Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 493

https://twitter.com/donnelly_b/status/1548029348199813120?s=20&t=tom32izajkBfUjQZDAs43A

The Quebec City-Windsor corridor is the most densely populated region in Canada. The last time I checked Wikipedia , it was reported to house about 18 million people, or about half of Canada's entire population.

So it is not surprising that there have been numerous high-speed rail studies for this corridor over the decades, as well as studies for other important links in Alberta (Edmonton-Calgary) and other parts of the country.

And yet, Canada remains the only G7 country without any high-speed rail. Though to be fair, the US doesn't have all that much either; certainly with respect to the size of its population.

However, there is some good news. In March of this year, the Government of Canada announced a Request for Expression of Interest related to high frequency rail service between Quebec City and Toronto. More information, over here .

But from what I have read, it'll be a faster upgraded service (~200 km/h), but not true high-speed rail (~250-300 km/h). I took the TGV from Marseille to Paris last summer, and this is how fast we were going:

If we're going to do this, let's be the absolute best in the world and not settle for mediocrity.

Even if you never experienced it yourself, we have all heard the lore of 1970s New York City. It was a raw, dangerous, and unpolished city that was simultaneously teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and providing fertile ground for artists and many other forms of expression (some suspect and some not).

Jane Jacobs is famous for saying that "new ideas often require old buildings." And the New York of this era was exactly that kind of city. Artist Donald Judd (a favorite of mine) bought his five-storey cast-iron building in Soho (on Spring Street) around this time (1968). He paid just under $70,000 .

So it is perhaps easy to romanticize this more accessible (and equitable?) version of New York. But there were many other things going on the city at this time beyond minimalist art in Soho loft buildings.

This photo essay by Joseph Rodriguez does a great job at telling some of those other stories in a decidedly humanistic way. Joseph was a New York cab driver from 1977 to 1985. And his final years, he had taken up photography and had started documenting the people and the city through his windows.

His incredible photos are also available in this book called, TAXI: Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987 .

Photo: Joseph Rodriguez

Some of you are probably shocked by this headline. But it is true. Here's the chart to prove it :

Toronto is number one. Los Angeles is number two. And New York sits just behind Winnipeg and Calgary. Huh?

The reason this is likely surprising to you is that when most people think of urban density they think of the urban core. And you are correct in thinking that the urban core of New York City is denser than the urban core of Winnipeg.

The difference here is that we are talking about "urban area" (or "population centre" in Canada). This is the continuously built up area around each major city. Think of it as the lit up area that you might see on a nighttime aerial photo.

Urban areas don't care about municipal or other jurisdictional boundaries. And they don't factor rural areas. Urban areas are a measure of continuous urbanization.

So even if you have the densest downtown on the planet, if you have a sprawling low-density urban area surrounding it, you can still end up with a relatively low overall population density. And this is precisely what is happening here with New York.

This is also why there's only so much that you can glean from a blended average like this. Because you can have very different urban forms and very different mobility splits (think New York City vs. Winnipeg), and still end up with somewhat comparable averages.

Chart: New Geography