People hate taxes despite the fact that basically every person who studies economics knows they are needed and a great way to spur economic success. Despite the fact taxes are needed and good at helping poorer people in society, taxes are hated. As a result, some researchers in the USA
Continue readingTag: cities
Things Are Good: The 20 Safest Cities in the World
The Economist safe cities list (pdf link) has been released and the results are pretty neat! There are some cities that you’d expect to be there and some surprise too! The analysts looked at digital, health, and personal security of every city on the list plus the condition of the
Continue readingThings Are Good: Slow Increasing Carbon Waste by Growing Cities
People living in cities have a lower carbon footprint than those in the suburbs and rural areas. Some people find this rather counter intuitive for reasons I don’t fully understand. There are researchers looking into the future of our global carbon footprint and they have concluded that if we increase
Continue readingThe Liberal Scarf: Good read on Liberal MPP Milczyn’s private members bill to promote affordable housing
As Toronto and other Canadian major cities continue to grow, more and more density and population growth is certain to happen. With that in mind, policy makers need to consider how to ensure affordable housing in urban cores remains available. This PMB by Etobicoke-Lakeshore MPP Peter Milczyn is something worth
Continue readingThe Liberal Scarf: Good read on Liberal MPP Milczyn’s private members bill to promote affordable housing
As Toronto and other Canadian major cities continue to grow, more and more density and population growth is certain to happen. With that in mind, policy makers need to consider how to ensure affordable housing in urban cores remains available.
“Last week, Peter Milczyn, the newly elected MPP for Etobicoke-Lakeshore, introduced his first private member’s bill: the Planning Statute Amendment Act. If it passes — and that’s a big if — it would give municipalities across Ontario the authority to direct developers to set aside a number of units in every residential project as affordable housing.”
Continue readingThe Liberal Scarf: Good read on Liberal MPP Milczyn’s private members bill to promote affordable housing
As Toronto and other Canadian major cities continue to grow, more and more density and population growth is certain to happen. With that in mind, policy makers need to consider how to ensure affordable housing in urban cores remains available. This PMB by Etobicoke-Lakeshore MPP Peter Milczyn is something worth
Continue readingCalgary inches closer to a charter
In 1867, Canada’s founding fathers created two levels of constitutional government—provincial and federal. The municipal level didn’t make the cut. This was excusable at the time. Over 80 per cent of Canadians lived on farms and in villages, so local government seemed rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things
Continue readingThings Are Good: Support DeepCity 2030: A City Sim About Cats And Resilient Cities
DeepCity Pitch video from DeepCITY Project on Vimeo. DeepCity 2030 is like Sim City meets Clash of Clans plus a Laser Cat and at least one Disco Jesus. The game has a hyperbolic approach to climate change and it’s up to the player to figure out what sort of city
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: More on the At Home/Chez Soi Study
Earlier this month, I blogged about the At Home/Chez Soi homelessness study prior to the release of its final report. Today I’ve blogged again, this time about the contents of the final report itself. This second blog post, being rather long and nuanced, was written for the Homeless Hub. It
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: 10 Things to Know About the At Home/Chez Soi Study
On Tuesday, April 8, results of the Mental Health Commission of Canada‘s At Home/Chez Soi homelessness study will be released at an Ottawa press conference. The study followed more than 2,000 participants in five Canadian cities. All were homeless when the study began. Half of them received the Housing First intervention,
Continue readingThings Are Good: Cities Are The Key For Adjusting To Changing Climate
Readers of this site have seen lots of evidence that in the 21st century the best place one can live for a small carbon footprint is in urban areas. Things like increased infrastructure costs and higher costs of living associated with automobile use in rural & suburban places are obvious
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Ford Nation, Perils of Populism and Public Choice
Watching Rob Ford in the recent weeks reminds me of what John Ralston Saul once wrote of Benito Mussolini and his contemporary reincarnation in Silvio Berlusconi: “He was the nascent modern Heroic leader. Mussolini combined the interests of corporatism with public relations and sport, while replacing public debate and citizen
Continue readingCalgary—sprawl or planning?
During the recent Calgary election campaign, two visions of the city’s future development vied for attention. One, presented by Calgary’s mayor, Naheed Nenshi, was about planning growth to ensure a sustainable city. The other, presented by a group of home builders and their hired gun, Preston Manning of the Manning
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Homelessness Policy
This afternoon, I gave a presentation on public policy responding to homelessness in Canada, with a focus on the past decade. I gave the presentation at this year’s annual conference of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association. Points I made in the presentation include the following: -Once inflation is accounted for,
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Is It Really That Hard to Imagine Cities Without Cars?
A blissful infographic of imaginative paradigm mechanics! Probably. That’s why really creative paradigm mechanics are thinking outside the box-y sedans to figure out how we could reorient cities and movement in cities with a changed premise: no cars. Imagine how much parking space we’d free up for human pursuits? Imagine
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Is new coal export infrastrucutre in the best interest of BC and Canada
Today’s CBC Edition Business Panel focused on the proposal by Fraser Surrey Docks to build a new coal terminal on the Fraser river to export US thermal coal (if you missed it, here’s the recording starting at 1:50). This may seem like a local issue for the West Coast, but
Continue readingopenalex: écoHackMTL: An excellent launch
We had an excellent turnout for the écoHackMTL launch. A big thank-you to everyone who helped me put it together! If you missed the action you can see a few photos over on our facebook page.
With close to 75 people in the room the energy was phenomenal, and we had a good mix of developers, community activists and NGOs, and representatives from the city. Those were exactly the connections that we were trying to make possible.
Now the questions is how much of that momentum we can translate into concrete projects between now and the hack itself in October.
Stay tuned. And for more info check out www.ecohackmtl.org.
Continue readingopenalex: écoHackMTL: An excellent launch
We had an excellent turnout for the écoHackMTL launch. A big thank-you to everyone who helped me put it together! If you missed the action you can see a few photos over on our facebook page. With close to 75 people in the room the energy was phenomenal, and we
Continue readingopenalex: écoHackMTL: An excellent launch
We had an excellent turnout for the écoHackMTL launch. A big had for everyone who helped me put it together! If you missed the action you can see a few photos over on our facebook page. With close to 75 people in the room the energy was phenomenal, and we
Continue readingThings Are Good: Save the Environment, Live in a City
The IEEE Spectrum recently interview William Meyer who is the author of the book The Environmental Advantages of Cities: Countering Commonsense Antiurbanism. The book’s central thesis is that we need to change the discourse around cities from a negative one to a more positive conversation about the efficiencies of cities
Continue reading