We don’t like coal today, but it certainly transformed Victorian-era architecture: “It is the biggest transition in the history of our species, with the possible exception of starting to use fire at all in the first place,” says Barnabas Calder, author of the groundbreaking study… Read More
I have long been interested in the possible relationships between climate and economy. Because my unproven hypothesis is that, given the choice, most city dwellers would probably prefer to hang out on Ipanema beach and drink caipirinhas in the sun than sit in a windowless… Read More
Last year over the holidays, I attended a virtual wine tasting event that was put on by one of our partners. It was with a vineyard / winemaker in Spain and so it was evening for us and some ungodly hour for him. At the… Read More
The Financial Times published the following chart last night. It shows the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases around the world, across the number of days since the 100th case in that particular country. The message here is that most western countries appear to be on… Read More
In 2015, Marshall Burke, Sol Hsiang, and Ted Miguel published a paper in Nature that looked at the relationship between temperature (climate) and economic output. They examined the historical impact of temperature changes (1960-2010) on 166 countries and then used this data to try and predict… Read More
What is happening in California right now is both sad and scary. I woke up to these photos in the New York Times. So I spent the morning reading up on wildfires and what causes them. I am sure many of you are thinking: Is climate… Read More
Last year Nolan Gray mapped out “the cities of the world where you don’t need AC or heat.” And just recently he updated his data with the help of Guardian Cities for their “sweltering cities” series. As part of the study, they projected out average temperatures, in… Read More
One of the things that I have been wondering lately with all of the devastation caused by hurricanes Harvey and Irma is if we need to be viewing these catastrophic incidents as the result of climate change or if we’re being too quick to apply… Read More
Architect Bjarke Ingels will be in Toronto next week to talk about how architecture can create communities and about a new project that he is working on with developers Westbank and Allied REIT here in the city. The last time I heard Bjarke speak was when… Read More
This past Sunday I spent part of the afternoon in Kensington Market (Toronto) for Pedestrian Sundays. If you’ve never been to a Pedestrian Sunday, you’re missing out. The entire neighborhood – which happens to be a National Historic Site of Canada – gets closed to… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 