From DougSaunders.net — Citizen Jane

OCTOBER 11, 1997 It’s easy enough to find her. Just stroll westward past the bookstores and cafés of Bloor St and head north on leafy Albany Ave. Step up to the narrow red-brick house with the big front porch, and knock on the door. There will be a shuffling, and finally you will be greeted by a little old lady with an apple-doll face and a warm smile. Be careful, though: She isn’t what she seems. Read more: Citizen Jane

So good—@dougsaunders knocks on #JaneJacobs door “Her theories can alarm and offend even her most ardent supporters" https://t.co/1m9dxZO6L2

— TheSidewalkBallet (@1sidewalkballet) November 18, 2015

The conversations that formed this article were the beginning of a lot of things I pursued https://t.co/iQHhoviF5n

— Doug Saunders (@DougSaunders) November 18, 2015

@CityBuilderBook global online reading: #ArrivalCity by @DougSaunders

#ArrivalCity Tweets CityBuilderBookClub (@citybuilderbook) | Twitter

Should Mayors Run the World?

Video: I defend the idea that mayors aren't the best national leaders http://t.co/Noz76UlGO0 (re this debate http://t.co/7H2R2efMNC)

— Doug Saunders (@DougSaunders) March 14, 2014

Doug Saunders — The World Wants Vancouverism. Shouldn’t Canada?

I recently flipped through aerial photos of Canadian cities in the 1970s. One thing stood out: the parking lots. They were everywhere. Downtown Vancouver was a checkerboard of them. Post-Olympic Montreal was streaked with them. Toronto, especially south of King Street, seemed to be nothing but one giant, contiguous grey parking lot yawning across the lakefront.

In September, I returned to Canada after living abroad for almost a decade, and was struck by the disappearance of those acres of cement emptiness. Toronto’s waterfront had become a wall of elegant glass housing towers, their tens of thousands of residents turning this former lonely wasteland into a thriving human community. Montreal is seeing its first new high-rise housing boom in more than 20 years, as the postindustrial southwestern corner of the island is populated.

Doug Saunders: The world wants Vancouverism. Shouldn’t Canada? - The Globe and Mail

DOUG SAUNDERS

A Housing Crisis of 

Global Proportions

DOUG SAUNDERS | Columnist profile | E-mail

London— From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Saturday, Apr. 28, 2012

“It used to be easy for a young couple to find a place to live. But this new generation is coming of age without access to decent housing. Even if they get a good job, they’re priced out of the market, forced to live as adults with their parents, or settle with cramped living conditions.”

Does that sound familiar? It should. In recent weeks, I’ve heard people utter almost exactly these sentences about their neighbourhoods in Washington, in Beijing, in Nairobi, in London, in Mumbai and in Toronto.

If there is a global problem, this is it: There is not enough housing, to rent or to buy, at a price that people with decent but ordinary employment can afford.


A housing crisis of global proportions - The Globe and Mail

From The Globe and Mail —Ikea Begins Urban Planning Project -

HOUSING

Welcome to Ikea-land: 

Furniture giant begins urban planning project

DOUG SAUNDERS

LONDON— There are feelings you get when you enter an Ikea store. The vertiginous experience of getting lost in their craftily designed labyrinth. The surprise of wandering into something you hadn’t intended to buy. The discomfiting almost-warmth of a fake apartment. The faintly reassuring sense that your children and your car are in someone else’s hands. Then the odd realization that you’re really inside a high-security structure on the distant edge of town.

Welcome to Ikea-land: Furniture giant begins urban planning project - The Globe and Mail

ANATOMY OF A SLUM
Why Did Antwerp’s Immigrant Ghetto Get So Bad? - The Globe and Mail
DOUG SAUNDERS

Antwerp, Belgium— 

From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011 8:00AM EST

It is an early Saturday evening on Handelstraat, a busy and somewhat dishevelled boulevard in the north of this historic Belgian port city, its sidewalks lined with outdoor cafés and tea shops, fish restaurants, butchers and bakeries, all of them buzzing with customers. It's a typical European street scene, except that most of the people have olive-coloured skin, many women sport head scarves and the throaty sounds of Arabic and Turkish mix with brusque Flemish.

Read more...