Few local or metropolitan issues receive more attention than housing affordability. This article provides a perspective on housing affordability. The focus is on the approach used by the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, which I co-author...
The front page of The Wall Street Journal cited the difficulty of cities (Note 1) trying to stop the escalation of house prices “Western Cities Try, and Fail, To Slow Chinese Home Buying.” The more descriptive online headline said: Western Cities Want to Slow Flood of...
By Wendell Cox May 4, 2018 Recently, Ontario PC leader Doug Ford’s proposed building single-family homes in a large supply of urban fringe (greenbelt) land to address Toronto’s severe housing affordability. This was a unique...
By: Wendell Cox Originally published: April 5, 2018 Source: newgeography.com In delivering the Annual Report of the Bank to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration on August 18, 2006, (now...
Earlier this year, a group called Equity Matters asked the province to establish an education equity secretariat. They want this office to oversee equity officers working in Manitoba schools. Equity Matters wants to ensure that all Manitoba students are reflected in...
Frances Widdowson probably isn't someone most Canadians recognize. I'm here to tell you why they should. In terms of Canada's intellectual culture, Frances Widdowson matters because she is a classic and prolific academic. In a time when demagoguery easily flourishes,...
The World Economic Forum’s International Competitiveness Report ranks Australia’s banks as 3rd most sound out of 133 nations. However, Australia has a serious housing affordability problem.
PowerPoint slides which accompanied the Lunch on the Frontier presentation by Wendell Cox in Calgary on October 29th, 2009.
A Canadian autobahn? Why not argues Wendell Cox who writes Canadians should join the rest of the world in building a comprehensive national motorway system.
The United States, Europe and Japan all have motorway systems that reach virtually all of their major urban areas; Canada is the exception.
Corus Radio
Senior Fellow Wendell Cox, an international transportation expert, finds that in Canada, Saskatoon has more telecommuters than any other metropolitan area as a percentage of its working-age population, at 1.5%. Next in line are Vancouver and Edmonton tied at 1.1%.
Congestion Costs: This is why such serious attention is paid to the Texas Transportation Institute’s (TTI) Annual Mobility Report, which estimates the costs of traffic congestion, principally the value of lost time as well as excess fuel costs. The fundamental premise, long a principle of transportation planning and policy, holds that more time spent traveling costs money, to employers, employees and shippers.
I have yet to discern any seething undercurrent of desire on the part of Americans (or the vast majority anywhere else) to return to the living standards of 1980, much less 1950 or 1750. Neither Washington’s politicians nor those in Paris or any other high income world capital are going to tell the people that they must accept a lower standard of living.
About three decades ago, Sydney embarked upon what was to become one of the world’s strongest “smart growth” programs (called “urban consolidation” in Australia). Aimed at concentrating population closer to the core, urban consolidation sought to restrict and even prohibit new housing on the urban fringe. Sydney developed its own equivalent of the famous Portland urban growth boundary. The result is that every land owner knows whether or not their property can be developed, and the favored understandably take advantage by charging whatever price the highly constrained market will bear.