Statistics Canada has just released the employment access data out of the 2016 Census, based on the main mode of commuting. Generally, there is little change between the modes, as Figure 1 indicates, compared to the 2011 Census results. (See: New Data on Commuting in...
The revival of America’s core cities is one of the most celebrated narratives of our time—yet, perhaps paradoxically, urban progress has also created a growing problem of increasing inequality and middle-class flight. Once exemplars of middle-class advancement, most...
"Kudos" to the Trudeau government for proposing the use of vouchers for low income housing and homelessness. It is too bad that even in the most successful economies, many people have insufficient means to provide their own housing. Vouchers are a better way to...
Households could face even greater housing affordability challenges in the years to come, according to the September 2017 RBC Economics (RBC) Housing Trends and Affordability report. In noting that " The days of ultra low interest rates in Canada are over," RBC...
In his annual State of the Climate report published on April 14, 2022, Dr. Ole Humlum, Emeritus Professor at the University of Oslo, examined detailed patterns in temperature changes in the atmosphere and oceans together with trends in climate impacts. Many of these...
I wrote an opinion column immediately following the May 27, 2021 announcement of the “shocking discovery of 215 bodies found in a mass grave at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.” In that column, I correctly stressed the need to wait for real...
Levittown, and the automobile-oriented urban expansion it foreshadowed, resulted in the greatest democratization of prosperity in history. Wherever mass suburbanization occurred – whether in the United States, its first world cousins Canada and Australia, Western Europe or later even Japan – we have seen the unprecedented rise of a mass property-owning class. Generally, where land regulation has remained reasonable, new houses can be purchased for less than three times median household incomes.
Yet the bottom line remains: Without smart growth’s land rationing policies, the severe escalation in home prices would never have reached such absurd levels. But the disaster in the highly regulated markets will be with us for years. The smart growth spike in housing prices turned what might have been a normal cyclical downturn into the most disastrous financial collapse since 1929. Now the taxpayers are being asked to bail out the mess that smart growth advocates, no doubt inadvertently, have created.
Stated another way, if price-escalating smart growth policies had not been adopted in state capitals, county courthouses, and local planning commissions, the financial risk in the current crisis would be at least $4 trillion less.
The only international analysis of its kind, the 4th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey expands coverage to 227 markets in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Wendell Cox explodes popular misconceptions about Portland’s Smart Growth Model.
Toronto amalgamation was a costly error – producing higher costs, disempowering voters, and shifting economic growth to more efficient suburban centres.
Housing affordability has been virtually destroyed by government policy in many markets in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The Globe and Mail thinks that census data confirm a Canadian distaste for suburban life. In fact, the data say just the opposite. The wealthier we get, the more our cities spread.
The dream of big-city mayors that Ottawa foot the bill for mass transit is closer to reality. Trouble is, subsidies from afar won’t make a dime’s worth of difference. Other reforms will.