So true. And there's research to back that up. It's been a century since the Bauhaus movement and longer than that since the rise of modernism. Architects have been trying to convince the public to prefer modern styles ever since. They have failed. "People prefer traditionally designed...

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I've heard the desire for new buildings to be built in traditional styles being painted as right wing too, and it's ludicrous. Traditional styles are only considered traditional because in the 20th century the design world rather arbitrarily decided that architecture had to throw out existing...

Yes the standards have moved in that direction. Steeles will be similar. And more streets to come.

Some connectivity improvements have been made in the Downsview Park area. Mostly small extensions and intersection improvements. Keele & Dovehouse Keele & Sheppard A new section of bike path on Sheppard completes a missing link in the Sunfield/Sentinal cycling route. The former streets...

I'm fine with Amsterdam beer but the food at their Harbourfront brewpub is atrocious.

It's not just people from the global south. My parents escaped from behind the iron curtain and hated Russia for decades. Now they're on Russia's side. They're so anti Communist that they reflexively support anything on the opposite side of the political spectrum, even if that's Putin's Russia...

Like with so many things, Canada ignores the rest of the world and settles for being just slightly better than the US.

Assuming you're referring to the part of Steeles between Midland and McCowan, the part just west of that to Kennedy now has cycle tracks.

Hamilton was larger than Ottawa in the more distant past but it passed Hamilton sometime in the 1920s. By 1941 Ottawa had 215,000 people while Hamilton had 176,000. Definitely debatable which city has the bigger pre-war core. Either way the two have very different development histories since...

Absolutely. But my point is that a neighbourhood like Cabbagetown doesn't have a lot of space dedicated to cars compared to more recently developed suburbs. It has narrower streets, hardly any surface parking lots, smaller setbacks, etc. The fact that it's built for walking and transit allows...

For sure, car infrastructure takes a huge amount of space. I don't know about Houten but large parts of pre-1950 Toronto are made up of singles, semis, etc., which works because there's not much space wasted accommodating cars. But even in those areas the majority of housing is apartments.

It's something that our society tried to normalize in the last century but it was never sustainable or reasonable in the long run. We'd have to have much lower density and a lot more sprawl for that to work, and even then it doesn't pay for itself. Toronto was also a much smaller city then. The...

Other than the sections I mentioned, none of the route will be controlled by CP, including the rebuilt Havelock sub. That's something like 90% of the route that they won't control. Bypassing Ottawa (the second busiest Via Rail station) is and always has been a terrible idea. There's a reason...

Not really. There's some in Montreal, potentially some in Toronto depending on the route, and the section between Perth and Smiths Falls. The rest would be controlled by whoever is running passenger trains. Hopefully something can be done to ensure that those small sections don't cause delays...

To be fair, it's never been reasonable for single detached homes in a major metropolis to be attainable to the masses. Nor should they be, unless of course you want your city to look like Houston. I agree with your larger point though. The province and feds seem determined to prop up an...

Interest rates aren't historically high. They're quite low by historic standards. The last decade of almost free money was the exception, not the rule.

One of the problems with Union is that GO, UP Express, and Via Rail each have separate areas with separate departure boards. Imagine the confusion of a tourist in the Great Hall looking to take a train to Barrie. They should have GO departures along with Via in the Great Hall at the very least.