The condo as housing access, in the US. People think of "condos" as towers of apartments,.when they should think of them like they're the joint-stock corporations of housing - an innovation in business model regulation, finance and ownership fragmentation. Get the regulation wrong, and...

This just in, biking is growing as a revenue source *far* faster than parking. 30% growth in revenue for bike share vs only 5% for parking. It's growth is also consistently underestimated in forecasts vs parking which is overestimated.

Ok - so here are our "4/5" and "Corner Store" prototypes on actual feasible sites (that currently have $2.9m bungalows) within the McDonald and 16th "Village".

I'm a broken record about how remarkable the transformation in Waterloo's Northdale neighbourhood is. If we could figure out a repeatable formula for mid-rise upzoning for low-car streets, we could achieve amazing things

This was our greatest currency series, hands down. Just saying.

In 2024, you helped us legalize 60-unit apartments on Major Streets and remove angular plane requirements up to 6 storeys. Last year was the first major update to the Avenues policies in the Official Plan in more than 20 years. This week is the next step in making mid-rises more feasible in Toronto.

Ontario's local conservation authorities

The people cry out for 2000 more stations and 20,000 more bikes

Guess whose youth (18-21) population is projected to hold up better than any in the Americas over the next 20 years?

Holy moly, that gap between us and the country to the south. Jeepers!

Today we're releasing AI for RStudio. It's really, really good—I'd encourage you to point it at the messiest data sources you have and see what it can do. www.simonpcouch.com/blog/2026-03...

My hot take is that the battles over TDSB control are basically downstream from the fact that Toronto City Council forced rust belt budget problems on the TDSB by pricing out families with children through their policies. thelocal.to/ontario-scho...

I recently visited Chatham-Kent, a municipality that has operated rural transit for two decades now; it even runs a seasonal route to nearby beaches. But it can only do so much; a provincial transportation strategy and sustained funding is needed. seanmarshall.ca/2026/03/03/r...

When you realize what you've done is actionable

I rounded up a few Claude Skills for #RStats users. Huge thanks to the creators who developed them. They share Skills for everything from tidyverse code to brand.yml files to learning while using AI. Hope the list is useful, and please let me know what I missed! 🧡 rworks.dev/posts/claude...

It's not that Toronto's perfect, but if we want to talk about Canadian vs. American development patterns and how growth is directed, well...

So when cases like 397 Pharmacy fail despite being generally in line with the bylaw but with a bit more space for bigger units, and fail with comments from the Committee indicating they hate the very idea and no variance would be minor enough, it tells others not to waste time applying.

I dunno, I feel like ultimately the goal should be to have zoning rules in place that don’t require “millions of little bylaw deviations” just to get housing built. www.thestar.com/news/gta/six...

With apologies to the Strong Towns crowd, the more I've seen this story today, the more I become convinced that we need much more pre-emptive, province-wide upzoning by the provincial government to ensure missing middle is just automatically allowed. Oh, and abolish committees of adjustment.

A pretty incredible example of an unelected committee of adjustment member just flat out saying they would ignore the city's by-laws in order to reject housing. It's frustrating to fight these little personnel battles everywhere but I guess that's life. www.thestar.com/news/gta/six...

Colleague @poppedculture.bsky.social came into the office today ranting about this which I hadn't even seen yet but: "the rule of law for land use in Canada" remains an absolutely revolutionary political objective that nobody is interested in. www.thestar.com/news/gta/six...

If I'm interpreting the rendering correctly, this is where they're planning on putting the new Science Centre. Will be 600 m away from the Ontario Line terminus. Trying really hard to build in some draws to Ontario Place and Therme I guess.

This is an important point that's often overlooked. Municipal reorganization doesn't need to be "unitary", for lack of a better word, we can shift to a more polycentric model of overlapping governmental bodies with different mandates and jurisdictions

Now an update. Recently, the province allowed itself to appoint regional chairs (they were either chosen by the regional electorate or by the regional council) and the guy Ford appointed is, no surprise, a pro-amalgamation toady. www.thestar.com/politics/pro...

It's hard to bike on the Beltline today and not wonder how the city would look now if the little railroad had kept running

A concrete example of why urban planners need to take a long look in the mirror for endorsing developments that expose more people to public health issues than is remotely necessary. These risks are not unknown and run counter to Public Health Ontario: www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/docu...

SmartTrack was never a real transit plan. GO Expansion was planned to provide the intended transit service. In March 2016, council approved integrating SmartTrack into the GO Expansion project. Focusing on the legacy of this proposal is distracting from the real issue. 1/5

It's great to see the IU Ostrom Workshop putting on this kind of professional development for science teachers. We desperately need educators who understand that the "tragedy of the commons" is, at best, incomplete and collaborative governance of our shared resources is possible.

Interesting new paper on the cost of permitting. This is hard to measure, and these costs have long been thought to be significant. This paper confirms this, estimating permitting costs at roughly 30% of the wedge between construction cost and the price of housing. (HT @michaelwiebe.bsky.social)

Chicago. Notably, in Canada, this would not be legal (though some cities might get away with it) owing to court decisions clearly requiring a broad link between fees and actual costs, or fees and some sort of regulatory objective. The vibe-based pricing here would not pass the legal smell test.

Always going to repost good governance analyses: "Without tackling this structural deficit through institutional reforms, however, intergovernmental relations will always revert to a competitive mode."

Canada’s medal total at Milan Cortina Olympics was a quiet reckoning: ‘Our system is in decline’ #Opinion

Well this sucks

“Patios add a great deal to the vibrancy and energy to the downtown. They attract people.” And they’re really good for business. I worked in the beautiful community of Collingwood Ontario in the early years of my career. It’s hard to see it hurt itself with self-defeating decisions like this.

The US political-media complex trying to normalize this is one of the reasons the damage that will has blown to the Western alliance is much deeper than we think. We simply don't think that the system has rejected him and his gang. It has embraced him, and it will embrace his future incarnations.

Good... good... good...

Worth emphasizing just how big this structural change is, socially and politically, in *how* more and more people live.

NYT OpEd asked me to explain vibe coding to a general audience, and I took a swing. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/o...

The last five years have come at us very quickly, but I have faith that the left is going to come around to "AI is our intellectual commons and everyone deserves access to it." It could take a decade or two, but I see us getting there. We may try banning stuff first; people are pretty freaked out.

I get why the Toronto/provincial politicians didn't want to have a big opening day for Line 5 LRT after the disastrous Finch West opening, but the flip side is they don't get credit for having something in May. They didn't stand behind the work when it counted.

Wow, that is a very remarkable mortality from the Great War

Aside from everything else, it's remarkable how good buildings look without the setbacks and angular planes that Toronto requires

Can’t reply on that thread so quote response. Yes, AI has become ridiculously good at routine tasks. The “Canadian FRED” tool I built during some jet lagged mornings and a few longish train rides over the break is almost entirely done by Claude Code. canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=42169... But…

Just flabbergasted to learn that Winnipeg's Water and Waste Department owns and operates a railroad! Municipalities are such fascinating organizations when you scratch the surface.

I honestly can't imagine predicting a $1.8 billion shortfall, ending up with a $2 billion surplus instead and then having the guts to call it "sound planning." It is actually very poor planning! www.thestar.com/news/gta/is-...

A slight variation--connection to line 2 at Coxwell, Gerrard--College--Dufferin, and then down St. Clair to connect to Barrie/UP/Kitchener, and terminating at Jane at the Milton Line. 17 km.

I think the way some other jurisdictions do it is the city would request (or have a plebiscite) to add a 1% HST surcharge within city boundaries, which strikes me as both bolder policy and more honest

At this point it seems no one understands reserve funds. They are majority unspent capital budget from previous years, not rainy day funds. Spending down the reserves is good.

Software investment spending is growing at exactly the same rate it has been for the past 20 years. There is just no AI boom in the aggregate numbers, at all. Makes you wonder how much of these huge "AI" capital programs are just relabeling of stuff these companies would be paying for anyway.

Eglinton Crosstown: Quite zippy. Stations deep. Also meandering. Trains full. Doors small.