Wait, You Have a Backyard?!

Gotta say, after being handed two books with the titles The Joy Experiments: Reimagining Mid‑sized Cities to Heal Our Divided Society and Broken City: Land Speculation, Inequality, and Urban Crisis, I had to admire my editor’s effort to force me to confront the galaxy-wide spectrum of human emotion related to one of Canada’s favourite topics: Why are our cities and the state of our housing so messed up, and what can be done about it? On the one hand, “joy” (a term the authors chose long before Kamala Harris memed it). On the other hand, “broken” (used by a writer whose previous book, from late 2020, was Sick City: Disease, Race, Inequality and Urban Land). But it turns out that the authors of these very different works share a common perspective. Scott Higgins, president of HIP Developments in Cambridge, Ontario, Paul Kalbfleisch, a creative director, and Patrick Condon, a University of British Columbia professor of landscape architecture, are all...