Articles and Reports

In Ottawa, on a Saturday morning, the sidewalks of the Glebe are full. People are walking to coffee shops. Parents are pushing strollers. Cyclists move between local businesses. Friends stop to chat on street corners. A short distance away, someone is walking to the grocery store while another resident heads to a nearby park. The Glebe, Ottawa. The same scene plays out in Hintonburg in Ottawa, Downtown Saint John's in Newfoundland, the Plateau in Montreal, Leslieville & Rive

Across the country, governments are discussing high-speed rail, energy corridors, AI infrastructure, industrial strategy, defence production, and housing. Canada is once again entering an era of nation-scale ambition, comparable to the railway, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the national highway system, hydroelectric expansion, and post-war suburban growth. Yet while housing is often discussed alongside these mega projects, it is rarely treated with the same level of coordination,

Gas prices are on everyone’s mind these days. Supply shocks from global conflict have pushed fuel costs to levels that are forcing people to rethink how they get around, and prompting planners to revisit a long-standing question: when does a neighbourhood become dense enough to give people a real choice to rely on cars less? Source: Dawn McDonald on Unsplash The answer, it turns out, has a measurable threshold. Once residential density crosses a critical point, car dependency

When thinking about intensification in older neighbourhoods, a question that might come to mind is: “What about infrastructure capacity? Can the pipes, stormwater, and water supply systems support it?” It’s true. Most older neighbourhoods weren’t built with today’s housing needs in mind. Add a few more homes, and suddenly the pipes work harder, the showers run longer, and the stormwater has fewer places to soak in. But that’s no reason to treat infill like a threat. With the

For over a century, catalogues like Aladdin's mail-order kits and the postwar Victory Homes delivered fast, affordable and replicable homes that built entire neighbourhoods. Today's Federal Housing Catalogue revives this dream with no-cost “pre-approved” or “near permit-ready” designs to spur low-rise infill redevelopment. The appeal of catalogue housing lies in repetition. Once a design is approved, it can be built again and again, reducing costs, shortening timelines, and m

Canada’s housing crisis isn’t from a lack of ideas: It’s from a system too fragmented to make them work together. Build Canada Homes (BCH) offers strategies to address Canada’s housing crisis, with early moves in financing, modular tech, and public land use representing an important step toward real progress. But siloed solutions won’t fix this system-wide problem unless they are in lockstep with zoning and approvals. Without coordinated regulatory reform, the initiative risk

Mark Carney’s plan to double construction to nearly 500,000 homes a year is a stress test for every outdated assumption built into our housing system. Local zoning, approvals, and financing frameworks were created for a slower, conventional construction process. That model simply can’t move fast enough to meet today’s urgent demand. Volumetric modules arriving onsite for assembly. Source: Guildcrest Homes. Modular construction offers an exciting opportunity. By mass producing

Home building is a business like any other: projects won’t get built if costs are too high or returns too low. Mark Carney’s 2025 federal housing strategy brings promising support—tax incentives, mortgage programs, and plans to build on public land—but it needs a critical piece: ensuring a successful business model for low-rise, multi-unit infill. Why Low-Rise Multi-Unit Infill? Think about the people you know. How many truly want to live in mid- or high-rise buildings? Most—

Why Sprawling Homes are Shrinking Opportunities for Young People This summer has been one of the hottest on record, with cities across Canada facing an unprecedented number of days scorching above 30°C. We're passing on a world literally on fire to future generations. At the same time, our housing market is a hot mess, and the promise of homeownership has quietly slipped out of reach for young people. Instead of handing younger generations opportunity and stability, we’ve han

The other day, I was chatting with my neighbour. She glanced at the row of empty parking lots down the street, shook her head, and said, “Why don’t developers just build something there?” It’s a fair question. From the outside, the way buildings pop up (or don’t) can feel like some secretive, black‑box decision‑making process. Let’s get into the behind‑the‑scenes deal‑breakers and green lights that ultimately decide whether a lot stays empty or whether an old home is replaced

We’ve all seen the same housing story play out: A city takes bold action, upzoning to spark a wave of new infill housing. Almost immediately, NIMBY opposition erupts, taking the form of heated public meetings, petitions, and a flood of emails. In response, council retreats, scaling back the new permissions, and the housing crisis persists. In this article, we explore how Edmonton and Ottawa have approached infill, offering practical examples of what works, what sparks frictio

Canada’s housing crisis is intensifying, yet outdated zoning laws limit our ability to respond effectively. These regulations were built for an era when the nuclear family was the default, and anyone who didn’t fit that mold had limited housing options. To make real progress, we need zoning policies that reflect the reality of how Canadians live today, supporting more homes and more types of homes. Nuclear family in the 1950s by Jerome G. Rozen Right now, our current housi

As the urgency to build more homes intensifies, the instinctive response is to get people building, and build quickly. The new Liberal government has put forth “Canada’s most ambitious housing plans since WWII,” which pledges to double the pace of construction and “get the federal government back into the business of home building.” But history warns us: speed without care can backfire. In the postwar rush, Europe responded to the housing shortage by building a wave of large-

As Canada wrestles with its deepening housing crisis, the Federal Government has once again reached for catalogue housing as its silver bullet solution. The new Federal Housing Catalogue, unveiled in Spring 2025, marks a shift towards infill growth—but does it truly address the complex realities of today's development landscape? Anyone who's spent time in the trenches of real development knows the harsh truth: beautiful architectural drawings don't build homes. Developers bui