Last weekend, I spoke on a panel at the Annual Conference of the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association. The panel was inspired in large part by the recent debate in Toronto over Mayor Rob Ford’s attempt to sell social housing units to private buyers. The panel, entitled “To Privatize or Not to Privatize? That is the question,” included myself, Vince Brescia (President and CEO […]
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openalex: Open Access Research: Cities and Climate Change
It may be an urban legend, by they say that the average academic article is read by a grand total of 6 people. That’s not an inspiring thought, especially for those of us who spend our time writing those articles!You can pin low readership on all kinds…
Continue readingCities—the provincial option
The possibility of Toronto becoming a province has popped up in the news again. The idea has floated around for years, supported by a variety of civic thinkers including the urban guru Jane Jacobs.The idea has considerable merit and not only for Toront…
Continue readingLetter to Toronto City Councillor, Mary-Margaret McMahon (Ward 32)
Dear Councillor McMahon,I am a resident of Ward 32, and am writing to express my concerns regarding the service-cutting fiscal plan proposed by Mayor Rob Ford. As I am sure you are aware, the Mayor claimed during his campaign that Toronto had a “spendi…
Continue readingopenalex: EcoCity 2011 – Networked Urban Sustainability: Breaking the Integration Barrier
September hit with the usually flurry of activity, which means that I’m only now putting up this version of one of the two talks that I gave at the 2011 EcoCity World Summit. The Summit was hosted in Montreal this year, and was a huge success all a…
Continue reading350 or bust: The Economy: Stealing The Future, Selling it In The Present, and Calling It GDP
In this TED talk from last month, futurist Alex Steffen shares a vision of the way our cities offer the key to addressing climate change. Cities, Steffen says, can help save the future while offering us a much-improved quality of life. More links: Futu…
Continue readingImpolitical: Tax value
This piece in the Globe today by a Toronto architect, Jack Diamond is worth a read because it’s the kind of case that’s not often made these days for what’s needed to build and keep the Canada we enjoy living in. It’s about cities and the elements that…
Continue readingOn the Green Party platform.
Finally — for now, at least, until the Tories and NDP release the rest of their platforms, and the Libs release anything at all — I’m going to take a quick look at the Green Party of Ontario’s platform. It’s the shortest, and the slimmest when it com…
Continue readingOn the Ontario PCs’ platform
[Sorry for the double-post. Had some unfixable errors in the previous version.]So, here we go with the Ontario PC Platform, the Changebook (warning: PDF). Or is that the Change Book? ChangeBook? I don’t know, and I don’t think they do, either.According…
Continue readingOn the Ontario PCs’ platform.
So, here we go with the Ontario PC Platform, the Changebook. Or is that the Change Book? ChangeBook? I don’t know, and I don’t think they do, either.According to this, Tim Hudak was a Customs Officer at the Peace Bridge. I knew there was a good reason …
Continue readingopenalex: Montreal discovers it’s not easy going green: New Economist Green Cities Index
An article that I wrote on the new Green Cities Index (.pdf) released last week by yhe Economist Intelligence Unit is out in today’s Montreal Gazette. It was an interesting one to write. The focus of the piece was Montreal’s poor performance, and…
Continue readingopenalex: Kunstler on The City of the Future and "Yesterday’s Tomorrows"
I’m no apocalypse junkie; visions of the end of days don’t do much for me. But I am going to recommend James Kunstler’s most recent article anyway. Kunstler is a major figure in discussions of both Peak Oil and New Urbanism. In the July/August edi…
Continue readingopenalex: Solar Map of New York City
New York City’s new Solar Map has gone live, and it’s a beauty. With a googlemap style interface, you can zoom into any building in the greater NYC area. Click on the building and up pops an estimate of the solar power you could generate on its r…
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: How Rob Ford Can Fix Social Housing
I have an opinion piece in today’s Toronto Star regarding Toronto’s Mayor, Rob Ford, and the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC). Mr. Ford would like to see a considerable number of units from TCHC’s existing stock sold off. For background on the issue, please my blog post of April 13, which can be found here. In today’s piece, I […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Municipalities, Procurement and Canada-EU Trade
There is an excellent post by Scott Sinclair at the CCPA blog.
Continue readingopenalex: Post C40 Summit Cities Need to "Go Big or Go Home" on Climate Policy
[I’ve got a new piece running over at The Mark News. The latest Clinton C40 urban climate summit just wrapped up in Brazil, and as always there’s been a flood of optimistic news coverage. I’m all for optimism. But I wanted to provide some perspective…
Continue readingopenalex: Bixi Responds to Flurry of Financial Coverage
Montreal news has been awash with coverage of BIXI’s financial situation. After some delay, the city has approved $108million in loans and loan guarantees for the non-profit that operates BIXI.
Those numbers, as well as BIXI management’s confrontation…
Continue readingopenalex: Jane’s Walk 2011: This Weekend Biggest Ever now in 15 Countries
This weekend is the fifth year of Jane’s Walk, and it is the biggest ever. Volunteers will lead 491 walks spread across 72 cities and 15 countries. What I love about the Walks, and what’s at the core of their success, is their simple open-source approa…
Continue readingopenalex: Eco-Sensual: LEED certified sensual healing in Montreal
“Eco-sensual design” – it’s got a Marvin Gaye kind of ring to it [video] – but I like it. It’s Montreal architect Owen Rose’s (meme-worthy) shorthand for the relationship that exists between smart ecological design and the sheer pleasure of b…
Continue readingopenalex: Jay Carson, Cities, and Climate…no wait Donald Trump & Tori Spelling!
I rarely read Fortune magazine. OK, that’s an overstatement. But it came across my desktop last week when they ran an interview with Jay Carson, disheveled CEO of the newly formed C40 Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI).If you’ve been around t…
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