Malcolm MacMahon

This is provincial policy, right? MPAC values golf courses as potential tee revenue less expenses (and leaves out bar sales) rather than as market value of the land. Wish we could calculate the Delta, but MPAC is so opaque with their data despite the gov being open data signatories!

Residential streets are also low density. Building 5/6 story mixed use buildings in neighbourhoods could have more affordable units than main streets, because the land is cheaper and the lots are bigger.

ME: yeah could i get the impossible burger with cheese.
THE VIZIER WHO'S BEEN ADVISING ME: ahh, an excellent choice sire. an imitation of the genuine article. there are some "friends" of yours to whom it bears a passing similarity
ME: you want anything
VIZIER: [chuckles] what i want is of no import

I have to travel back in time and stop All Gore from inventing the Internet.

LotR goes through similar cycles. Even with a new offering like Rings of Power, it's less popular than it was in the 60s/70s and early 00s. And it's author isn't publicly losing their shit.

My take is that SK/MB are more politically similar than in the 40s-90s - old cultural divisions have been overtaken by urban/rural politics. Now, MB is more progressive because it's slightly more urban.

In lieu of provincial changes, I feel like THIS is what guidelines would be useful for. A set of rules that an applicant should follow for an alternative, and standards for staff to approve. Making it ad-hoc and having the mayor step in every time isn't going to work.

Touching the lathe of heaven and saying "unit caps violate freedom of assembly"

2025: The year Edmonton built the missing middle – Jacob Dawang Edmonton’s zoning reform is working. In 2025, newly legalized eight-home rowhomes drove a record increase in homebuilding, achieved by redeveloping only 0.39% of properties in mature neighbourhoods.

NEW POST

While cities across North America struggle with housing shortages, Edmonton is proving that zoning reform works.

In 2025, for the first time in history, the number of homes permitted in 5-8 unit rowhomes surpassed detached homes. 🧵

#yeg #yegcc #yimby

www.jacobdawang.com/blog/2026/zb...

Good article! I like Reece's point, but in terms of political economy, the "subways, subways, subways" crowd are also the group destroying state capacity to deliver transit. Transit City was to be built by the TTC, who at the time were better at cost controls than Metrolinx.

April - 1805. Napoleon is the Master of Europe. Only the Selkies stand before him. Oceans are now battlefields.

It'll require an unusual coalition, but we should be ready to take advantage of a new government. They had to try it a ton of times in NYC. We'll probably have to try it a few times here too.

Doesn't the Netherlands have good intercity trains? And Amsterdam has a decent subway network for what's ultimately a pretty small city.

If the high speed rail ever gets built, we're gonna call Carleton and Kanada GTA.

If you ban billionaires, who will make these chains link by link and yard by yard?

That being said, Etobicoke, North York, and Scarborough *still* have lower densities than what they thought they should aim to achieve by 1980.

This is unfortunately correct - you need a majority government who is about as dependent on the 905 as the Rae majority, and the only reason he wasn't dependent on it was because the 905 was much less populated then!

Also a 1 hour train trip makes Ottawa and Montreal part of one labour and real estate market. Ticket price and last mile will matter a lot, but the Toronto leg won't have that economic impact - it'll be about air/vehicle traffic mitigation for business and leisure travel.

On the production side, it's filming 10+ pages a day, absolutely no unions, and combining jobs like a student film. Then it's microtransactions and ads? I'm not sure who the audience is - I guess it's old soap opera audiences.

If this same logline was for horror-litfic, it would sell more than 1200 copies.

A bit surprising that the millennial candidate doesn't list "housing" as an outcome she cares about in Ontario? I guess it falls under "areas within provincial jurisdiction" but still, not a good sign that politicians haven't moved on from housing at this point.

The discourse around AI/TikTok and IndyRef3 is going to be horrible. And there'll be a big redux of foreign election interference discourse again.

Nunziata, Ainslie, McKelvie, Colle, they were all really reliable votes for Tory. The mayor creates a centre of gravity. Though I guess people could argue Tory wasn't as right leaning as Bradford is positioning himself.

We're dealing with analogue cranks here, and having seen IntegrityTO, I vastly prefer the analogue.

"The chair of this committee frequently says that in Ontario, we zone for buildings, not for people. But when we have a report that says adding new buildings will create complete communities and we couldn't possibly do that in Rosedale, I wonder if that's true."

If this was paired with an easy strata agreement for multiplexes (which Matlow requested years ago, and Build Toronto have recently requested) that might move the needle!

There are relatively few houses even in Cabbagetown that sell for $3m, and those that do frequently have things like wine cellars, car elevators, etc. Even some of the gutted renos go for $1.8m. I think we can say $3m is luxury.

Mark Andreesen, who is one of the funders of this project, has publicly objected to zoning reform in his own town!

I agree, but some councillors change! Matlow went from council villain to being very good on equity and land use. Though the councillor responsible for Rosedale I think could be hard to reach.

I wonder if the next step is deputing and saying that. If it's contained in the report it falls under speaking to the item. The type of councillors who value equity are also a bit more concerned about hypocrisy and shame.