In March 2018, Statistics Canada launched the largest “wastewater-based epidemiology pilot test” ever conducted in North America. Over a 12 month period, it collected wastewater samples across the country in order to test for traces of cannabis and other drugs. The pilot captured 8.4 million… Read More
Jens von Bergmann (data analyst and mathematician); Nathanael Lauster (sociologist); and Douglas Harris (law professor) have been working since 2018 on a study of how condominiums are used and occupied across Canada. The goal is to use the results to better inform public and academic… Read More
Bloomberg recently reported that Canada admitted 321,065 permanent residents last year. This is up 12% from 2017, where the country admitted 286,479. Last year was also the largest cohort since 1913 (the year before World War I), where the country admitted just over 400,000 people.… Read More
This week two new office buildings were announced in Toronto and Vancouver by Allied Properties and Westbank. Both are being designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). As you would expect, Alex Bozikovic of the Globe and Mail has done a proper writeup, here. The building… Read More
This week’s federal budget announced two measures that are intended to improve housing affordability. The first is a modification to the Home Buyers’ Plan. This is a plan that gives first-time home buyers the ability to do a tax-free withdrawal from their RRSP (it does,… Read More
This Planetizen article (2014) by Brent Toderian surfaced over the weekend. It is about tall buildings and why we should be focused more on how they are designed, as opposed to just how tall they are. Brent talks about this in terms of “density done… Read More
Earlier in the week, my friend Rodney Wilts of Theia Partners sent me a JLL report called, World Cities: Mapping the Pathways to Success. I am admittedly only getting around to it now. The report proposes a new typology of world cities that looks like… Read More
Bloomberg Businessweek just published a longish article about Vancouver and the Chinese capital that fuels it. It’s called, The City That Had Too Much Money. Most of you are already familiar with this narrative, but here’s an excerpt that talks about the city’s economic base… Read More
Last night I checked out the Unzipped Toronto exhibition, which is the relocated Serpentine Pavilion (pictured above) that was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group in 2016. It was initially housed in Hyde Park London, but it’s now on King Street West Toronto. Westbank purchased the… Read More
I’m on a flight right now reading the latest issue of Monocle Magazine in a seat that barely accommodates the length of my femur. This month’s issue has their annual ranking of the top 25 cities in the world. Munich is first, which is not… Read More
