Let’s transform the heart of the Village into a walkable, car-free space! 🏳️‍🌈🚶‍♂️ We're proposing to pedestrianize Church St (Wellesley to Alexander) from June 19 - Aug 21 to celebrate The 519's 50th & our Cultural District. Help make it happen! Sign here: ExperienceTheVillage.ca

From 9 garages to 4 new homes (in Toronto, by Steven Fong Architecture + one:1).

Cast your vote for the Ontario Association of Architects’ 2026 People’s Choice Award. Pick your favourite from among this year's Design Excellence Award winners from an Ontario architecture practice. oaa.on.ca/2026-peoples...

Canadian Architect’s Elsa Lam speaks with Paul Farish and Jason Thorne about how the city is using competitions, QBS, and other procurement models to advance design excellence and engage a broader range of firms.

The 3rd #GlobalPlacemakingSummit, will be in Bangkok, Thailand! Hosted by the Urban Studies Lab and #PlacemakingThailand. #Placemaking #PlacemakingASEAN #PlacemakingAsia

Did you miss our 1st URBAN TRUTH STARTER PACK? These are accounts with unusually good communications or marketing/branding of issues and ideas for better city-building. Sharing the truth more persausively, and calling out disinformation & lies! Please follow & SHARE! #UrbanTruth go.bsky.app/47w5jKk

A short thread of some North Macedonian Brutalism in Skopje. Starting with the Central Skopje Post Office by architect Janko Konstantinov.

After the fall of Communism in Tirana, owners of ground floor units in the ubiquitous apartment blocks would add small shops to their units, often starting with just a window for selling goods, and eventually adding full storefronts and small extensions. Now they’re the city’s main streets!

In the early 2000s, the City of Tirana initiated a program to bring colour and life to the drab, grey Communist-era apartment blocks of the city.

“Tirana Moons” temporary outdoor public space and library in Tirana (by Studio Precht and UDV Architects).

Morning ride with Iden Petraj, the Bicycle Mayor of Tirana.

Love this! Bicycle School in Tirana, Albania.

I think this is the first mural I’ve ever seen that honours an architect! This is a mural of Svetlana Kana Radević in Podgorica. She’s credited as the first female Montenegrin architect.

The Festina Lente Bridge and “The Equilibrists” over the Miljacka River in Sarajevo.

The Socialist modern apartment blocks of Novi Zagreb. This is the 1974 “Mammoth”, one of Europe's largest residential blocks, measuring 250 meters long with over 1,100 apartments. And the 1968 “Rockets.”

Before and after in Ljubljana.

Riding around Ljubljana with @liorsteinberg.bsky.social of Rotterdam-based Humankind City for his “Urbanists on bakfiets talking cities” podcast.

Ljubljana is a very under-appreciated city.

Shade. Seating. Snacks. Zürich’s transit kiosks.

The City is running a cargo bike corral pilot program (https://secure.toronto.ca/council/agenda-item.do?item=2024.IE18.9). Please email requests for potential cargo bike parking corral locations to [email protected] by April 2. Requested locations will be considered for installation in 2026.

The new Stadttunnel bike tunnel running under the main train station in Zurich.

Like a jungle gym for office workers. MFO-Park at the site of the former Oerlikon Machine Works in Zurich (by architects Burckhardt + Partners and landscape architects Raderschallpartner).

Just another Sunday at Zürich Hauptbahnhof … 60 trains in the next 45 minutes.

“Five Design Teams Shortlisted for Park Competition in Liberty Village … the competition forms part of a larger municipal push to improve the quality of Toronto’s public realm through design-led procurement.” urbantoronto.ca/news/2026/03...

Niagara Falls Exchange is an OAA Design Excellence Awards finalist! Read more: oaa.on.ca/whats-on/new...

Our “Zoning for Low-Carbon Technologies” initiative is a comprehensive review of our zoning by-law to facilitate things like building / ground-mounted thermal energy devices, roof-mounted solar panels, over-cladding, EV parking and solar parking canopies. Learn more at tinyurl.com/d6bcbv9e

Looking forward to the Urban Future Better-Cities event next week in Ljubljana!

Planners spend more time out in the community than just about any other public servants. It was a busy one for me this week with a talk for a local residents group, a community open house with >700 attendees, a talk for students at TMU, and a ward tour with City Councillor Rachel Chernos Lin!

18 days ago we launched our website, introduced ourselves and our mission, and explained what we’re going to do. Today we passed 5000 followers here on Bluesky. And counting. Thank you all for your interest and support, and for your OWN efforts to change cities for the better. #UrbanTruth

Looking for development activity data in Toronto? The Development Pipeline Dashboard is an interactive tool that lets people explore development activity across the city. The dashboard highlights the number of projects, residential units, residential and non‑residential space.

Happy to be included in this great and important Starter Pack, along with a lot of Canadian urbanists and communicators! The @urbantruth.bsky.social keeps knocking it out of the park.

“Bike Share Toronto had a 40-per-cent increase in individual riders in 2025 compared to 2024” www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The Craven Road community art gallery (Toronto).

Coming soon. The new glazed terracotta-clad Wallace Emerson Community Centre and park at Dupont and Dufferin (architect Perkins + Will).

In response to popular demand after creating an arc diagram of rides between stations on the TTC’s Line 1, our Data Viz Lead has created one for Line 2 that displays which pairs of stations see the most trips, and which pairs have very few between them https://ow.ly/hjUa50YntwO

Enjoying a now-totally-legal 😀 espresso at Finch Store w/ Mayor Chow, Councillor Bravo & one of the main community voices who helped make the neighbourhood retail initiative happen @anotherglassbox.bsky.social Thx to Yana & entrepreneurs like her who bring life + community to local neighbourhoods!

The City is updating its Mid-Rise Building Design Guidelines — and we want to hear from you. Join an online consultation to learn about the proposed updates and share your feedback. 📅 March 11 and 12 📍 Virtual Meetings Register and learn more at: ow.ly/nBJF50YpMlV

Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

Just a shoutout to all the people that made this happen. 🔥🔥🔥💯💯💯

My current read. “Strangers Need Strange Moments Together” by Melissa Mongiat and Mouna Andraos of the Montréal-based artist collective Daily tous les jours … about their work to bring together technology, storytelling, performance, and design in public space.

Which Canadian city has the most impressive #train station? #Winnipeg #Toronto … maybe #Vancouver … After all, Terminal City exists because of the #railways.

In the second issue of EXPO, I look at the history of the condominium in Canada. Why did condos become the primary mode of delivering multi-unit urban housing? Why did we build so many? And what happens now that nobody's buying?

Some new Toronto midrise. This is “The Pacific” in the Junction by developers Oldstonehenge & Clifton Blake and CORE Architects.

The City and our partners have advanced flood protection & infrastructure in the Port Lands … and we’re now seeing new parks, streets and future neighbourhoods take shape. Join us for a Port Lands Open House on March 10 to celebrate progress and talk about what’s next. Details tinyurl.com/mry5mb3f

The Gold Medal is the highest honour that the Institute can bestow in recognition of a significant and lasting contribution to Canadian architecture.

“Mid-rise buildings give us an opportunity to vastly expand housing options in Toronto” by David Crombie and Tim Gray in @nationalobserver.com www.nationalobserver.com/2026/02/24/o...

Did you know that the City is conducting a survey about the future of street furniture in Toronto? The current contract expires in the summer of 2027 and a new vendor & furniture will be picked. Take the survey to have your voice heard. #TOpoli ca.mar.medallia.com?e=90006671&d...

The 1929 Pape/Danforth branch of the Toronto Public Library, designed by George, Moorehouse & King to blend into the streetscape, with an award-winning 2006 renovation and expansion by Hariri Pontarini Architects.

A lot of talking about Bluesky going on around here tonight, so I’ll share this again — this platform has the best community and conversation relating to city-building/urbanism. And it’s the platform that I like the best, that’s closest to the old Twitter than I loved. I hope it keeps growing.

If we’re going to tackle the messy and complicated challenges facing cities today, we need clear, objective, factual information on which to base our decision-making. With people like Brent, Tom and Grant behind it … the new Urban Truth Collective is bound to be interesting!!