River Davis’ recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Tokyo’s generally flat home prices had me, again, wondering about demographics. I mean, aren’t their demographics working in reverse? They have an aging population, low immigration, and a low birthrate. But Tokyo, which represents about… Read More
A good friend of mine just sent me this fascinating research paper called: Opposition to Development or Opposition to Developers? Survey Evidence from Los Angeles County on Attitudes towards New Housing. It is a study out of UCLA that was published earlier this year by… Read More
McKinsey Global Institute just published a “supply-side toolkit” for cities struggling with housing affordability. This seems to be every successful city. The article includes a long list of potential tools. Some of them you may agree with. And others you may disagree with. But I… Read More
Opposition to new development is nothing new in this city. In fact, it’s the norm in almost all cities, regardless of how big or small the project might be. But the battle happening right now in Toronto with respect to the proposed 8 storey condominium… Read More
Earlier today Richard Florida published a piece in CityLab called: Anatomy of a NIMBY. The article cites a recent paper by Paavo Monkkonen (of UCLA) that focuses on the relationship between NIMBYism and housing affordability – a much talked about subject these days. More specifically,… Read More
I’ve been reading the blog 5 Kids 1 Condo for, I think, about a year now. It’s written by Adrian Crook who is a single dad of 5 kids, living in a 2 bedroom condo in downtown Vancouver. And his blog is about just that.… Read More
Tom Gardner and Morgan Housel (The Motley Fool) recently published a LinkedIn article called, Why Does Pessimism Sound So Smart? (Especially When Things Are So Good.) Here is the gist of it: If you say the world has been getting better you may get away… Read More
For the past week or so I’ve been seeing the proposed Kettle Boffo Project in Vancouver make the rounds online. Here’s a rendering of the project, which is located at Commercial Drive and Venables Street: The reason it has been making the rounds is that a… Read More
The Toronto Star published an article today called: Midtowners battle the rise of the midrise. It’s about a group called The Density Creep Neighborhood Alliance, which was formed in order to fight a 4 storey stacked townhouse project that is currently going through the rezoning… Read More
The Old Urbanist has just published an informative post called “Where Zoning Went Wrong.” In it, he talks about some of the defining characterstics of American city planning and suggests that the delegation of planning authority from states to local municipalities is what has caused… Read More
