Always neat to get a real good opportunity to reup @resnikoff.bsky.social's insights. www.thenation.com/article/soci...
Architecture critic @theglobeandmail.com. Also author, University of Toronto Daniels Faculty instructor, husband, father of two city kids. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/authors/alex-bozikovic/
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Always neat to get a real good opportunity to reup @resnikoff.bsky.social's insights. www.thenation.com/article/soci...
. @novakovicto.bsky.social rounds up the Aga Khan Awards: www.azuremagazine.com/article/the-...
In Ontario, criminal vigilantism works and will influence gov't policy. Keep that in mind.
An incisive argument
There’s a very clear signal here that Toronto police do not care about this camera or this crime. If this guy was vandalizing police cars, he would’ve been caught in a week www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
This is possible. Also Rail Deck, in retrospect, was vaporware and a distraction from the actual public works that the city should’ve been building in boom times.
I was never a big hockey fan, but I had Ken Dryden as a professor at McGill in Canadian Studies. We talked about citizenship and patriotism, and what all of that means. One day, I put up my hand in class. I told him I was Canadian, voted in every election, and considered myself civically engaged. 1/
I’m very much in favour of saving the tree canopy and that’s a long story, but this is going to add onto all the other things, not replace them. “Get a taller building if you save a tree” will never happen.
That’s not how this is going to play out
Another obstacle to intensification of the neighbourhoods, which the city claims to want.
We praise “culturally responsive” design, even when we know almost nothing about the cultures it’s responding to. Lately, I’ve started to think of architectural criticism as its own type of diaspora. In @azuremagazine.bsky.social, one of my more intimate pieces: www.azuremagazine.com/article/hous...
Food $200 Data $150 Rent $800 Baseball bats I’ve hidden all over the house $3,600 Utility $150 someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying
Important reminder from our @alexbozikovic.bsky.social that the Toronto/Ontario deal for density around transit stations is not yet real and has to make it through council. Would city councillors oppose development right by transit, you ask? Yes, some would www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...
ERA
Honoured to share the stage with Toronto's hottest urbanist tonight.
Will Toronto get more density? It’s complicated. I report on recent transit area changes to planning that could transform the city www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/90421fe...
I was there in August wondering this very thing!
Big cities in the US and Canada chose to choke growth and strangle their housing markets in the 1960s. The consequences continue to stack up
Toronto: It’s good
On verra
Exhibition Place is the biggest wasted opportunity in Toronto from an economic, cultural and public space perspective. The Indy is part of the problem. www.thestar.com/sports/auto-...
One of the neighbours lives a full mile away and has concerns about the garbage bins
Councillor @diannesaxe.bsky.social would like to hear more from the neighbours “before approval”
Will Toronto get more density? It’s complicated. I report on recent transit area changes to planning that could transform the city www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/90421fe...
The year is 2010 and I'm reading about opposition to development on Ossington The year is 2025 and I'm reading about opposition to development on Ossington The year is 2040 and
This is not snark. I am genuinely trying to understand how this happens.
Can’t some parents park their cars half a mile away and walk? Do people actually prefer to wait five hours rather than walk 10 minutes, or do they not have a choice?
This year there are shade sails to protect you in the cattle pen while you wait for the ferry. It took collaboration with Waterfront Toronto to get this done. $440-million a year in Parks capital projects and yet…
This has been low-hanging fruit for every Toronto mayor and parks director for the past 30 years. Nothing.
Sitting at Ziibiing on a beautiful summer day watching the world go by. This space is so much better used than it was when it was just Hart House Circle. It's hard to tell who is a UofT community member from looks, but I've seen all ages from toddlers to the elderly in just a short half hour.
E-bike is now much more reliable and usually faster than a car anywhere in the Bikeshare coverage area
O
The state of the Canadian housing discourse. I’ve now been blocked on three social media platforms by Andy Yan, professor @sfuurb.bsky.social, who speaks to “friendly” media all the time.
Coliseum, Exhibition Place, Toronto, 1940s Artist: Nicholas Hornyansky, 1896-1965 Medium: Pencils, & watercolour washes Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, Toronto Public Library #hornyansky #1940s #architecture #exhibition #coliseum #sketch #torontoart #art #artist #toronto #canada #jeremyhopkin
Gift article. British buildings were built to retain heat. Now they must be redesigned to stay cool. Climate change makes urban heat one of the global challenges of our time, and will require rethinking housing, infrastructure, public space, public health, and more. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/w...
Can’t stop thinking about my neighbor’s garage door
Touring Toronto’s car-free community on Ward’s Island
I’m aware, thanks
bsky.app/profile/alex...
Sometimes we* get it right (* Waterfront Toronto)
Trump's order to give preference to neoclassical design for civic buildings isn't just a matter of architectural taste. It's DEI for the AEC industry — a leg up for conservative firms in any federal construction contracts worth more than $50 million www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
These components came from a lumberyard; they aren’t being removed. Not everything old is sacred.
And yet here we are
Nah. Paint it. The domestic tastes of 1882 are not sacred.
None of that is in dispute, certainly not from me. But Darrell‘s point is precisely that cities change (and that the narrative that gentrification kills everything is a sloppy one). What would you have liked to have seen here?
Here we go again with this ahistorical nonsense. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/a...
Yes; I am praising this and noting it remains unusual
And of course, “the problem is that the government got out of the business of social housing” (in a country where social housing has never reached even 5% of the total)
Is he wrong?
Meanwhile in Canada most of the left doesn’t accept this math, and/or insists that upzoning alone is not enough! (even as the most troubled cities haven’t yet done much upzoning)
Imagine a progressive politician saying this obvious thing in so many words.
And look at the lasting success. @jskstreet.bsky.social showed the way in New York. Yet Toronto’s government stubbornly insists on doing things in the opposite fashion
“Public support becomes easier to galvanize once something exists and gains value in residents’ lives.” A similar note in @michaelkimmelman.bsky.social’s piece today www.nytimes.com/2025/08/23/h...
Too many cooks; a sad failure of “activation”. What it needs is a leader and a vision right now.
My column on Old City Hall and how Toronto is wasting an opportunity: www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...
Sing it
“Public support becomes easier to galvanize once something exists and gains value in residents’ lives.” A similar note in @michaelkimmelman.bsky.social’s piece today www.nytimes.com/2025/08/23/h...
Too many cooks; a sad failure of “activation”. What it needs is a leader and a vision right now.
My column on Old City Hall and how Toronto is wasting an opportunity: www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...
You are incorrect on all counts. In any case a construction project on an important public site arrants a detailed professional assessment of its design qualities and heritage value.
Buildings can be insulated from the inside
@oliviachow.bsky.social is pushing for quick results. Good. But there’s zero chance the city delivers 120 projects in five years, and a very high chance the architecture is incoherent and sloppy.
And they are hiring one design team to do all the projects. This narrows the field to a few corporate firms, none of whom are very good at this sort of thing. This while @jasonthorne.bsky.social is attempting to rethink procurement and address such issues
Toronto plans to rebuild 120 washrooms, demolishing 20 including several on Toronto Island Park. This (Irving Grossman, 1964) and others need to be saved.
This is an incredible piece. Do not miss.
“building high rise buildings next to single family zoned isn’t safe for many reasons” meanwhile in Toronto
I doubt it. Too many towers!
Can you build a great neighbourhood from scratch? If anyone can, it's Allies and Morrison. Their arrival in Toronto delivers a jolt to Canadian urbanism www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/...
Their secret to building good new neighborhoods: mimic the chaotic incrementalism of the real city
Can you build a great neighbourhood from scratch? If anyone can, it's Allies and Morrison. Their arrival in Toronto delivers a jolt to Canadian urbanism www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/...
No update on my August goal: $50 / $500 ODSP doesn’t cover survival. $500 = food, hygiene, staying connected. Even $3 helps. RTs = lifelines. 💛 ko-fi.com/sharpieguy 💸 E-transfer: manderson4@gmail.com #ODSPoverty #MutualAid #MutualAidRequest #DisabilityJustice #KoFi
I would assume so
The extent of our mid- and low-density sprawl is just so much more vast than theirs. The Canadian built environment is what an American would recognize as cities, dense suburbs, and rural areas. Our typical suburb is much rarer there (and everywhere else on earth).
"In terms of its underlying causes, the current homelessness crisis is very nearly the opposite of the 20th century urban crime wave. It is a product of affluence, inequality, and political sclerosis." publiccomment.blog/p/notes-on-a...
Don’t forget @akareynolds.bsky.social .
My first Starter Pack! The Canadian urbanism and planning community on here is growing. Give these folks a follow. Some well known faces … and some you should get to know! (please re-post!) go.bsky.app/AEYL7FZ
If this was built as originally designed, with a café and washroom, the park would have been even better, and there would have been staff in the space. The city chose to not to spend that money.
Love Park is very good. Matt finds one of the keys to its success: a worker accountable for its upkeep. The public service should have a manager for each of the city’s most visited parks. Someone - a person - needs to have an eye on each place and answer for it. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
Homeownership should be a choice, not a necessity to obtain secure tenure. My latest (paywalled, sorry) www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
Great reporting by Ana Pereira, @emmamci.bsky.social, and Brendan Kennedy from @thestar.com
Word games aside, Therme has built one (1) complete project and bought another. It’s an opaque company with a modest record and a sales pitch
The government‘s total target is 2 million homes
The new MP for Haldimand–Norfolk is not a fan of Ottawa. www.eliecantinnantel.com/p/conservati...
I agree on all counts
Counter argument: the existing building industry is operating below capacity right now. Why not put them back to work in the short term?
Each of these is a reasonable argument that has a significant counter argument.
Which would amount to a huge intervention in the economy, at possibly massive economic cost
Build Canada Homes needs to bring about 10,000 200-unit apartment buildings, or 500,000 fourplexes, mostly in existing cities. Where will they go? How will that physical change be greeted by local politics and planning? Building a new supply chain is easy politics. This is hard.
A key assertion from the CD Howe paper: modular construction supports "compact, denser housing" in cities including fourplexes. 1. Is there any evidence this is real? 2. Thousands of fourplexes would be needed to make even a dent in the problem. Where are they going? cdhowe.org/publication/...
UBC Brock Commons: - Attractive and flexible architecture - 18 storeys (not permitted by right almost anywhere in Canadian cities) - 300 homes (so perhaps 1500 needed in Toronto, similar in Vancouver) www.naturallywood.com/projects/bro...
Going back to the CD Howe report, case studies: Jacobsen Hall at @trinitywestern.bsky.social. - Five storeys (illegal on 90% of Toronto residential land, similar in Vancouver) - 220 units (so perhaps 2000 such buildings are needed in the GTHA alone) - Low ceilings, limited spatial flexibility
If prefab will solve Canada's housing problems, I'd add: Where *specifically* are the homes going to go? Where are the sites in Toronto and Vancouver regions to build 100,000s of homes? www.thestar.com/business/opi...
Panda, via the ERA HIA which is on the project website
You could pull it off
Seeing the Obama Center rising from the Point is startling. Not so much that it’s ugly, but it really does begin to resemble some type of magnificent tomb; a crushing weight that says very little…but somehow so loudly.
What exactly are you objecting to and why?
Incredible 1950s shot of 50 Park Rd. under construction. Look at the car.
