons… Read More
I was planning to write about something else today, but then I saw Fred Wilson’s post on revitalizing urban cores and I had to switch topics, because I think he makes a great point about turning around declining cities: I’ve been asked by civic leaders from… Read More
