Our Work

What if we could increase housing supply AND revitalize downtowns at the same time? Our report explores the opportunity that vacant and underutilized office space presents for increasing housing supply while making downtown districts across Canada vibrant, equitable, livable, and resilient.

Visualizing Density is a pilot project created by the Canadian Urban Institute to help planners, designers, elected officials, residents’ groups, and private sector builders design more complete communities and adapt existing ones over time. This work aims to contribute to the ongoing conversation about managing growth and building great communities in Ontario.

How do 400+ housing organizations, experts, and advocates feel about Canada’s National Housing Strategy? “What We Heard” compiles their observations and urgent suggestions to ensure the plan meets its targets and cuts homelessness in half.

This report is an invitation to discover Victoria, to dip in and out, visiting its corners and its main streets, to hear how the city is moving. It reflects what we heard and offers some of the best guidance Victoria can offer.

In Windsor, we heard diverse perspectives on what it’s like to live there, what people are concerned about, how they view the city and its institutions, and how they are coping with—and driving—change.

This technical report provides a scan of the ways eleven Canadian cities and urban regions structure their responses to affordable housing and to homelessness. Selected jurisdictions are Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Peel Region, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and the Halifax Region. This data was collected from public sources and, where possible, verified through interviews during 2021.