Galliard Homes reduced the amount of affordable housing in the project's housing stock from 35 per cent to just 10 per cent, citing increased construction costs and changing building regulations as key factors.
I understood at a very early age how much place matters and how impactful government services can be on one's life. The Mayor's Office of Equity and Racial Justice was really focused on working with agencies to think about how they're addressing inequity, whether it's through budget as a lever or personnel as a lever, procurement, policymaking. But land use is a lever as well.
Good urbanism should transcend politics. Socialists and capitalists can walk the same neighborhood and agree it's a pleasant place to live. They can each appreciate the tree canopy, the corner café with people spilling onto the sidewalk, the mix of ages on bikes and on foot, the architectural details of older buildings, and so on.
My family had Slide Show Night when I was growing up. Not every Saturday, but a whole bunch of Saturdays. Either my sister or I would be in charge of setting up the projector, the screen, and loading the carousel. During the show, there'd be a few landscapes or skylines taken during vacations, but almost all the shots were up close. Like most dads, mine wasn't a professional photographer, but he did a good job of capturing memory triggers: faces, gestures, and decorations.
Cities around the world share a common goal: to become healthier and greener, supported by civic infrastructure that restores ecosystems and strengthens public life. The question is how to reach this. Global climate targets, local building codes, and municipal standards increasingly guide designers and planners toward better choices. Still, many cities struggle to translate these frameworks into everyday, street-level comfort and long-term ecological protection.
Once a nice-to-have niche urban design concept, TOD has become an essential part of many urban neighborhoods. It has helped address the shortage of housing by enabling the development of higher-density residential communities near transit stations. It has helped revitalize countless once-deteriorating or static urban enclaves near transit hubs by activating sidewalks near the developments. And it has spurred walking and transit use, enabling residents of TODs to reduce or eliminate automobile dependency.
Jane Jacobs was also one of the voices that challenged this predominantly rationalist logic, arguing that truly vibrant streets are those capable of sustaining the diversity of everyday life, its informal exchanges, and the forms of care and natural surveillance that emerge from them. What these authors share is a fundamental insight: streets are not merely infrastructures for circulation, but social ecosystems, shaped by the relationships, uses, and encounters that take place within them.
The global average building utilization rate dramatically jumped in 2025 to 53%, the highest since before the pandemic, validating the effectiveness of hybrid strategies in driving more in-office activity, according to CBRE. Utilization rates were 38% in 2024 and 35% in 2023, compared to the 65% that most respondents to CBRE's global workplace occupancy benchmarking program identified as their target.