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Chicken and egg. The OMB takes the ultimate accountability for planning decisions away from council and this encourages council to behave in an irresponsible way. Accountability and responsibility need to go hand in hand. Council is responsible for planning, but not accountable because...

The OMB decision seems to have been based entirely on accepting the risk that the development would lead to the surrounding employment lands also turning to big box retail. This is called 'contagion'. There is a clause in the official plan that says employment lands should not be used for...

Same reaction here in Canada to the brief 'airport' visit. It's nice to know that other countries have the same childish need for American attention as us. On the other hand, its one less defining Canadian characteristic. Obama is a busy guy. His economy is falling apart, he's got 2...

140K? That's the cost of one full time person (esp. in London). This is how you critique an 8 billion dollar budget covering the salaries of tens of thousands of people? What's next? Wait, I already know - we'll hear about lavish office parties costing literally HUNDREDS of dollars! The...

People are most sensitive to criticism of beliefs that they hold without a rational basis. For most religious people, their religion is a collection of such beliefs. On the other hand, there are religious intellectuals who can argue rationally in favour of their religion and they are quite...

They've been dithering over plans for that MINOR transit improvement for 7 years, I believe. Truly an archetypal project for those who say we can't get anything done in this city.

That's hard to beat. It's clumsy, stingy, unwelcoming and bland. I worked in Frankfurt (well, Eschborn) Germany one winter. I used to ride the S-bahn from downtown Frankfurt to Eschborn each, invariably gray, morning and look across the train tracks at the Deutsche Bahn headquarters. I...

We tend to think of Toronto's issues as having Toronto specific causes: socialist council drove business away, the mayor's an idiot, the province screwed us, the feds ignore us, etc. And yet the article makes it clear that many of Toronto's major issues (loss of prominence in the local economy...

The article only discusses statistics for the overall American population. Cyclists are an insignificant proportion of that. We don't really know what the probability of serious injury/death is for the population of daily cyclists vs. the population of daily drivers. Certainly, once your bike...

I think we can too. But if our priority is free parking and the cheapest retail format possible, walkability will loose out. I would argue that walkability is loosing out in the city. We don't seem to be able to create walkable areas anymore. Where we have piecemeal redevelopment of...

Actually, we did. Miller was pretty clear in his first campaign that he was rejecting Lastman's legacy of a crumbling city that would not increase taxes. In his second campaign, he promised to keep taxes in line with inflation. That is, he promised to increase taxes. It was also clear, in...

I'm struck by the absurdity that you live in an area that was built over 100 years ago, and yet you feel entitled to all of the automotive conveniences of modern sprawl. It's like someone living in Venice and complaining about the lack of roads. Move to Vaughan or Milton or Pickering or...

I guess this is what we can expect from the Federal government's 'accelerated' infrastructure funding? More promised money failing to appear? Useless Tory dickwads.

It's undeniable - we have a reflex to regulate. I remember - decades ago - seeing a Scarborough city council session on the cable community channel. They were debating regulation for hot dog vendors: the need to map out where they would be allowed to setup their carts. Hot dog vendors...

I liked #75: Threatening to move to Canada. I heard that so many times from San Francisco liberals when I was living there. It started to annoy me because it was all just whining - never a genuine interest in Canada. American liberals can be so pathetic at times.

It reads like this is just Moscoe letting his totalitarian impulses get the better of him. I don't think it's going anywhere. This why we need term limits for councilors.

Those articles on in Sweden and Norway make me despair that I live in such complacent and self satisfied country. That's the kind of country Stephen Harper projects: no vision, no principles, just immediate self interest. Forget the future, just gimme $15 off my kid's ballet lesson and 2% off...

Yes, where is the TTC? How has the TTC progressed with its plans to redevelop the Eglinton station lands? About as well as they have with their online trip planner? Remember a few years ago, Google offered to give the TTC a trip planner for nothing but ad space? But no, the TTC decided it...

Your deposits and GICs are insured by the CDIC. Mutual Funds, including Money Market, are not. There are banks in the US which recently devalued their money market funds because those funds held short term debt of institutions that defaulted. Established wisdom is that savings accounts...

If it's nice, that performing-arts centre will be the first nice thing built on Kingston's waterfront in 100 years. Kingston has done an excellent job of almost completely blocking off its downtown waterfront with awful hotels and condos. And that approach to waterfront development continues...