Category: Current Affairs
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Cars with Lots of Real Estate
A friend wrote in reply of my 4 July 2009 post “Big People. Little Cars. Tiny Houses. The Scale of our Neighbourhoods”, which spoke of our neighbourhoods being sized around our mode of personal transportation which, in modern day North America, tends to be our cars. To quote Alex: “There are a couple of…
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Traditional Media vs Social Media, and it’s Similarity to Urban vs Suburban Design
The recent passing of Walter Cronkite and the commemoration of the Apollo 11 lunar landing spawned much commentary about how as a culture, we’ve lost not just trusted voice and a collective goal, even the ability to dream. There are many indicators supporting this notion, even some directly related to the design of our cities.…
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Ten Hours in Toronto
Spending ten hours in a city usually happens unexpectedly when your airplane connection is delayed. This wasn’t the case here; this was planned in advance. I had a promotional plane ticket given for me, one that was going to expire this month. It had to be used, City of Toronto garbage collectors’ strike or not. In…
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Land Development Strategy on Autopilot
First we shape our buildings, and then they shape us” Sir Winston Churchill “Motion is the aesthetic of modern man” Clifford Wiens Maybe it was driving through a crowded parking lot, looking for a parking space. In amidst the row of SUV’s there appeared to be an empty space, only to come upon…
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The “Architect – Comedian” as the next new comic sensation
At a farewell party last night, one fellow picked a conversation topic started expounding on “lawyer-comedians”. Now, I can count lawyers as being among my best of friends, however: a “lawyer – comedian” sounded as oxymoronic as would an “architect-comedian”. I somehow doubt if anyone could find comedy in issuing a change order or an…
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The Rise and Fall of the McMansion, and other Midwestern Housing Trends
Tuesday, September 5, 2006 In the US market, many sense that the slumping sales of Toll Brothers Builders and Lowe’s are symptomatic of an overall declining real estate and construction market. Has all of the wind gone out of the housing market, as the housing bubble doomsday promoters predicted? Perhaps not. Perhaps the housing market…
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Parking Lots
Saturday, November 19, 2005 A recent article by Paul Kaihla in BUSINESS2.0 Magazine brought me to think about the parking lot as a prolific, yet endangered landscape feature of the post war era. The article, entitled The Next Real Estate Boom (November 1, 2005) spoke of a coming wave of expansion, growth and redevelopment of…