Whenever you see a best-of-anything ranking, you should probably ask yourself what the hell “best” even means. In this case, Resonance Consultancy is ranking the world’s cities based on six alliterative categories: place, people, programming, product, prosperity, and promotion. Some of these metrics are qualitative,… Read More
The big news this week in Toronto planning & development is the province’s decision to approve three downtown development projects using a tool known as a “ministerial zoning order.” The impetus for doing this was to speed up the approval and delivery of about 1,000… Read More
This Thursday is the launch of a brand new city event called the WRLDCTY Virtual Festival (vowels, clearly, suck). Presented by Vancouver-based Resonance Consultancy, the “host cities” are New York, London, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, and Toronto. The idea is to bring together thought leaders… Read More
Constructed throughout the 1930s, the R.C Harris Water Treatment Plant (pictured above) is the largest water treatment plant in the City of Toronto. It produces over 120,000 million liters of water each year, which represents about 30% of Toronto’s drinking water. Designed by Scottish architect… Read More
Today I’m excited to announce the latest artist collaboration at Junction House. (For a background on the others, click here.) Bogota-born, Toronto-based Juanita Lee-Garcia has created a series of hand-cut collage panels for the construction hoarding at Junction House (the background color is the project’s… Read More
A new report was just published by Urbanation and the Federation of Rental-Housing Providers of Ontario (FRPO) arguing that the Greater Toronto Area is undersupplying rental housing to the tune of about 20,000 units per year. This number considers both purpose-built rental housing and condominiums… Read More
Why do some buildings cost more to build than others? And how is it that some cities, as a whole, seem to build more cost effectively than others? Without getting into the specifics of how different markets work, I thought it would be valuable to… Read More
Here’s a weekly round up of links and articles that you may find interesting. The topics cover the sorts of things that we usually talk about on this blog. The latest Mackay Laneway House update is now live on the Globizen Journal. The ground floor… Read More
It has been well documented that Tokyo tends to build a lot of housing. And the argument goes that this has helped to maintain a certain level of housing affordability. The city is constantly building and rebuilding. It also has different views about housing. Now,… Read More
It used to be the case that cities had a habit of catching fire and burning down. Toronto had the Great Fires of 1849 and 1904. Chicago had the Great Fire of 1871. And the same can be said about many other cities. In fact,… Read More
