Canada and the United States have lived together in peace for more than two centuries, since the War of 1812. Yet, it has not always been easy. Elephants provided one of the most graphic descriptions of the two nations living together. There are no elephants in...
Talk continues of the potential for a housing bust in Toronto. Through the end of March, house prices had had increased 33 percent in a year. Bank of Canada Governor Steven Poloz noted that "There’s no fundamental story that we could tell to justify that kind of...
The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has today released "Restrictive Land-Use Regulation: Strategies, Effects and Solutions," a new report by Wendell Cox, a senior fellow with the Frontier Centre. The report evaluates currently in-vogue housing regulation strategies...
Cities (urban areas or settlements) have been around for millennia. Over that time, cities have changed in form and function. But the way that people move around the city has materially changed only twice. Walking was predominant until less than 200 years ago, then...
The choice we face is clear: a modest expansion of greenfield development or greater housing poverty For 18 years, I have been monitoring international housing affordability, as author or co-author of the Demographia Housing Affordability series. The latest...
The April 1982 Saskatchewan election proved to be a major turning point in the province's history. Over its nine years in office, the Devine government commenced and completed numerous policy initiatives in spite of considerable challenges including two recessions. ...
It is time for policy-makers to level with the public about transit. People are not going to sacrifice more than three hours a week to travel by work to transit. There will never be sufficient funding to make transit competitive to much more than downtown.
Warsaw is going in the right direction, as people and businesses locate where it is less costly, improving the quality of life. On the other hand, many urban areas in the more affluent Western World are determined to contract the planning disease and their citizens are paying the price in excessively high land
prices.
A major new study of housing affordability ranks Winnipeg and Edmonton as among the most affordable markets in the world.
Urban sprawl critic Wendell Cox’s powerpoint presentation on Smart Growth to Lunch on Frontier audience in Winnipeg, February 24th, 2004
The city of Portland, Oregon, took the lead in implementing “smart growth” policies to contain urban sprawl. The results, to say the least, were underwhelming, and wiser heads are trying to correct the mistake.
A Frontier analysis of US Census data indicates the reverse, that higher expenditures per capita are generally associated with larger municipal units and that consolidated governments are more costly than governments typified by multiple government units.
Urban planning should be responsive, not prescriptive. It should respond to the needs and desires of people, not seek to impose standards of behavior on them.
An analysis of Winnipeg’s population trends reveals we should be worried about the lack of growth, not “sprawl”
Over the past two decades, various countries have established policies to shift the production of transit services into a competitive environment.