A friend of mine called me out today for not using my online presence — both social media and this blog — to share my views on the horrible tragedies that are taking place right now in the United States and the world. She is… Read More
This isn’t a laneway suite per se, but Office Ou here in Toronto recently completed this garage conversion. The idea was to take a typical rear laneway garage and turn it into something that could better house a wide range of uses. As Toronto reconsiders… Read More
The Knight Foundation recently published a report looking at what attaches people to the place in which they live. To get this information, they surveyed over 11,000 Americans, some of which live in urbanized areas and some of which just live in metro areas across… Read More
The Moovit Public Transit Index has been tracking the impact of COVID-19 on public transit usage around the world. Not surprisingly, people are using transit a lot less. Above is a chart from Moovit showing usage from January 15, 2020 to April 12, 2020, for… Read More
The American Institute of Architects just presented its 2019 Housing Awards. 12 housing projects were recognized across four categories. Some of the projects I have written about before — such as the Tiny Tower in North Philadelphia. But most of the projects haven’t been covered… Read More
ISA Architects recently completed a project in North Philadelphia called Tiny Tower. It is a 6-level, 1,250 square foot single family home built on a small 12′ x 29′ lot. That’s about the footprint of two parking spaces. It feels like a house you might… Read More
Three years ago I wrote about how I was one step closer to not only going cashless — I had pretty much already done that — but also going walletless. (That’s one of the things about writing a daily blog — there’s a public record.)… Read More
Architect Robert Venturi died this week at his home in Philadelphia. He was 93. Here is his obituary from the New York Times. Robert Venturi was, along with his partner and wife Denise Scott Brown, a central figure in 20th century American architecture. He is… 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
This morning I stumbled upon an old (2013) post from Rebel Metropolis that documents urban American life through street photos taken before the automobile. Above is Little Italy, New York City, 1900. All of the photos in the post are from Shorpy. The photos are… Read More
