The LRT saga in Hamilton is the most bizarre sh*tshow since Rob Ford's handling of Transit City. Just build it. It'll improve your city.

The park actually looks really inviting with all the sunlight.

For sure. I always wished they had saved the twin smokestacks at the Art Deco Symes Road Destructor in the Junction. But alas, they were demolished at some point after the incinerator was decommissioned and repurposed as a waste transfer station.

I know people in Burlington who essentially use the GO train as a subway equivalent at rush hour already. The Lakeshore line trains run approximately every 15 minutes. They take a Burlington city bus to the GO station at one end of the city, hop on a GO train and travel across the city in a few...

What makes it even worse is that one person was offered $10,000 to allow his front yard to be used by construction crews to speed the project up, and he still refused. I’m not saying you can’t negotiate, but come on.

Lamb seems like he doesn't care about end users. He was fine with letting people live above a mechanic's garage at this location in illegal apartments with carbon monoxide issues until the city stepped in. If there's a profit to be made, he'll make it and move on to the next project. At the end...

A hotel here will basically print money if well managed. Here's to hoping they can budget properly and build something great, even if the scope has to be reduced.

It would good if they could finesse the design to preserve sight lines to the church. It's a picturesque heritage building and a local landmark.

It's a small site, but we should get at least 4 above-grade storeys on a main street in a major metropolitan city. Also, I'm generally not a fan of neutral-coloured facades for "background buildings" like this one. Beige and grey can be depressing in the winter when there are no colourful green...

Is there a rule against masonry for these projects? The cladding is almost always some cheap substitute like corrugated metal, EIFS, siding, etc.

I've always been a fan of Montreal's iconic greystones and New York's brownstones. Many of New York's luxury prewar apartment buildings have stone-clad facades. Stone facades convey permanence and luxury and tend to be found in the most exclusive locales. That's not to say that colourful brick...

On the one hand, taking brick over stone seems like choosing a burger over steak. On the other hand, light-coloured stone and precast don't tend to weather well in our climate. Either will get stained and will likely need to be restored in 30-50 years' time.

We're living in a city (and a country) where seemingly every last loonie is going towards paying rent, saving for a home downpayment, or investing in a rental property. That doesn't leave much for spending on culture or even on consumer goods.

There's a local building in Toronto with exterior hallways, 25 Ritchie Avenue. The facade design obscures them, though. I remember touring it during Doors Open one year with the architect, David Peterson. He said that a major advantage to external hallways between units was energy savings and...

What's the alternative, though? Travel around the country should be as affordable as possible to encourage people to live in and invest in cities other than the big 3. People are more likely to move to a different city if they can afford to travel to visit friends and family in their hometown...

Daniels Waterfront was mediocre, as is Menkes' project on the LCBO site on Queens Quay. 16 Bonnycastle Street turned out well, though, with its chiselled facade designed by Moshe Safdie. The Tridel projects like Aqualuna are turning out to be spectacular. Not to make excuses for Daniels and...

Lynx just went out of business. Flair has also struggled financially despite using a similar model that has worked in the US and EU. Air Canada has little domestic competition for flying overseas.

Jonah Prousky has covered the issue of why air travel is so expensive in Canada in the media in some interesting pieces. It's apparently not a coincidence or even a factor of the country's size and density. One issue is the "user pays" model for running airports in Canada where travellers are...

It's a really bad building for the location in that it feels overbearing, has no relationship with the waterfront public space that neighbours it, and has no contextualism to the design. It shows that municipalities should be more aggressive in acquiring these waterfront sites for public uses. I...

It'll look great in architectural photos and lousy in person, especially as the metal cladding ages.