People worried about the sustainability of democracy will be tempted to celebrate Americans being down on the economy now. But I worry part of this is that countries are becoming ungovernable in the Tiktok age.

My Tahoma hops grew into a big bush again this year. They might still be good; if anyone wants to harvest some, lmk.

In the time since Vancouver Council voted to reallocate 10% of road space (which has gone nowhere), cities like Paris & London have practically transformed themselves, not to mention NYC's similar success with congestion pricing.

Paris celebrated the opening of its 300th “school street”: landscaped & pedestrianized or semi-pedestrianized blocks situated in front of schools. Most have been completed since 2020.

Some guy once said "urban noise is the smog of the 21st C" over on that other place before the poison took it over. To wit... www.nber.org/papers/w34298

Everyone take a moment to gloat over the FinTwit folks who claimed labor & supply chains make quantum leaps in multifamily housing production impossible "What about teh lumber", they said. "What about teh labor", they said Then NYC simply exploded to completion levels unseen since 1965

Looking forward to tuning into this panel tomorrow. Some of the best YIMBY-LVT synthesis thinkers in North America presenting.

G&M: unemployment was rising in Canada long before the trade war, especially in Ontario, Quebec and BC. The largest increases aren't in manufacturing. 1/2

3. Finally, an independent report showed that much of what is rezoned for is not actually financially viable. Which means it won't actually get built. So this is just another step in the cycle: tweak -> outrage from NIMBYs -> very little actually changes -> more tweaks -> outrage -> tweak ->outrage

Everyone that rides through here knows that the connection between the Arbutus Greenway and Kent sucks. No wayfinding, steep hills, parking lots, 6-lane arterials... The good news is a motion from @mikeklassen.bsky.social aims to fix this! Along with much needed improvements on Kent. (1/3)

Why are single-stair buildings actually SAFER than two stair buildings in some circumstances? It seems counter intuitive… obviously, more redundancy is better, right?

Unhedged chart of the week; Pity the poor Fed via @hakyungkim.bsky.social Sign up for COTW here: ep.ft.com/newsletters/...

Bike / Park Oriented Development (BPOD?) ! A motion from OneCity councilor @lucymaloney.bsky.social aims to end the apartment ban next to bike streets and parks! We need liveable density on quiet leafy streets. Don’t like arterial density? Want alternatives to towers? Speak in support sept 17

@nilo.bsky.social

NIMBYs play the long game. Today they are protesting the construction of a larger elementary school. Next year they will say their neighborhood cannot accommodate more housing because the school won’t have enough room. Happens all the time.

I don't get why Canada's interest cost is so high compared to the US and France, etc.? Worth it to have CPP making a killing in the stock market, but strange when the US has higher rates and similar debt.

Worried the proposed four storey school won’t fit the character of the neighbourhood? Adding some office space and housing on top of the school fixes that. Somewhere between 12 and 17 storeys is a good baseline, but to be safe we should add a few extra storeys to future-proof it.

France's PM Bayrou lost confidence on a plan to cut the deficit from 5.8% of GDP to 4.6%. French 10-year debt was trading 0.77pp higher than German debt before the vote. He had a tenuous hold on government to begin with, so maybe can't be generalized, but cutting is hard.

What mysteries lie behind the hedges of Belmont Ave? Come learn on our next walking tour: VANCOUVER'S WORST ZONING! When: September 20th, 2 pm Where: We meet at Belmont & Blanca RSVP and more details at the Eventbrite page below!

So furious to see this. It happens all the time: gov underfunds services, then points fingers at immigrants through flawed policies gov created. This fuels bias & discrimination. What we need is reform — immigrants like me aren’t your scapegoats. #bcpoli #cdnpoli www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

The Fifth Element is such a delightfully weird, corny movie. Pure 90s. I'm not sure how they made the special effects so bad.

The "use your real name" website, which has been implementing automated enforcement of its policies for years, can't figure out that Elon Musk Tesla isn't somebody's real name.

For those of you in or near Nanaimo BC, I'm looking forward to speaking at this free conference next weekend. You can learn more about the conference & register here: www.nanaimoclimateaction.org/climate-conn... Hope you see you there!

It should definitely be based on time, or any move that demonstrably improves a commute, including changing to public transit. Also, get rid of the horrendously unfair transfer taxes already.

Loads of sales pulled forward during the Covid boom, now an interest rate hangover. Prices aren't down much, but with inflation, a $1.95M house today is about the same as 1.81M 3 years ago, a 7% drop in real terms. It's got to give more eventually, if sales stay low.

Still can't believe governments threw as much as $12k each at EV buyers instead of funding public transit. www.cbc.ca/news/scie...

Outside of agriculture, the biggest BC recipient of foreign worker approvals in the latest quarter (Q1) was Amazon for 49 software engineers, basically export-oriented workers who will pay tax here instead of somewhere else, & help build YVR as a software engineering hub that will lead to...

Great post from @kevinerdmann.bsky.social on the postwar downzonings that made the first round of zoning look super permissive. Bluesky hasn’t seen enough of this chart. kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/the-end-of...

We made cities illegal. open.substack.com/pub/kevinerd...

India is building enough renewables to decrease fossil fuel dependence on absolute terms? Pretty good for an emerging economy. xcancel.com/lakshmishaks...

There must already be a Black Mirror episode where increasingly senile immortal oligarchs rule over nations? Big miss by the writers if not.

It bums me out so bad that we are a people so completely devoid of national pride that we cannot even fathom building public works such as these.

Two upzonings in British Columbia. Kelowna delivered a big increase in construction but Coquitlam did not. Because Coquitlam also imposed red tape, parking requirements, etc. A reason for setting targets for completions, not theoretical "capacity". www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 1/3

I am once again asking if anyone wants to pick some Tahoma hops

It finally happened.

The Cambie corridor

Edmonton has built more, grown faster, and maintained radically better affordability than the deteriorating situation in Vancouver. morehousing.substack.com/p/rbc-june-2...

Love the comparison of jobs growth and housing permits!

A timely piece on the subtle ways that policies that claim to be "for seniors" can sometimes be code for "no kids." Examples are from the US so I thought that I would pull some Canadian ones, along with some other ways we're keeping kids out of cities. www.theargumentmag.com/p/no-country...

Reminds me of Winy Maas's"human scale high-rise" vision, which gets a lot less eclectic looking as it becomes more real.

Net investment to Canada is up big. Inflows are the highest in 17+ years. It's just Canadian stocks people don't want. Interesting that this happened after the foreign buyer ban for real estate.

I see the G&M's Editorial Board feels similarly. I'm not as down on design catalogues overall, but the idea has to include sufficient area where they can be easily built. The catalogue isn't a substitute that gets you extra credit if you don't do the rezoning. www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/edit...

A couple of points here apply really well to Vancouver. 1. Vancouver should be building more homes than cheaper suburbs, & cheaper cities like Edmonton. The reason it's not is because the City burdens projects with more fees, process & other requirements, and also...

Interesting new paper compares density upzonings in two similar BC cities that had dramatically different effects in terms of construction & value uplift. Keys to the difference? Effects were only felt when upzoning was accompanied with expedited permitting processes & reduced parking requirements.

🚌 We need better transit NOW, not another bridge in 10+ years. Queue jumps, extended bus lanes, and more frequent service can move people faster TODAY. Read Michael Hall's great piece explaining why improving existing transit is our best immediate solution: www.nsnews.com/opini...

Only 16% reading for pleasure, sure, but what about those of us on here, reading for sadness, anger and anxiety.

The vast majority of zoning codes, each in their own right a radical experiment that would on to completely remake the cities they regulated, were adopted without virtually any public involvement.