Friend: Ever go to Jilly’s? Me: No, actually. Friend: Same. Me: What about you? [Addressed to random guy in elevator] Random guy in elevator: I’m from Portland. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I went to check out the new Broadview Hotel last night… Read More
I just stumbled upon the above project. It’s in Portland. It’s called Slate. It’s 147,000 sf. It sits on a 100′ x 200′ site. It was completed last year. And it was developed by Beam Development and Urban Development Partners. Besides having two very cool… Read More
I like this comparison of street grids that Daniel Nairn prepared back in 2010: There’s huge variation here. On the one end you have cities like Carson City, Portland, and Providence, which have small blocks (180′ x 180′ and 200′ x 200′). And on the… Read More
Thanks to this blog, it’s pretty easy for me to go back and look at what I was doing and thinking throughout the year. That’s one of the benefits of writing a daily blog/journal. And as is usually the case, 2015 was a year of… Read More
On Monday evening I gave a 45 minute talk at the Rotman School to a delegation of about 70 people from Portland. The talk was about Toronto housing, but more specifically about the history and possible future of high-rise housing in this city. Thanks to… Read More
Ace Hotel, LA by Dan Hogman on 500px https://500px.com/embed.js The word on the street right now is that Ace Hotel will be opening up a location in Toronto’s Fashion District at 51 Camden Street. Unlike its other outposts around the world, which entailed the renovation… Read More
The Martin Prosperity Institute here in Toronto just released a new research study called Segregated City: The Geography of Economic Segregation in America’s Metros. The report looks at the physical sorting and separation of advantaged and disadvantaged groups within cities. And it did so across… Read More
About 9 months ago I wrote about a new startup called Urban Engines that was trying to improve urban mobility by using big data to optimize transit usage. Last Tuesday the app launched in 10 cities across North America. So if you’re in Boston, Chicago,… Read More
Joe Cortright of City Observatory recently reposted an article that he wrote back in 2010 called, Keeping it Weird: The Secret to Portland’s Economic Success. In it he talks about a “weirdness index” that he developed for CEOs for Cities that measured and ranked 50… Read More
Earlier this month, Bloomberg published this map showing where Uber operates and where it’s been banned (or is being challenged). You can click on the map for a larger version. Uber operates in about 250 cities across the world. But it’s being challenged in a… Read More
