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
All posts tagged “tokyo”
The Tokyo Toilet – Part 2
You can tell a lot about a place by the quality of its public toilets. I don’t know about you, but if I’m at a restaurant and the toilets are filthy, I automatically assume that the kitchen is at least as filthy. And so what… Read More
Japan pays people to leave Tokyo
We have spoken over the years — here, here, and here — about the centralizing and decentralizing forces that play out within our cities. Agglomeration economies, for example, are a centralizing force. There are real economic benefits to people and firms clustering together in cities.… Read More
Distributed Japanese capsules
Japanese Metabolism was a post-war architectural movement that was based around the idea that cities and buildings should be able to grow and transform just like other organisms. There are other elements to the movement, but this was at its core. And perhaps the best… Read More
Swimming in the Seine
There is an ongoing debate about the value of cities hosting the Olympic Games. And that’s because this is usually how it works: You, the host, spend a lot of money (Tokyo 2021 was over $25 billion), it feels really good during the games while… Read More
[Book] Emergent Tokyo — Designing the Spontaneous City
I just ordered a copy of this book. So I haven’t read it yet. But I did just read this Q&A with the authors (and it clearly piqued interested). The central idea is that Tokyo — which is a massive city that is famous for… Read More
What might Toronto learn from this infill rental project in Tokyo
This is a lovely little infill rental project in Tokyo by ETHNOS (architect) for Real Partners (developer): The building is 4 storeys plus a rooftop terrace. From the plans, it looks like there are 8 units, all of which are two-storey suites. The A and… Read More
Do the best cities have a lot of immigrants?
I tweeted this out last night while watching old reruns of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown series. This was a great show. If I were to give everything up and become a YouTuber, this is the kind of travel and food channel I would want to… Read More
Slime mold may be better than us at transportation planning
So slime mold, which is a fungus-like single-celled organism, has a tendency to build highly optimized networks across its food sources. In other words, if you scattered a bunch of food on a surface and then dropped in some slime mold, it would naturally create… Read More
Largest cities in the world from 100 to 2015 CE
I just discovered this set of maps (via Brian Potter) looking at the largest cities in the world from 100 CE all the way through to today (well 2015 CE). Here are what the two bookends of this map series look like: It is an… Read More