Green Buildings and Urban Development in Toronto. Tweets my own

Joined July 2009
Jeff Ranson retweeted
A significant amount of the charm embodied in the 5000 years of urbanism before WWII exists in the urban form, not the materials We can recover the urban form even when we have to use modern materials
This is the best preserved medieval street in Europe. Recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, The Shambles in York, England has had shops trading on it for nearly a thousand years. It's older than the Crusades.
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Great to talk with @donnelly_b about building YZD a neighbourhood (city?) from scratch, and how the hardest part of building something new is often replicating what works so well in the old parts of the city. @globizen
Welcome to the third edition of Global City Builders by @globizen. This month, we sat down with @jeffranson of @northcrestdev to talk about one of the largest redevelopment projects in North America — YZD. Read the Q&A at globizen.com/journal.
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Then once you get the roads and blocks right, you still need to address the impacts that vehicles have in our building design, which can undercut what you're trying to achieve at the community level. Loading is a big issue here.
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Instead of east-west pipelines why don’t we build a trans-Canada super conductor transmission network? That would unlock markets for both renewables and LNG+CCS generation in the Prairies.
BREAKING: Mark Carney says the federal government and the provinces have agreed to create a national trade and energy corridor Premier Susan Holt tells me there’s “never been better alignment” over a west-east pipeline project. #NB
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At least they're wearing suits.
Hoovervilles in Central Park during the Great Depression
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This is a great approach. Little projects have little public risk and big projects have bigger public risk, so resource appropriately. (Replace "risk" with impact/service burden/transformative potential/investment value...whatever you want to focus on).
Replying to @BlairScorgie
In doing so, I recommend that @CityPlanTO establish a stakeholder advisory committee comprised of planners, architects, developers, financial analysts, lenders, and others to assist in determining the composition of each tier based on what is necessary and achievable. #TOpoli
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I think any politician who supports this should pilot it on themselves. Record everything they do and let AI scan for impropriety.
Oracle's Larry Ellison says “citizens will be on their best behavior” with an AI surveillance system
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The rates should go down significantly because the assessed value growth would be WAY higher than the proposed tax rate increase. But on average this would have zero impact on the tax amount paid. It’s just applying a lower rate to a higher value to get to the same total.
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The US has run a significantly higher deficit to GDP ratio than Canada over the last decade. How much does that explain the difference in productivity and what is the risk of a significant period of productivity that doesn't dilute debt at all?
Canada and the United States had equally productive economys from 1995 to 2015. Trudeau quickly put an end to that. #Trudeau #TrudeauNationalDisgrace #thursdayvibes
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By that logic Montana should consider it a privilege to be taken over by California.
Fox Host Jesse Watters: If I were a citizen of another country and a neighbor of the United States, I would consider it a privilege to be taken over by the United States of America.
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Is Canada "a small part of global emissions"? a) our direct emissions are about 2% b) what we import causes about 2.5% more (mostly in China) when it's made, c) what we export (mostly Oil & Gas) causes another 3%. We touch >7% with .5% of population
Replying to @BrentToderian
Contrary to your uninformed assertion many of us in media have done our research. 1. Carbon tax is not revenu neutral. Who says? Budget office. Do your own research. 2. Canada is such a small part of global carbon we could go back to stone age and make no difference. Read up.
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TIL that squids have bones.
A sponge made from a fusion of cotton fibre and squid bone could help to clear some of the world's microplastic pollution after a team of Chinese researchers found it can soak up as much as 99.8 per cent of the particles from water samples. dezeen.com/2024/12/18/squid-…
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Canada's GDP per capita is lagging behind the US. But US debt growth per capita is also way higher. Can any economists explain how much the GDP gap is related to deficit spending gap? visualcapitalist.com/governm…
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Our tax policies for property try to do too much with a single assessment. As if a formula using just assessed value can fairly recover public costs (without any site specific context), do means testing (without income data), and push development goals.
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For example, single-family homes have always been the least efficient properties for cities to service, but property tax doesn't reflect that. When you propose raising taxes on SFH, people worry that families who "need" SFH can afford it. So is the tax a subsidy for families?
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That's clumsy policy - an incentive that doesn't filter for need. We'd be much better off with assessment that directly reflects the public cost of the property, then transparently offer incentives, rebates, or exemptions that either drive public goals or provide social support.
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