I lived in my last condo for over 10 years. And since it faced east, I never got to see any sunsets while at home. Now that our new place faces south and west, I am amazed at how often there’s a beautiful sunset here… Read More
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All posts tagged “toronto”
Toronto’s Major Streets Study approved at Planning and Housing Committee
Back in March, we spoke about how Toronto wants to allow small-scale apartments on all of its major streets. Well today, this study — known as the Major Streets Study — passed at Planning and Housing Committee. It still has to pass at Council. And… Read More
Art in hospitals
Art in hospitals is such a good idea. The above photos are from Michael Garron Hospital, here in Toronto. One thing I have never understood is why so many hospitals look and feel depressing. (My mom is a nurse and so I was around them… Read More
Forty-one
Today is my forty-first birthday. I had aspirations of making it a slower day, but that didn’t really happen. I did, however, start my morning “on the Bench” for one of our development projects and that was pretty spectacular, especially with the weather we had.… Read More
Toward more rental housing
The Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area is expected to see 6,821 new rental homes completed this year. This is a “multi-decade high”, according to Urbanation’s latest rental report. Indeed, you need to go back to the 1970s to get rental supply figures of this magnitude.… Read More
Three ways to optimize investments in transit
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
Toronto’s unstable neighborhoods
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
How big (or small) are your parking spaces?
There is an ongoing architecture/development joke that the way you design a building is by first starting with the parking. Once you’ve figured out how the parking will work, you can then move on to, you know, the secondary stuff, like figuring out how actual… Read More
More sellers than buyers
This week, Urbanation released its condominium market update for Q1-2024. And I’d like to point out two data points. Firstly, across the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Area (GTHA), there were 1,461 new condominium sales for the quarter. This is the lowest quarterly total since Q1-2009… Read More
More people are cycling in Chicago
One of the common criticisms of bike lanes is that most people don’t want to cycle in the winter. I mean, just look at Montreal’s winter cycling retention ratio. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t invest in cycling infrastructure. Chicago, for instance, has been… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 