Building all kinds of things in cities should be easy. The planning profession does not believe this and they need to be stopped.

Toronto planning pushing in precisely the wrong direction.

"Approvals are so fast under Olivia chow developers and planners can barely believe it!" I have so many questions about this article.haha.

I need to go work for the sprinkler industry. There are bazillion cubic acres of sky in toronto alone that could be sprinklered 6 story rather than house... I don't understand why these guys aren't funding effective online reformers.

Maybe the game theory is just too hard for me to see but - having a huge underserved demographic (urban families- admittedly disorganized but obvious), in an almost pathologically democratic system- it seems unbelievable that its in no one's interest to fund code reform.

Don't they want to be in place where their workers get to buy cool architecture? Is that 'global talent attraction?' Have you seen the amount promised to California Forever??

harmonizing and liberlizing the code to to grow the buildable urban space to compete with big guys? People fund so much speculative stuff!

If I did high volume suburban housing or towers in a city like toronto, I'd be worried about the durability of my imperfect architecture and the audience it serves that has little choice. Maybe i'm just repeating myself but- who funds a 'row house factory' but won't throw pennies at...

Look at the *billions* VC put into pre-fab with the expectation they will shave, what- 1 or 2 percent off construction costs? Meanwhile young people ready for kids and older people who want to live in elegant but easy to maintain urban apts that live like a house are a massive underserved market...

I dunno- firms invest in shaping regulations *all the time* I still don't get this.. For starters wouldn't this be a land acquisition strategy? If you know which jurisdictions are likely to reform, you can buy sites ahead of the changes?

Why couldn’t venture back researchers though? Always seems like the biggest opportunity but maybe I misunderstand inventive 🤷🏻‍♀️

"Imagine if every city had 12 different parts of town that defined what kind of Apple computer you can buy, and if your Neighbours could complain and make you buy a PC instead."

* Trying to explain zoning to tech investor guys who want to be the Steve Jobs of housing disruptors.

Different strokes for different folks? House oriented Anglo culture maintains some cultural anxiety about guests seeing into the slutty private spaces of the bedroom. The French Flat critique has all kinds of accusations of licentiousness and unclear boundaries w the bedroom. 🤷🏻‍♀️

From @uytaelee.bsky.social who did one of the best videos on urban apts and circulation- here’s his new work on elevators. 🙏🏅

What business concern is in favour of this ignorance and disordered services??

All-Utility Underground Map Coming for New York City Instead of having utility representatives mark each site, 3D Underground would let project planners work more independently.

This article was posted by Chaim in @stephenjacobsmith.com's comments. Comparatively, how well mapped is Toronto's underground relative to NYC where the disorder and ignorance of what-is-where, is really hampering their goals? www.enr.com/articles/620...

If Toronto is going to build a midscale form of urbanism, it is going to have to think of garbage pickup differently. NYC's unmapped underground prevents it from doing buried on street Containers. This issue is rearing its head again with the effort to Build public washroom connected to the sewer.

I'm mostly focused on building code issues these days but my background attention is on the design of streets. How well mapped are Toronto's underground utilities?

Maybe more like read @conradspeckert.bsky.social's page on stairs, then went deeper via @stephenjacobsmith.com 's whole institute including the thing with the plans drawn with @holz-bau.bsky.social and then that report on elevators... but basically...

Accurate: x.com/alexbozikovi...

Vancouver especially!

Counter argument: it’s funny to me that Halifax, St John’s, Nuuk, Reykjavik, Bergen all do the multi colored house thing… no other cities in Canada do that- is it the salt water? The snow? Halifax is not very snowy!

Desire to optimize may in fact be heritable. Seems kinda personality driven. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Dying. Also, adding Lebowitz to your entry in my contacts …

That’s why there’s no alcoholism, no drug addiction, no exodus from the city, no cleaning manias, no television dependency, no inexplicable physical complaints, zero allergies, depressions nor suicide, vandalism and crime in Romania!

Murder story but they highlight: “the tints were illegal” 🕶️

Nas is single stair haha

2025 direct discussion of everyone’s favourite 1961 takes that moves beyond stating the obvious “her ideas matter!” Is always welcome in my books.

Chain of address moves to suburbia made old urban things cheap. Stop building you get ‘gentrification’ of the old stock. I don’t know if Jacobs tragically misunderstood the relationship between old buildings and new construction or if it was convenient romanization of personal biography. Eitherway-

Her old nyc was cheap. Building came to a standstill after the boom of the 1920s Jacobs, was homesteading in the aftershock of a war, the adaptation of the car, and the huge buildouts of postwar suburbia. Old was cheap.