“It is absolutely impractical”
Wendell Cox
Cox: Downtown Rethink
This article entitled People in Toronto won't stop working from home and it's impacting the city paints a relatively negative picture about downtown prospects - noting that Toronto office vacancy rates have just hit their highest level since 1995. Looks like the...
Calgary City Council: Reimagining the CBD
In a previous post, I commented on the difficulties faced by the Calgary CBD (downtown), with its huge office vacancies resulting from the mid-decade oil bust, along with the rise of remote and hybrid working accelerated by the pandemic. Calgary (metropolitan area...
Demographia International Housing Affordability – 2023 Edition Released
Demographia International Housing Affordability rates middle-income housing affordability in 94 major housing markets in eight nations: Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. This edition covers the third...
Featured News
How to Turn Free Citizens Into Compliant Serfs
Free citizens have minds of their own and want to pursue their lives as they see fit. This is inconvenient for the elites, who wish to be in charge of everyone’s lives so that they can show their superiority and gain benefit for themselves and their friends. So the...
Demographia International Housing Affordability – 2023 Edition Released
Demographia International Housing Affordability rates middle-income housing affordability in 94 major housing markets in eight nations: Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, New Zealand, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. This edition covers the third...
Downtown Calgary: At Risk?
Downtown Calgary is a big deal (see photo below and photos following the text). Traditional American and Canadian downtown areas (central business districts or CBDs) are a holdover from the pre-auto era. Their geographical limits were largely set by the early Great...
Urban Containment Policy and Housing Affordability
The city of Ottawa is updating its Official Plan. Under consideration are expanding the urban boundary (urban growth boundary) and strengthening of its intensification (densification)policy. These strategies are components of urban containment policy. This report...
2021 Edition of Demographia International Housing Affordability
How Affordable is Housing in Your City? 2021 Edition of Demographia International Housing Affordability CANADA, February 22, 2021 - The Frontier Centre for Public Policy has just released the 2021 edition of Demographia International Housing Affordability. The survey...
Upward Mobility Index 2020
"In today’s media, on our college campuses, and on the streets of our great cities, no cry is more pervasive than the demand for “social justice” for America’s minorities. While much attention is given to athletes, academic pundits, political activists, and media...
Despite Surges, Rural Death Rates Remain far Lower
There have been reports of rising COVID-19 infection rates in rural areas and even “surges,” such as here and here. Many of these reports fail to note the most important statistic of all with respect to rural areas --- that, even with the recent increases and surges,...
Japan Prefectures: COVID-19 Fatality Rates and Urban Densities
Japan has done remarkably well in controlling the Covid-19 virus. The nation’s death rate per million population at 0.9, is very low by international standards and the lowest among the G-7 nations. Yet there are significant variations among the prefectures — as...
Cut Expensive Housing Regulations to Preserve the Middle Class
Last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published research showing that the middle-class is shrinking throughout the developed world. In Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle-Class, OECD emphasized that the threat to the middle-class...
Ottawa is 2900 square kilometres and the expansion, if it is approved, the expansion of the urban boundary is 1650 hectares (~16.5 square kilometres), causing great debate among the city council, we are going to focus on intensification, urban expansion, and housing...
A Look at Demographia’s Latest Housing Affordability Survey
Hites Ahir: You recently released the 16th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2020. Tell us about the housing affordability measure used in the survey. Wendell Cox: Demographia uses the “median multiple,” which is the median house price...