Category Archives for "Architecture"

Where buildings in North America meet grade, we tend to throw away its value. How’s that? Every time you open a building at grade to the outside, every time, you add both functionality and value. It’s easier to access apartments, condos, retirement residence suites/rooms, stores, offices co-working spaces, makerspaces, you name it and it makes […]

“You can’t drink all day, unless you start in the morning,” one middle-aged female fan of the Buffalo Bills told me at their home-opener on Sunday September 16th, 2018. It was 0930 at the time, proving her point. That the Bills are important to Buffalo seems self-evident to me. But after tailgating with over 100,000 […]

Law of unintended consequences It’s one thing for a city to allow secondary dwelling units (ie, basement apartments, in-home suites or coach houses in your backyard), it’s another to provide enough parking to get cars off streets, especially in northern shelf areas and the snow-belt. If you ban frontyard parking and second driveways, this is […]

Send them to Porto, an industrial city of 1.8 million in northern Portugal to see how it works (well): More images of Porto… Note how they reach amazing densities and create animated, walkable communities with a careful integration of woonerf (living) streets): Bruce M Firestone, B Eng (civil), M Eng-Sci, PhD Real Estate Investment and […]

It’s probably not where you think it is. Most observers would assume it’s downtown where all the office skyscrapers live. That may be where the highest price per square foot or square meter of land is traded but is it the most valuable? I would argue not. Huh?

Fifteen minutes outside of Olhão, Portugal, you will find a 30-hectare olive oil plantation that combines sustainable farming practices with agritainment. Most mornings around 10 or 10:30 am, a Monterosa (favorably reviewed on TripAdvisor–62 reviews, five stars) staffer will take a group of around 30 (made up of locals on holiday and tourists) around the […]