This comment doesn't make sense to me. It's been a while (since there isn't one in the centre city!) but I thought Wal-Mart sold mostly clothing and general merchandise. And I haven't been to the No Frills, but I thought they were only groceries. If all Wal-Mart sells is groceries, then they...

APEGA, the board overseeing professional engineering in Alberta, has concluded their review into this incident. The main conclusion is that the City of Calgary's engineering oversight and management was sound:

It's pretty simple (I think this is even part of the heat warning message on my phone in the Environment Canada app): When 2 or more consecutive days of daytime maximum temperatures are expected to reach 29°C or warmer and nighttime minimum temperatures are expected to fall to 14°C or warmer...

I don't think that T&V really "overbuilt" so much. Especially considering they were in pretty extreme crisis and had tons of latent households a couple of years ago. Here's the population change from July 1 2021-July 1 2024 and the housing starts over the same time frame:

There are still 3 Arbyses around; one on Canyon Meadows, one on 17th SE and one in Cross Iron Mills. Had a beef n cheddar and curly fries when I was at Cross Iron six months ago and I hadn't had one for about a decade. Glad I had it, but I'm now good for another decade.

It's getting serious now...

Trains need maintenance every single night. Cleaning and inspection is light maintenance, but it is still maintenance and I can't imagine people would be thrilled if every single night at 3AM a cleaning crew was hosing down a train outside their window while lights bright enough for inspectors...

My thoughts about this are that there are (broadly) four groups of things behind the drop: 1). General antipathy to the US because of their threats to our country 2). Specific concern about travelling to the US because of security issues at the border, etc. 3). Low Canadian dollar - this is...

I was just going to post this as well! Here's the original report; https://www.oag.com/blog/canada-us-airline-capacity-aviation-market 75% reduction in April transborder bookings (1.22 million in 2024 and under 300K in 2025) and similar reductions all through the summer vs March 2024. But the...

I didn't mean to imply any causal relationship between the assessment and the sale decision. I'm not buying anywhere. Not really interested in that right now. It's a fairly generic property; a 25 year old suburban townhouse condo (so no zoning or lot type or any other redevelopment...

My property assessment went up 28% year-on-year. I'm putting it on the market; the realtor's estimate (which was also exactly the same as what I'd come up with independently before contacting him) is less than 2% over the City assessment.

Absolutely we are, in the same way we were 120 years ago: and 60 years ago: and 30 years ago: All three images come from this post in the essential Construction Physics newsletter, by Brian Potter who spent years working for an automated construction startup. Construction has a ton of...

I'm pretty sure the province still designs their freeways for 130 km/h; certainly feels like that's what people drive it at.

So the first commercial project in the 'Village Centre' consists mostly of: Gas station with drive-through carwash Drive-through A&W Drive-through Starbucks Drive-through bank Drive-through restaurant (hopefully McDonald's -- there's been one announced, but it's not in the DP plans, so that...

The minimum stations would be Westbrook, Foothills, U of C and Brentwood. An expanded set of stations could include University District/ACH, Parkdale, Spruce Cliff. So 4 attendants minimum, up to 7 total. The route 9 takes 34 mins to go from Westbrook to Brentwood; add in a 6 minute...

I think the building catalogue is a good idea (as mentioned, derisk developments -- especially for newer/smaller builders but also in smaller markets where missing middle units aren't going up all the time). And there's a lot of good in them; a good mix of bedrooms, accessible ground-floor...

Peak "We have Copenhagen at home" energy.

Peak "We have Copenhagen at home" energy.

The obvious place is by the Firestone tower; LRT station adjacent, you don't necessarily need to dig deep into the soil for an amphitheatre, sunset view of the downtown and mountains would make concerts amazing, and if you could develop acoustics so the sound goes west, then it's 900m of...