NanaimoCommons @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social

This is a snapshot of an ideology, a mechanistic and misanthropic ideology. It’s an authoritarian ideology, it values the private individual over the public commons and understands citizens to be mere elements in a consumer economy. It makes our city colder and uglier.

I had a quick look at the Ontario ones and they seem shockingly viable. No weird bedrooms with only skylights or similar nonsense. One unit has an upper unit kitchen on the 3rd floor not 2rd floor… but that was the only weird thing I saw. The designs seem great overall.

As the New York City Council takes up a plan to end parking requirements on new housing, a deep look (mostly underground) at how they operate in the city today, with @mihirzaveri + @larrybuch: nytimes.com/interactive/20…

1/Here's something a lot of people I talk to don't understand about Japanese urbanism, and why Japanese cities are so special.

Reviewed : The Joy Experiments: Reimagining Mid‑sized Cities... Scott Higgins + Paul Kalbfleisch. Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, + Urban Crisis. Patrick Condon City planning + Canada’s housing crisis @fabulavancouver #LiteraryReviewofCanada reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2024/…

A common argument against upzoning (made by landscape architects, curiously) is that it makes land prices go up, and hence doesn't actually improve housing affordability. As you might expect, this argument is precisely backwards.🧵 1/

New regional highways = more traffic in the city. It’s very simple. More regional transit = more people in the city, without their cars. One enables the city to flourish, the other destroys city life. This is why great cities across the globe have removed urban expressways. They want more people, not cars, in the city. The traffic congestion we have today is a choice, and officers at intersections waving cars through is the biggest joke of all. It is about creating a perception that something is being done, when in fact, nothing is being done at all. Continually welcome more cars into a city = destroyed urban life. Walking, cycling and transit are not frivolous, they are foundational to urban life. Regional highways destroy urban life.

My latest from the Globe… Facing Victoria’s Pandora Avenue problem theglobeandmail.com/canada/toronto…

Exciting news! Strong Towns soft-launched a new program this month. Today we’re opening it up to non-members to fill the few remaining seats. The Strong Towns Accelerator is our answer to the local leader -- inside or outside of city hall -- that wants personalized assistance from me and my colleagues. It’s a twelve week program going through my first book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution, with an emphasis on how these ideas are implemented. We are limiting each session to 15 people because the plan is to make it very intimate, with lots of discussion and getting to know each other. For Strong Towns, this is an opportunity to help seed bottom-up action in places that are ready to experience change. For participants, it’s an opportunity to accelerate your leadership in building a Strong Town. This is entirely virtual so you don’t need to travel to Minnesota (although that would be cool). Sessions start in September and we only have a handful of seats left, so there is a bit of urgency.🔥 If you’re interested, you can sign up (first come, first served) or email me to reserve a slot. My email address is my last name at strongtowns dot org. You can send questions to the same place. Cheers! pages.strongtowns.org/strong-towns-a…

B.C.’s plans to allow single-staircase multi-unit dwellings heralded as a move that will allow for a much needed and more affordable new type of housing. A design change that aims to unlock housing density. Gift article. @fabulavancouver @globeandmail theglobeandmail.com/gift/30a4f28ac…

What happens when you can't do the extreme building setbacks mandated by the fire code? You get smaller vehicles.

Can This Country Show Europe How to Compete Again? @PatcohenNYT nytimes.com/2024/08/13/bus…

If your city cannot financially sustain its essential infrastructure without outside support, your city is fragile and its future is tenuously dependent on others.

A selection of drawings and a new essay from my ongoing Put On Notice series documenting development in the Church-Wellesley n’hood from Saturday’s Globe Opinion section. xoxoxo theglobeandmail.com/opinion/articl…

Another cyclist is dead. When will Toronto wake up? The mounting toll of death and injury is simply unacceptable. It is beyond dispute that immediate action is needed. @TorontoStar editorial thestar.com/opinion/editor… #cycling🚴‍♀️ #VisionZero

“The job of a politician is to use power well,” he wrote in his memoir. “And I believe I used power well.”

The Nanaimo to Vancouver bathtub race ran from 1967 to 1996. Bruce Stewart photo at Kits Beach in 1978 evelazarus.com/the-nanaimo-to… #everyplacehasastory #kitsilano #nanaimo

Emily Carr’s 100-year-old Oak Bay cabin could be yours for $5.5 million! The good news is, it comes with a 10-bedroom heritage house designed by Samuel Maclure. evelazarus.com/emily-carrs-5-… #Victoria #emilycarr #sensationalvictoria #oakbay