In life and business I find that we are often faced with decisions that pit emotion against rationality. What I mean by this is that maybe your ego is telling you to do something. And maybe, as a matter of principle, you know with certainty… Read More
The construction process can be a pain in the ass. It’s messy. It’s inefficient. It’s always filled with surprises. And you could argue, as many have before, that every job is really a custom job — a kind of prototype. But at the same time,… Read More
Why do some buildings cost more to build than others? And how is it that some cities, as a whole, seem to build more cost effectively than others? Without getting into the specifics of how different markets work, I thought it would be valuable to… Read More
That is the argument that Joshua Gordon, who is an assistant professor in the Simon Fraser University School of Public Policy, recently made in this opinion piece in the Globe and Mail. In his view, there’s no evidence to suggest that housing supply can actually… Read More
At a high level there are two components to the value of a house. There’s the value of the land and there’s the value of all the improvements. That is, the bricks, wood, and other stuff that form the actual house. When a media outlet… Read More
Here are a few things to consider. One, the home you live in was likely built by a person or company that was trying to make a profit. Two, when your home was being developed and built, it probably upset a bunch of people. Both… Read More
In Athens, I have a learned, there is something known as antiparochi. The practice took hold in the middle of the 20th century at a time when Athens was in desperate need of new housing. Supposedly during the 1950s, an estimated 560,000 people came to… Read More
One of my colleagues likes to remind me that in an open concept floor plan, which is obviously pretty common these days, it is the RCP, or reflected ceiling plan, that really defines a space. (For those of you who might be unfamiliar, an RCP… Read More
I asked this question on Twitter this morning because I am planning to write more development-related posts. It’s a topic that seems to be of interest to a lot of people. One question that I received was about the kind of profit margins that Toronto… Read More
The New York Times is running an opinion series right now called, The America We Need. It is all about how the US might emerge from this crisis “with a fair, resilient society.” This piece by Carol Galante covers many of the topics that we… Read More
