Oakville is finally starting to get the height it should have been investing in for years. This has only been made possible by the province as pushback against anything of this density has been intense. #oakville #urbanism #walkable #midtown

www.blogto.com/real-estate-...

I hate the rhetoric around running a government “like a business” because sometimes, despite best efforts, businesses fail and go bankrupt or are sold off. That’s just the reality in a free market system, but none of can happen to a government without serious consequences for regular people.

Nice to finally see the snow come down yesterday. Perhaps a white Christmas finally?

People need to cool it on the sidewalk salt. My poor dogs paws looked terrible by the end of that walk. First snow panic was a little overblown this year.

People don’t want to admit it, but this was Hazel McCallion’s true legacy. She kept taxes low in Mississauga using this system and everyone has tried to emulate it.

It seems counterintuitive but you need to make it very inconvenient to drive somewhere to force people to take a different option. It feels discriminatory at first, but people get used to it and it ends up being a net positive on every metric.

What was happening today? I’ve never had so many issues coming into Oakville, but traffic down Trafalgar added almost 20 minutes to my commute. I can’t wait to live and work in a place that lets me use public transit. #gtacommute #oakville

An important message here: we've rightly criticized rent controls done poorly, but in the process we have thrown out the potential of rent controls done well:

financialpost.com/real-estate/...

We need to stop treating housing as a financial asset and start treating it as a social good if we ever want to fix the Canadian housing shortage. #canadianhousing #urbanplanning #disinvest

Absolutely. In Canada, developers only care about their bottom line and the shortage has become so bad that people are going into huge debt to buy houses they don't need. If we built houses that hit that "missing middle" then people would be able to live in appropriate housing forms. #missingmiddle

The "Goldilocks" density is about three stories, as this urban form avoids the outsized carbon costs of taller buildings and is more efficient than single-detached. Think of the canal houses of Amsterdam, or Brownstones in Boston. Outside of CBDs, three story forms should be the norm. #urbanplanning

Shocking. Blows my mind when the province ignores basic, heavily researched planning concepts like induced demand. Adding more lanes won't reduce congestion, getting people out of their cars will.

Go Switzerland! www.bluewin.ch/en/news/moto...