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
Toronto has a lot more CCTV cameras than I would have thought. According to this (2022?) data from Comparitech, there is estimated to be about 19,236 cameras installed around the Greater Toronto Area. With a population of around 6.31 million people, this translates into a… Read More
This is one of my Christmas gifts. And it is, of course, exactly the sort of thing that gets me excited. Thank you Bianca. You clearly know me. I am endlessly fascinated by cities. I keep a running list of places I want to explore… Read More
Back when Toronto was debating the future of the eastern portion of the elevated Gardiner Expressway, I was an annoying and vocal supporter of tearing it down and replacing it with an at-grade boulevard. I was blogging about it ad nauseam. I participated in Jane’s… Read More
Following my recent post about the largest cities in the world (from 100 to 2015 CE), a number of you rightly pointed out that the data looked questionable. Where, for example, is Shanghai in this latest list of largest cities? So I think it’s important… Read More
The Journal published a piece this past week talking about China’s $52 trillion residential property bubble. According to a recent study by Goldman Sachs, this is the current value of all Chinese homes (built homes and developer inventory). And to put this number into perspective,… Read More
Since 2005, LSE Cities (London School of Economics) has been collecting comparative data on how global cities perform in terms of key spatial, socioeconomic, and environmental indicators. This is their latest data matrix: To be clear, it is not a ranking of cities. It is… Read More
The below graphs are taken from a recent (June 2019) report by Knight Frank on “prime” residential pricing across the world. They define “prime” as generally being the top 5% of each market by value. What these graphs show are the spread between the average… Read More
The latest project out of MIT’s Senseable City Lab examines the “sensing power of taxis” in various cities around the world. Looking at traffic data, they determined how many circulating taxis you would need to equip with sensors if you wanted to capture comprehensive street… Read More
Joe Berridge’s recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail makes the case for why Shanghai is destined to become “the capital of future.” Brash city building, massive scale, and entrepreneurial hustle are among some of the reasons why he believes the city is on… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 