It really is wild how much of stuff you thought had to be based in some kind of rigorous, evidence-based process ends up being just vibes all the way down.

Some bad news: Calgary has repealed its zoning reform. Which for some reason was referred to as “blanket rezoning”, a term that kinda makes it sound indiscriminate and careless. Rather than an attempt to increase housing options and market flexibility. The opposite of “one size fits all”.

Loving these econ explanations where Michael breaks down commonly (mis-) used terms.

Okay so my editor gave me some space to write the thing. New from me at TVO. www.tvo.org/article/anal...

This is really quite good. Short and to the point.

Metro Vancouver land use, 1955

I used @jensvb.bsky.social's Vancouver street tree map to find a 4-block stretch of giant magnolia trees in East Van (Inverness between 29th and 33rd) and it is lovely mountainmath.ca/vantrees

Planners understanding that allowing something as an option is not the same as requiring everyone to choose that option challenge impossible.

LOL, this is about people not wanting multiplexes in their neighbourhood

Minimum lot size regulations have done a lot of harm. How much harm? @lausterna.bsky.social and I ran estimates for Vancouver and the numbers are staggering.

There's one trait where economists clearly outperform the other social sciences: Hubris.

The cool thing about municipal politics is, we could just...not do that

Lol, NPR has a feature on Sen̓áḵw titled "The skyscrapers that NIMBYs and zoning couldn't stop" www.npr.org/2026/03/27/n...

When people say “housing is not affordable” they often don’t mean that they can’t afford their current housing. Instead they mean that they can’t afford to achieve their preferred living arrangements in reasonable proximity to jobs and amenities they value. We need measures that capture that.

Saying zoning is not a constraint because some homes get permitted is like saying your personal budget is not a constraint because you bought some groceries.

Unpopular opinion: All choice moves are welfare enhancing. And if your affordability metric registers choice moves as a clear net negative then your affordability metric has a problem.

How earthquake safe are Vancouver condos? statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/23/h...

"The panic now visible in British Columbia is not evidence that reconciliation has gone too far. It is evidence that reconciliation has begun to have material consequences." @khelsilem.bsky.social in @macleans.bsky.social: macleans.ca/politics/can...

Vancouver Open Data updated their tree dataset and now also include (some) trees in parks. And I added UBC trees, lots of cherries in bloom up there right now. Live version: mountainmath.ca/vantrees

I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Grant Sanderson (@3blue1brown.com) is one of the most skilled visual communicators. His explanations are pedagogic masterpieces and a joy to experience. He's outdone himself with his latest on M.C. Escher's Prentententoonstelling. youtu.be/ldxFjLJ3rVY

the left nimby program in a nutshell 1: "decommodify housing" 2: sadly, no new housing is built 3: i inherit my parents' house

Nice empirical data how upzoning works to reduce prices. By reducing the cost of the land component of housing. Also a good explanation of why one can’t take the observations from upzoning a single parcel and think they work the same for broad upzoning (a fallacy also known as Condonomics).

Stained glass window depicting early Canadian settlers converting First Nations people to Christianity right above the confession box is an interesting choice.

"Ironically, as the empirical case for YIMBYism grows ever stronger, it is the anti-”Econ 101” crowd that is now falling back on airy theorizing and simple models. It turns out that their problem with non-empirical economics wasn’t the lack of rigorous real-world investigation after all..."

Updated quarterly population estimates out today. BC internal net migration held mostly steady with a slight net-positive internal migration. Adding in international migration pulls this deep into the negative as NPR population is dropping fast. Plus Q4 is generally a low quarter for immigration.

Ah yes, the well renowned neighbourhood for affordable housing - West Point Grey

@gillianpetit.bsky.social and I have built something we're proud of. INCLUSIECON is our research home — rigorous work on tax and transfer policy, designed from the start to be used. Take a look 👇 inclusiecon.ca

Simple truths

Can confirm

Many people have been using our interactive crash map, which plots all crashes leading to serious injuries or fatalities since 2023. We just did a huge revamp of it, and introduced the ability to filter by location, demographic, mode share, and more. Check it out! visionzerovancouver.ca/crash-map/

Replication is (mostly) thankless work, big kudos to @michaelwiebe.bsky.social for doing these. Great to in this case see the replication (with lots of corrections of issues in the original paper) getting published.

Morning hail has not greatly disturbed the plum blossoms, here gathered round the view of Sen̓áḵw against Vancouver's skyline (not to mention today's drama queen sky) How do I know they're plum blossoms? I cheated and checked against @jensvb.bsky.social handy map: mountainmath.ca/vantrees

When you give someone the power to deny people housing, in shockingly many cases they will use that power to deny people housing.

A very Vancouver story. The Vancouver planning system essentially requires land speculation. That’s considered so normal by now that the school board argues the land it leases should be valued on the speculative value. But ultimately judge disagrees that speculation is part of “immediate” value.

February data just came in and now we can see how durable these declines are. February 2025 is when we saw the first big drops in travel patterns, did this persist year over year or are we reverting back? The data shows a (small) further decline in Canadians travelling to the US. So far.

Hello I would like to share with you my new-and-improved website that compiles 46 years' worth of baby-names data in Alberta: albertababynames.com It now includes the latest data (for 2025) and a similar-names function to easily browse through various spellings in naming trends.

Took the bus today, which means I had some time to waste on the ride home and added colouring for flower trees. (And some overdue styling updates.)

Carefully designed paper finds that St Paul's rent control ordinance 1) led to significant declines in home values for Saint Paul home owners, 2) gave greater benefits to higher cf. lower income renters, 3) harmed small landlords as much as large ones www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

Cherry blossom season is upon us in Vancouver. Want to find the best spots for viewing? Interested in specific species of cherry trees? My treemap has you covered. mountainmath.ca/vantrees

And in addition to younger people who did form households owning at lower rates than their peers across time and space, younger people are forming households (of any tenure) at lower rates. @lausterna.bsky.social and I decomposed this into a dual measure of housing frustration.

My precioussss… One Zone to preserve them all, One Zone to guard their character, One Zone to hoard for kith and kin, and in nepotism bind them.

That’s a crazily clean break. I’ll have to dig into the microdata to better understand how living arrangements of adults in family households changed.

And now the third crane is almost deconstructed, phase 1 of Sen̓áḵw is nearing completion.

Am going to use this to place bets on the trains I book being late as a hedge to ensure I am happy no matter if I arrive on time or way late. Also, a good way to quantify the hidden costs of unreliable rail service.

Single-stair gets the New York Times treatment. @holz-bau.bsky.social reminds us why they call the last line the kicker: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/b... (gift link)

Where a bunch of Vancouver-based housing talking heads advocate for bringing back the quota system of the residential floorspace cartel where Metro Vancouver organizes the member municipalities to keep housing artificially scarce... 😬😬😬 housingreset.ca/2026/02/25/c...

Became a citizen earlier today. It’s a remarkable experience, really quite special. Did not anticipate the layers of emotions that come with this.

Last month Surrey news site published a scoop about a Vancouver politician's shock resignation. Except that never happened. Our investigation found the website, Surrey Speak, is powered completely by AI. And it has links to a tech company backed by SFU #vanpoli theijf.org/article/insi...

A storey in four acts as captured by local news media: 18 storeys is too high, we’d be fine with 4-6 storeys 6 storeys are too big, we'd be fine with multiplexes Multiplexes are monstrosities, we are fine with existing post-Second World War bungalows ...