One week in, the World Cup in Vancouver is a hit. But can we take the energy and further evidence that the city loves car-free public spaces, and turn that into a permanent legacy on Granville Street? Here's my short video exploring the idea.

“Thinning” is optimistic. New starts are going to drop off a cliff and be down for a year or three. We’ll be back in a shortage context in 2028/2030. Construction costs will moderate (unless we lose too much skilled labour to other markets). Upzoning now won’t drive much land lift.

Authorities that won't introduce congestion pricing are making an official announcement that their policy is to prioritize convenience for car owners over all of these benefits for all residents.

sometimes i turn a corner while walking in vancouver and stumble upon car-free heaven. this city can be so great with more of this everywhere

A few before after along the T6 tram in Lyon. Place Grandclement, 2008 vs today. Probably the most amazing transformation, from a 5-leg chaotic intersection to a non-intersection with minimal lical car traffic on the edges and a nice public realm.

I've been a broken record on this for three years and I'll be a broken record for as long as that fucking website exists: X is a viciously racist far-right organising platform that ONLY WORKS because a huge number of centrists, lefties and progressivs cannot stop propping it up

London continues to build pedestrian streets at a steady clip. The new King’s Passage is a great example.

This violence has been normalized and created by a culture devoted to driver at all cost planning. We coddle and bow down to every demand and when there is a human outside of the car sharing the space they are perceived as an obstacle and have already been dehumanized justifying their wrath.

Last time I was in Lyon the area in front of Lyon Part-Dieu was a big mess. Now the works are finished and I can't really convey how nice a place it is. Busy with people but so calm, because all the space in front of the station is either pedestrian or reserved to mostly electric transit and taxis.

Here’s a SERIOUS question. What if our property tax system was actually fair, and was based on public costs actually incurred to support housing? What if low density housing had to pay its way, rather than being subsidized by responsible infill housing? What if we stopped incentivizing sprawl?

Today I took one of the weirdest bike routes in Metro Vancouver. It's so circuitous that it makes 45th Avenue look like an airport runway, has a stop sign every block, and doesn't have a safe crossing of a single arterial it crosses. Not sure why anyone would take it over Railway or the West Dyke...

Meanwhile, at the Granville Island parking lot, Vancouver council sits, transifxed in fear that a driver might get mad if they make the city better...

This is something I hammer on, because it is a bit counter-intuitive, but the more places I experience, the more convinced I am - road width is one of the most important factors in a city feeling livable, far more important than building height, which is largely irrelevant

Laws to require speed limiters for the most egregious traffic offenders have been passed in five states. We are, in fact, getting speed limiters.

This is what 6 bikes and 6 cars looks like. Bloor Street, Toronto. Imagine planning cities for the former, instead of the latter. #onpoli #biketo

thinking about how herzog & de meuron's stunning mass timber office building in basel is 100% illegal in the US single stair highrise mass timber hybrid no sprinkler look at how clean those ceilings are and look at those shades! www.baunetz.de/meldungen/Me...

When real estate agents think it’s too dangerous to take the TTC but hundreds of school children take it everyday with no issue

*powerpointing intensifies*

In just 17 years, Seattle went from not having light rail to having the most ridden system in the nation. We’ve proven how leadership & investment can change a city and people’s lives for the better

How do we know we've upzoned enough? When: - high- and low-density land prices are equal. - additional upzonings do not increase land prices.

A low-slung commercial building turns into 50 homes in Berkeley. (2019➡️2025)

Ending low-interest loans to multimillionaires is small, but probably one of the best pure policy victories from Eby. It annoys me that the journalists lets all the quotes in this piece talk about "low-income" seniors without ever mentioning assets.

Well well well By @carltonreid.com . #bikesky #bikeTO

I've ALWAYS wanted to write a reported story on bike theft. This one is doozy—a teenaged thief who stole $50,000 worth of bikes in Silicon Valley. Big surprise, the police did next to nothing. Here’s how the victims got their bikes back with DIY detective work. escapecollective.com/a-thief-took...

Passing by Brentwood station on Skytrain, thinking that the sequel to Pixar’s Up (Upper, I assume), should start with a beleaguered car dealership owner surrounded by high rise towers and being hounded by developers to sell out. Could be a ‘Cars’ crossover, maybe

it's certainly interesting to watch every single person in the oil industry repeat in a monotone “we are 3 to 6 weeks away from the worst energy crisis in history”, supply chain people with thousand yard stares, every single macroeconomist I know is benchmarking against 2008, etc and then meanwhile

Science world looks good as a soccer ball. Maybe we should keep it that way after the World Cup is over

And in what direction did house prices go while we prioritized the interests of local landowners?

Globally, car culture claims 3,500 lives a day. Yet our moral panic is spent on ebikes, people riding on sidewalks to stay safe, and pedestrians wearing dark clothing or wearing headphones. We have normalized mass casualties while villainizing people just trying to exist outside of a vehicle.

I love the SkyTrain. This is a good video. Except it calls Nanaimo bars cookies. Are brownies cookies? Is pie cookies? IS THE SKYTRAIN COOKIES?

Banning hotels (and most housing forms) near the province's biggest specialty hospital has really bad consequences: vancouver.citynews.ca/2026/05/30/t...

I missed this before. The CPPIB has lost $100B of Canadian's money since they switched to active management 20 years ago (vs. an equivalent passive portfolio). Their costs are high compared to smaller pensions.

The Toronto Classic: 3 shitty drivers versus 150 pedestrians trying to get to their train/subway.

The Cours Charlemagne, a large road through central Lyon, was pedestrianized in front of the Confluence shopping mall in 2021. Trams + bikes + pedestrians.

Before (2025) / After (2026) Avenue Debidour in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. The former dead-end parking near a park is now a pedestrian zone. Works were completed less than four months ago.

Brand new plaza open at 18th in Cambie Village! People already enjoying. 😍

Everyone should fill this out!! 49 finally getting the bus lane treatment it deserves!!

It should be legal to build homes that I do not personally want to live in. Not every home will serve everyone at every stage of life. Families are not the only people who need housing. New housing primarily benefits the people who get places to live, not the investors who make money on it.

A first look inside #TransLink's new 60-ft-long, 4-door articulated trolley buses built in Europe. Yes, that's an extra door at the rear. With some notable differences for the interior design, too. #vanpoli #vanre dailyhive.com/vancouver/tr...

Here is an inspiration for Toronto on how to manage left turns with center-running tram lanes. Cars wait in the rightmost lane instead of occupying the tram lane and yield to trams. It seems to work pretty fine in a very busy unsignalized intersection.

Twice as many senior administrators as 10 years ago, some getting paid much more. It's hardly unique to school boards or even government, but I think it's certainly a reason funding (tax dollars) doesn't go as far as it used to. thetyee.ca/News/2026...

Building dense new apartment buildings frees up much more affordable housing, including larger homes like detached houses! In this study, homes were a whopping 44% cheaper in the second round of moves/vacancies.

youtu.be/QQYMUMTI7fk?... Economic research shows that building new market-rate homes can start chains of moves that ultimately free up much cheaper ones. Here, Pew trace a real-life chain starting with a luxury building and ending with a low-income family being able to reunite in a home of their own

"The site is zoned as residential, but apartment buildings are allowed." Is an apartment building not residential? What is going on here? What is the Star saying about apartments and the people who live in them? 🖕 www.thestar.com/real-estate/...

on my birthday I took to the newsletter to write about the AI commencement address backlash, and how growing anger at AI is now irreversibly tethered to justified rage at the extraction class -- whether AI boosters like it or not

I’ve covered waste and elevators. Each is a huge topic and wins you double digit dollars per unit per month in savings. You need to do this for every system of the building to fix the problem. It is fixable though – HOA fees in Europe are a small fraction of ours.

Capital cost escalation is an existential problem in the transit industry right now and we don't have enough engineers screaming from the rooftops about it. Where are we headed if we keep swallowing these cost increases unquestioningly? Is this happening with highway infrastructure too?

The strangest thing in BC media is when reporters describe Bill Tieleman as just some guy and not one of the best-known lobbyists in the province. I guess he's good at his job.

This is going to come across as pretentious and unhelpful, but I really recommend reading books. Reading a book is the only thing I do where I feel like I'm nourishing my attention span, rather than sanding it down. The trick is to just read whatever you enjoy — not what you feel like you should.

Do you know why there is a speed bump? Because drivers can't help but drive dangerously next to this elementary school Do you know why there are flex posts next to the speed bump? Because drivers would avoid the speed bump and use the bike lane to continue their dangerous driving