
Canada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...

The bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
The story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...

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Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.

Canada must become a global superpower
The silver lining to the US starting a trade war with Canada and regularly threatening annexation is that it has forced this country out of complacency. Indeed, I'm hard pressed to remember a time, at least in my lifetime, when patriotism and nationalism has united so much of Canada. According to a recent survey by Angus Reid, the percentage of Canadians expressing a "deep emotional attachment" to the country jumped from 49% in December 2024 to 59% in February 2025. And as further evidence of...

The bank robbery capital of the world
Between 1985 and 1995, Los Angeles' retail bank branches were robbed some 17,106 times. In 1992, which was the the city's worst year for robberies, the number was 2,641. This roughly translated into about one bank robbery every 45 minutes of each banking day. All of this, according to this CrimeReads piece by Peter Houlahan, gave Los Angeles the dubious title of "The Bank Robbery Capital of the World" during this time period. So what caused this? Well according to Peter it was facil...
The story behind those pixelated video game mosaics in Paris
If you've ever been to Paris, you've probably noticed the small pixelated art pieces that are scattered all around the city on buildings and various other hard surfaces. Or maybe you haven't seen or noticed them in Paris, but you've seen similarly pixelated mosaics in one of the other 79 cities around the world where they can be found. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about right now. Huh? Here's an example from Bolivia (click here if you can't see...
>4.2K subscribers
>4.2K subscribers

Over the past few weeks I’ve been running a little experiment on Twitter where I tweet about a new development project in Toronto and I ask people to vote on it. If they like the project, I ask that they retweet (RT) it. And if they don’t like it, I ask that they favorite it (FAV).
Here’s what it looks like in tweet form:
https://twitter.com/AThisCity/status/575803932083032064
As you can see from this experiment, about 69% of the people who participated seemed to be in favor of this project (at least at the time of writing this post). That said, the discussion following this tweet was a lot more negative than I would have expected.
Somebody also pointed out that in my experiment I’ve created a bias towards supporting the project, since a retweet means the project gets shared, whereas a favorite doesn’t do that. I would argue that the more distribution the better for an accurate consensus, but point taken.
So today I thought I would do this same experiment here on Architect This City.
At the bottom of this post, I’ve featured a comment from myself asking if you support the 1 Bloor West project. If you like the project, I ask that you “up vote” my comment. And if you dislike the project, I ask that you “down vote” it. You can do so by using the up and down arrows towards the bottom left of the comment.
Hopefully this hack will create a more neutral voting framework. I hope you will participate. If you’re reading this via email, you’ll need to open up the post in your browser by clicking “read more” at the bottom.
If you’d like to learn more about the project before voting, check out this article from the Globe and Mail. Happy voting!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been running a little experiment on Twitter where I tweet about a new development project in Toronto and I ask people to vote on it. If they like the project, I ask that they retweet (RT) it. And if they don’t like it, I ask that they favorite it (FAV).
Here’s what it looks like in tweet form:
https://twitter.com/AThisCity/status/575803932083032064
As you can see from this experiment, about 69% of the people who participated seemed to be in favor of this project (at least at the time of writing this post). That said, the discussion following this tweet was a lot more negative than I would have expected.
Somebody also pointed out that in my experiment I’ve created a bias towards supporting the project, since a retweet means the project gets shared, whereas a favorite doesn’t do that. I would argue that the more distribution the better for an accurate consensus, but point taken.
So today I thought I would do this same experiment here on Architect This City.
At the bottom of this post, I’ve featured a comment from myself asking if you support the 1 Bloor West project. If you like the project, I ask that you “up vote” my comment. And if you dislike the project, I ask that you “down vote” it. You can do so by using the up and down arrows towards the bottom left of the comment.
Hopefully this hack will create a more neutral voting framework. I hope you will participate. If you’re reading this via email, you’ll need to open up the post in your browser by clicking “read more” at the bottom.
If you’d like to learn more about the project before voting, check out this article from the Globe and Mail. Happy voting!
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