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zoecoombes.bsky.social
Toronto, yo. Tell me about single stair buildings, skylit mezzanines, on-street trash containerization, small elevators, life / safety review, windows in bathrooms, zero lot line buildings- all the things that feel seemingly perfectly impossible. 🙏
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Posts 9 Comments 41

I'm still upset. The next time that someone asks you why Toronto can't "be like Paris, 6-8 storeys everywhere," remind them that we had a proposal for mid-rises on a pretty small amount of land and councillors lost their heads and started ranting about 50-storey towers. That's why.

submitted 19 days ago • 3 comments

I don’t like the “people are voting with their feet” line about California and NYC’s population loss/decline. People aren’t voting with their feet, they’re losing the game of musical chairs. To the extent population is falling, it’s due to shrinking household sizes, not vacancy. Demand remains high.

submitted 38 days ago • 10 comments

Cities like to brag about how many kilometres (or miles) of bike paths they have, but the number doesn’t tell you anything about quality, connectivity, or usefulness. They should instead be judged on actual bike volumes (like from bike counters) or overall cycling mode share.

submitted 51 days ago • 15 comments

Jesus Christ. Contemporary Toronto’s psycho/social molten core, right here:

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

“Punkthus”. Haha, perfect.🤘

submitted 73 days ago • 0 comments

The only applications that should be *rejected* are those that fit the context of another era. We need more and better in 2024. If you are stuck in 1910 typology you should be building in Owen Sound, or suburbia not in a city.

submitted 81 days ago • 0 comments

We’ve focused on massively subsidizing EV battery manufacturing while suppressing the obvious- unleashing construction of homes that are not supertowers at some suburban transit node, where the HVAC maintenance team needs a PhD in humidity. Revive the low tech physical world, for starters Ontario.

submitted 82 days ago • 0 comments

I keep hearing people say that America is ‘deglobalizing’ in the era of AI- but I dunno, google translate and computationally enabled investigations of obscure codes seem to be emerging- and it seems to me to be a good thing.

submitted 82 days ago • 0 comments

“…floor plan efficiency (habitable space – stuff near windows – relative to gross area) has fallen a lot.” Isn’t it more accurate to say- “floor plan *quality* in 2 and 3 bedroom apartments in north America is, really bad? Efficiency? Or Quality?

submitted 82 days ago • 0 comments