People move to cities for a whole host of reasons, whether it be for more money, more affordable housing, and/or better weather. The fastest growing cities in the US, for example, tend to be in the south where it’s warmer and where housing supply is… Read More
As I am sure you have all heard, there’s a lot of debate in New York right now (city and state) about whether they should reject Amazon’s decision to open up a new headquarters in Queens. Urbanist Richard Florida has been arguing that one of… Read More
So I was wrong. Amazon didn’t pick Toronto for HQ2. It instead picked Crystal City, Virginia (Washington) and Long Island City, NY (New York City). More on that, here, in the NY Times. Confession: My prognostication was at least partially about trying to create a… Read More
As part of the Amazon HQ2 bid process, a number of cities produced videos. I only discovered them today and so maybe some of you also missed them when they were released last fall. There are videos from Detroit, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las… Read More
Dan Doctoroff, the CEO of Sidewalk Labs (and the former deputy mayor of New York City), was recently interviewed by BNN Bloomberg about the company’s plans and ambitions for Quayside here in Toronto. He talks about the project; their interest in timber construction; how the… Read More
I spent this evening reading about Opportunity Zones, or “O-zones”, in the United States. For a census tract to become an O-zone, it has to have a poverty rate of 20% or higher, or the median household income has to be less than 80% of the… Read More
Over the weekend, Jason Thorne, who is the General Manager of Planning and Economic Development at the City of Hamilton, tweeted this out. He said, if Jerry Seinfeld can do Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee, then he was going to do Planners On Bikes Getting… Read More
The Globe and Mail recently ran an article arguing that tech salaries in Toronto are significantly less than those in the US and that it is leading to “alarmingly high rates” of brain drain. The claim is that the average tech salary in 2017 was US$73,000… Read More
Jennifer Keesmaat – the former chief planner of Toronto – recently published an article in Maclean’s called: Toronto’s unaffordable. Why can’t Halifax or Saskatoon take advantage? Her argument: “The hard truth is that many mid-sized cities won’t win the future because they are stuck on… Read More
The world is increasingly spiky. Inequality is growing and it is increasingly geographic in nature. We know that people tend to make more money in urban areas compared to rural areas – even when they possess the exact same level of education. The returns to… Read More
