Toronto’s new garden suite (accessory dwelling unit) policies are headed to Planning and Housing Committee this week for approval. If you’d like to leave a supportive comment, you can do that over here by clicking “submit comments” at the top of the page. I just… Read More
We talk a lot on this blog about laneway housing and ADUs, including, of course, the one that Globizen built earlier this year. But beyond being exceedingly cool (see above), what has this policy change meant at the macro level? To what extent is it… Read More
Vitalik Buterin — who is best known as the cofounder of Ethereum — recently penned this post on his blog where he argues that “crypto cities broadly are an idea whose time has come.” (Credit to Shamez Virani for sending the post to me this… Read More
Strong Towns recently published an interesting set of articles talking about something they refer to as “pretextual planning.” Articles here and here. What they mean by this is that sometimes we create planning rules not necessarily because we think they are the right thing to… Read More
This is a chart from Abundant Housing LA (a YIMBY group), via City Observatory, showing the relationship between median household income and single-family zoning across the 88 cities that make up L.A. County. On average, about 80% of the land in the County is zoned… Read More
Here’s some food for thought around electrical vehicles. In this recent article in The American Conservative, Jordan McGillis argues that, “the electric vehicle is the climate idol of the unimaginative.” Rather than simply changing what’s under the hood of our cars, we should be reexamining… Read More
With laneway suites permitted as-of-right across the entirety of Toronto, the City is now looking to other forms of accessory dwelling units and other ways to increase the supply of rental housing. The next frontier is likely to be something that the City is broadly… Read More
Netflix has a new docuseries out about Latin American street food. I watched two episodes of it last night. The first was about a chef from Buenos Aires, Argentina and the second was about a chef — named Dona Suzana — from Salvador, Brazil. Even… Read More
Building on yesterday’s post about inclusionary zoning, below is a telling diagram from the Urban Land Institute showing which areas of Portland can support new development and which areas cannot. To create this map, ULI looked at achievable rents in each US census block to… Read More
Robert C. Ellickson’s recent paper, titled Zoning and the Cost of Housing: Evidence from Silicon Valley, Greater New Haven, and Greater Austin, really holds back when it comes to the shortcomings of zoning ordinances. Here’s an excerpt: Zoning, as practiced in much of the nation,… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 