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Reminder, the NIMBYs are complaining that a 4 storey school HERE is too big. 😒

Very curious to see a study comparing the average cost of a parking spot (including free parking) to the average rent for living space, both normalized e.g. per square foot. And also an estimate of just the land component of rent, ignoring building/maintenance. I suspect the answer won’t be pretty.

Dec 2025 building permit data out from StatCan today. With 2025 now complete (subject to revisions) here are number of new residential dwelling units permitted (building permit) aggregated to quarterly frequency. canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=16752...

Vancouver is not a real city

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

NEW VIDEO: The Bikeshare Dilemma Bikeshares and scootershares (also known as “Shared Micromobility) is one of the fastest growing forms of transportation on the planet today, but cities appear deeply divided on how to manage them. youtu.be/qfz6AsYycA8

Are "pre-rebuttals" a thing, like "pre-zonings"? If so, here's a pre-rebuttal from @jensvb.bsky.social and I to the latest argument that supply doesn't matter (from CCPA, sigh). The Key: Doubling up is the demographic indicator demonstrating our shortage. homefreesociology.com/2025/07/06/h...

Strongly agree. From our 2023 Housing Nationalism paper: "[R]eactionary nationalism operates as part of a cultural toolkit for solving problems, where entrepreneurs practiced in the tool can advance their own interests by seeking out and magnifying problems to solve." hdl.handle.net/2429/87373

Still stunned every time a planning prof looks at the landscape of rising rates of doubling up and concludes that’s entirely due to people’s preferences. And that the strong correlation of doubling with rents is purely coincidental. And that adding homes won’t change doubling up rates.

Could all have been avoided if he had thought to sign his emails up top…

Randomly remembered going to this concert, and was trying to think how this song (originally from 1982!) fits in with current events. Back then it felt like a future to try and prevent, now it feels like a stage we already passed, roughly around the “they are eating the dogs and cats” phase.

Random browsing through today's StatCan data releases, electricity generation by type in Canada. canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=62783...

Super interesting article. And yes, high vacancy rates in non-market housing is a sign of poorly designed policy. Also, pretty depressing what some seem think a "solution" to this misalignment is.

Such a confused article. Vacancy rate for “affordable housing” is not a meaningful metric. That metric is useful for housing allocated by market mechanisms, but non-market housing gets allocated as soon as it’s available. We should look at wait lists instead, 8000+ long and ~2 years wait time in NS.

Could not help myself, ran the numbers. Scrapping the Capped Assessment Program (similar to California's Prop 13) so that incumbent homeowners pay the same effective rates as newcomers or renters would yield a substantial tax revenue increase for HRM. The CAP has grown into a large fiscal liability.

Great to see Andy Ramlo's liquid demography contribution below! Wish @jensvb.bsky.social and I had been able to include it in our post criticizing the solid demography alternatives (i.e. his red lines)... homefreesociology.com/2025/12/08/t...

Epic thread on budget meeting and potential property tax increases in Halifax, and I wonder how much can be raised simply by killing the CAP that has protected (predominantly rich) incumbent owners from paying the higher effective tax rates newcomers and renters face.

My work relies heavily on both, text and code. Written in a (quarto) notebook that combines both, in an editor with LLM integration. The LLMs are sometimes useful for the code part, but I always turn it off for the text. And if I forget and it autocompletes my paragraphs it’s a vivid reminder that …

Victoria (City) v. Adams decision on right to shelter: if there's not enough shelter space you can't stop people from sheltering in public Seems like a start for right to housing: if there's not enough housing, you can't stop people from housing themselves in RVs. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Looking on from Vancouver I chuckle at the suggestion that impeding apartment construction was "unintended".

Updated population projections out from StatCan this morning. A good opportunity to reiterate that net NPR is a stationary process that’s essentially zero except for policy change induced short term fluctuations. canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=88837...

Neat! I modified it a bit to show Vancouver's bike routes instead of rail. (h/t @bmann.ca ) #bikeyvr

Small town Kimberley rallying in support for Greenland matches well their progressive history also rallying in support for zoning reform. True story: we used their 2022 code for modelling possible results from BC's Small Scale Multi-Unit Housing legislation. news.gov.bc.ca/files/bc_SSM...

It got postponed, but they already made a book about it.

Super interesting peek at inheritance as a portion of property transfers in the US, amounting to 7% overall and 18% in pricey California by cotality data. @jensvb.bsky.social and I saw some similar patterns in Canadian data looking at non-market transfers. homefreesociology.com/2021/08/13/c...

With 2025 housing starts data in a quick check where select metro areas are at, and how that fits in historically. Montréal, Calgary, and Vancouver beat out Toronto for 2025 starts. Live version: canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=42127...

I can’t wait to watch these! Knowing Andy, they’re going to be great.

It reminds me a bit of @frankfukuyama.bsky.social’s End of History in the sense that it captures a major turning point. We will see how well and how long it will hold up.

We have a consultation problem. I write about a Toronto rec centre that will have taken 14 years to plan, cost at least three times the original budget - and be a bad building. www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...

If Canada hopes for support from our allies when threats to our sovereignty materialize, we need to show support for them in the face of threats to their sovereignty. The source of the threat doesn't change that logic. www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...

New job alert 👀 So many people work incredibly hard in their free time to help us get shit done at VZV, I’m incredibly lucky to get this opportunity to dedicate myself full-time to our work. Still pinching myself that this is real honestly!

100% The main guy behind this lives kitty-corner to the school site on something like the 4th floor of his 12 storey condo building. It is petty NIMBYism at its worst.

Good weekend reading that I have missed when it came out. Edmonton has been a clear success story when it comes to housing in Canada and the rest of the country should pay close attention.

Our piece on single stair: a crucial change that is slowly coming to Canadian cities By me and @johnlorinc.bsky.social

If only someone had warned that many municipalities value exclusion more than they value the cash Ottawa was putting on the table (it me, I warned)

2025 population estimates are out, early check in from my phone because thanks to CanViz I now can. City of Vancouver’s population declined 2024-2025 (and 2024 estimates for both Surrey and CoV got corrected downward).. canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=15921...

Last day to become a OneCity to vote in the mayoral nomination! Take 2 minutes now to be apart of it 🙌🏼

📢{duckspatial} v0.9.0 is now on CRAN !! 🚀 If you work with big spatial data in #rstats, duckspatial brings the power of @duckdb.org to spatial analysis in R. It is dozenz - 📦website cidree.github.io/duckspatial/ - Blog post: adrian-cidre.com/posts/014_du... #duckspatial #rspatial #duckdb

Dmitry again pushing boundaries of data work using LLMs, this is good stuff. Loving the detailed rundown of the challenges in the process.

Introducing CanViz, my little side project over the break to make StatCan tables more accessible.

NEW VIDEO: North America’s Elevator’s Problem Elevators are absolutely essential to modern cities..... and it turns out North America kind of sucks at them. We partnered with @sightline.org to look into the many issues plaguing our elevator industry, and what it might take to fix it.

Never miss a Uytae video.

Reminder that you should join OneCity *today* if you want to help choose between these candidates. Super quick+easy: www.onecityvancouver.ca/member-dues

This year the BC government set the wealth test for the HOG at above $2M, while renters get income tested at around $65k (adjusted net family income) for the full tax credit and get less money than the HOG for e.g. my condo. (Yes, this is my annual call to get rid of the HOG)

I have way too many thoughts on the FCM advocacy paper on why property taxes aren't enough for municipal revenue: fcm.ca/en/resources... But wanted to highlight the $107k "municipal investment per dwelling" metric for weirdness (p. 19-20). Like, that's not just supporting dwellings, folks!

Happy New Year!

Yes, our current way to finance municipal infrastructure is broken beyond repair. “In the longer term, the way cities generate revenue to pay for new housing infrastructure needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.”

Extracting value on the front end of development (community benefits) instead of the back end (taxes) is eating the seed corn. It'll never produce as much community benefits as planting a good harvest and sowing it when it ripens.