EQ Journal

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County of Renfrew Reborn

Here are the slides from a talk on economic renewal that I am giving for the County of Renfrew on Monday September 17, 2012 at 10 am at the Best Western Renfrew Inn and Conference Centre. The challenges facing the county are not unlike small towns elsewhere in rural Ontario and, for that matter, in [...]

Grasshoppers, Squirrels and Ants in Grassel

Occupy Grassel Movement Picking up Steam/Government Planning Action The majority of the population of Grassel is made up of Grasshoppers, Squirrels and Ants. Mensa Ants account for 1% of the population. These are the groups that populate the World of Grassel, viz: Grassel World, 100 Rows x 100 Columns 1. Grasshoppers are low wage earners [...]

Want Higher Density Communities?

Then First Build Out not Up (This is an article I wrote in 2003 concerning the policy direction of then Kanata Councillor, Peggy Feltmate who continued in a long line of municipal politicians to oppose building the City outwards in the mistaken belief that this would prevent building upwards. Her goal and mine were the [...]

Rent Curves

How Developers can Make More Money and Urban Design can Improve by Exploiting Vertical Rent Curves It has always amazed me that many developers, those veritable profit maximizers, don’t understand that neo-urbanist principles* can improve their returns while at the same time making them better city-builders and I suppose better corporate citizens. For example, most [...]

Entrepreneurship, Economic Development and Sustainability

(From a speech originally given to: Kiwanis Club of Ottawa, Friday September 12, 2003, Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel) Entrepreneurship is more than just a key engine for economic growth; it is the most efficient means of producing a sustainable community, not just in Canada but in developing nations as well. Countries that have city-state economies [...]

Ownership Distorts Value

Ownership of a thing increases its value in the mind of an owner. I see this all the time in real estate but it applies in other sectors as well. Thinking of selling your enterprise? When people are coming to this decision, they begin to think of all the work they did to create it [...]

IRR, Internal Rate of Return

Power of Leverage/Goal Setting Determining the Internal Rate of Return Probably the truest measure of a project’s rate of return is its Internal Rate of Return. The IRR is that interest rate that exactly balances the discounted value of future net cashflows with the investment required to develop the project or enterprise. The higher the [...]

Livable Cities Versus Mono Cultured Suburbs

This article was originally written for the Conference on Social Harmony, Ottawa Public Library, December 4, 2001 It wasn’t long after my wife and I and our five kids moved to a western suburb of Ottawa in the late 1980s before a group of our neighbors circulated a petition in the neighborhood. They were concerned [...]

Tree’d City

Question: How long does it take to grow a tree? Answer: As long as it takes. That is what makes trees so precious. Years ago, my wife and I bought a lot in Kanata Lakes (in the west end of Ottawa) on a golf course for our growing family. Although, we only had two children [...]

How to Write a Great Testimonial

The Difference Between your Value Proposition and Differentiated Value I just wrote a testimonial for a mortgage broker that I admire (Dilys Hagerman). Here is what I wrote about her: “There are five reasons why I believe Dilys is a great mortgage broker: first, she is très sympatico. She has a good heart and really [...]

Best Homes 4 U

Create a Virtual Homebuilder, Please In 2000, in a speech to the Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce on Parliament Hill, I tried to get Ottawa-area home builders to create a Virtual Homebuilder but failed; this is a very conservative industry. Here is what I had in mind: -put their available lots and designs online in a [...]

Property Rights

Introduction Many of us think that when we own a property, like a home for example, we own that property in an unfettered way. In many jurisdictions around the world today, individual ownership to a property is held in the form of a fee simple title to that property, which is the highest form of [...]