Planning

It seems that a day hardly goes by without another incident of violence making the national news. From school shootings to aggressive protests from extreme groups and endless petty crime in general  read more »

You’ve probably seen photos or videos of huge homeless encampments in America’s cities, like the ones in this Daily Mail article about Portland.  read more »

In the middle of the 20th century, there was considerable interest in developing new communities (new towns). The interest was, to some degree, driven by the establishment of new towns in nations like the United Kingdom and France, where a number of projects had been completed by 1970.  read more »

Cities evolve by either expanding, deteriorating, tearing down or preserving. Some cities like Dallas have vast vacant land and other cities have little undeveloped land. Whether a city is expanding or declining, preservation is always healthy for a city.  read more »

The city of Portland announced yesterday that it received a $2 million federal grant to get it to ban gasoline (and, presumably, Diesel) delivery vehicles in a sixteen-block area of downtown Portland.  read more »

Whether hundreds of years ago or today, the far-reaching environmental impacts of urbanization are because cities are “a node of pure consumption existing parasitically on an extensive external resource base.”  read more »

The proper size of government permeates public policy discussions about homelessness, poverty, and health care. The left and right debate varying degrees of government involvement, typically failing to act and often deteriorating into a state of policy paralysis.  read more »

In a previous post, I commented on the difficulties faced by the Calgary CBD (downtown), with its huge office vacancies resulting from the mid-decade oil bust  read more »

One of the arguments against single-family zoning is that separating housing from other uses forces people to drive to shops, work, and other destinations.  read more »

A poll by highly respected IPSOS, released by BILD-GTA, shows a strong awareness of the Greater Toronto Area’s severely unaffordable housing.  read more »