Sometimes I’ll hear people in Toronto talk pejoratively about all of the development that’s been happening at Yonge & Eglinton (in midtown). They’ll say it’s too much density. But then you come across charts like the ones above (source previously shared here) and you realize… Read More
This is a telling map from Jens von Bergmann. It shows the changes in population density across Toronto from 1971 to 2021 (measured in people per hectare). What is obvious is the spikiness of our city. We have been very effective at adding lots of… Read More
Boy, population densities can be so misleading. The typical approach is to just take the number of people and divide it by a given area. This then gives you something like X number of “people per square kilometer.” The problem with this approach is that… Read More
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about infill housing and overall urban densities, let’s look at some basic math. The City of Toronto has an estimated population of 3,025,647 (as of June 2023) and a land area of 630 square meters. That means that its… Read More
There are about 2.1 million people who live in Paris (2023 figure). The metro area is, of course, much larger with over 13 million people. But if you look at Paris proper — that being the 20 arrondissements within the Boulevard Périphérique — it’s the… Read More
Here’s an interesting paper from WFH Research that looks at, “the evolution of working from home.” Not surprisingly, remote work tends to vary by industry, with tech being the most likely to work from home and with hospitality & food services the least likely. By… Read More
I came across this interactive world population density map over the weekend and I immediately thought to myself, “this is going on the blog.” It uses data from the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) produced by the European Commission and by CIESIN (super long name)… Read More
According to this recent report by Smart Growth America, which looked at “walkable urbanism” in the largest 35 metro areas in the US, only about 1.2% of land is, on average, built out in this way. Everything else needs to be driven. But here’s the… Read More
Here is an interesting set of maps (from this study) showing density trends, population trends, and residential area trends (i.e. sprawl), across Europe between 2006-2012 and 2012-2018: The key takeaway is that, broadly speaking, there is — or at least there was five years ago… Read More
This data is from 2019, but I imagine that things would look pretty similar today and that it might even be a little more pronounced. The dataset from the above article looked at how many people have cars in a given area (a darker dot… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 