Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 405

I just learned that the US has a "National Walk to Work Day." And it happens to be today, Friday, April 7, 2023. It was started in 2004 by the federal government and the American Podiatric Medical Association -- because, you know, walking is good for your feet -- and the idea is that since so few Americans actually walk to work, we should encourage them to do it at least one day of the year. Back in 2019 , the figure was that less than 3% of Americans do it on average.

While I'm sure that there are some good intentions here, I'm guessing that the impact of this national day is probably somewhere between zero and "I guess I'll park in a farther spot at the office park today." The reality is that a day like this exists because we have spent the last 75 years, or even longer, making it exceedingly difficult to navigate our cities without a car. So it is equal to, "let me speak out of the other side of my mouth for a day."

But we also know that a real and meaningful solution is pretty simple to achieve (though clearly not easy). Build smaller streets and build more densely, especially next to transit. (Would you add anything to this?) So I think it's time for a new kind of national day. Maybe it's a day where every dense development proposal next to transit just gets automatically approved. It would be a national day for "this took too long, so here you go."

I don't know, this probably needs some work. I'm open to other ideas here.

I am positive that it had absolutely nothing to do with this post about fourplex feasibility , but I was happy to receive this notice in the mail yesterday:

It is a public meeting notice for the City of Toronto's proposed multiplex policies (defined as duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes). And as you can see from the highlighted section, they're looking, among other things, to make this form of housing exempt from floor space index maximums.

Good.

I don't like this "where applicable" business, but I'm going to conveniently ignore that for now and just say that this is positive. Removing density maximums is a mandatory ingredient for helping to make this type of housing feasible.

No FSI maximums. No DCs. And let's modernize how HST is charged on new rental housing.

There were nearly 7 billion global flight passengers last year, and these were the busiest airports :

Overall, volumes are up 54% compared to 2021 (not surprising). But we are still down about 26% compared to pre-pandemic levels (2019). The one exception -- at least when it comes to this top 10 list -- is Denver. It's right back to where it was in 2019. I wonder why.

I find this list interesting because, one the one hand, airports are what connect global cities to the rest of the world. If you're a big and important city, you need a big and important airport. But on the other hand, having a busy airport could also mean that you're a hub in the hub-and-spoke airline model.

And that's what Atlanta is. It is the world's largest airline hub and the primary hub for Delta Air Lines. Apparently , it was also the first airport to adopt the hub-and-spoke model following deregulation of the industry in the 1970s. Which could be why it's still number one on this list.