Bullpen Consulting and Batory Management published their Q4-2019 land insights report for the Greater Toronto Area today. According to the report, there were 36 high-density apartment land transactions in Q4-2019. The average sale price was about $111 per buildable square foot and Bullpen estimates that… Read More
There’s a lot of data/speculation out there about the impact of ride-hailing apps. Many dense urban centers are claiming that they have increased traffic (slowed average speeds) and pulled people away from public transit. The University of Toronto published this study last year. And the… Read More
The Information estimates that around $16 billion has been spent over the last few years on developing autonomous vehicles. This is across some 30 companies. But about half of this spending has come from just three companies: Waymo (Alphabet), Cruise (GM), and Uber. Waymo has… Read More
Aaron Renn’s latest article in the Manhattan Institute is about how America’s top cities can “grow to new heights.” Usually when we talk about urban problems, it is because of failures. But in this case, it is about problems of success (though I suppose you… Read More
I have a fascination with “small” Japanese homes. Many, or perhaps most of them, would be illegal to build in a place like Toronto. This one here in Tokyo, called Jewel, is only 1.4m wide on its narrowest elevation. See above photo. Designed by Apollo… Read More
The North American rule of thumb is that young people — specifically people in their 20s — are the most likely to to live in an urban neighborhood. After that it’s all down hill and, broadly speaking, the percentages decline. But at some point, much… Read More
Feargus O’Sullivan is doing a series in CityLab right now on the “home designs” that define four European cities: London, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Paris. The first one is on London’s classic “two-up, two-down” design, which refers to a two storey home with a living room… Read More
A few weeks ago, I tweeted that I was creating a simple email newsletter that would notify you of new planning/development applications (and updates) near where you live (in Toronto). About 100 people subscribed following that tweet and we then spent the following few weeks… Read More
I have stayed at two hotels over the last month where I did not need to interact with a human as part of the check in process. And in one of those two instances I didn’t even need to interact with a computer at the… Read More
Elon Musk recently posted this Twitter survey asking if we, the people, would like “super safe, Earthquake-proof tunnels under [our] cities to solve traffic.” It was leading in that the “no” response was, “No, I like traffic.” And it was initially vague in that it… Read More
