For homebuyers interested in new construction, common options range from customizing a builder’s model to working with a design-build firm to create a one-of-a-kind home. But in recent years, a quieter trend has emerged: Some buyers are skipping the blueprints and starting with a blank canvas by purchasing undeveloped, or “raw” land.While the pace of land sales has cooled slightly, a Realtor.com analysis still shows a 1.2% increase in transactions in 2023. The data coincides with broader real estate trends, from housing inventory shortages to a rising interest in multigenerational living. The top land markets, according to Realtor.com, are California, Texas, Georgia, Florida, and Colorado. “For many of my clients, [buying undeveloped land] comes down to freedom, creativity, and privacy,” says Harley Bush, a real estate agent with Caughman Realty in Midlands, South Carolina. “They want the ability to design every inch of their home, not just pick from a builder’s limited models. They want space to grow, the ability to orient their home around a lake view or sunset, or even create a small family compound.”That said, buying land to develop and build a house on comes with significantly more considerations than purchasing a home or building one in an existing neighborhood. Ahead, some tips from real estate pros on how to buy undeveloped land, including the steps you need to take and the hidden costs and hurdles that can pop up. Related StoriesIs it Worth it to Buy Undeveloped Land? Altaf Shah / 500px//Getty ImagesBuying undeveloped land is attractive to buyers who want customization that it allows for, but there is a unique set of risks and some extra due diligence that comes with going this route, says Matthew Coates, president and principal of Coates Design Architects. In addition to design freedom, those who buy raw land generally get more acreage, more mature landscaping, better views, and fewer neighbors, he points out. Buyers can also create a more sustainable and energy-efficient home, something that’s more difficult to retrofit into an old house.“The most successful buyers I deal with see it as a long-term project right from the start, rather than thinking it will be a quick endeavor,” Coates says. “They ask the right questions, assemble the correct team, and go in eyes wide open.”That long-term mindset is especially important when it comes to infrastructure. Buyers should be prepared for some logistical hurdles. The big four are water, power, sewage, and road access, says Elena Novak, the lead real estate analyst and researcher at PropertyChecker.com, a property records search site.“In rural areas, you may need to drill a well, install a septic system, and build a road to reach the site,” Novak says. “If electrical service is far away, utility companies may charge thousands to bring in a new line.” Some buyers also forget about internet and cell service, and may need to explore alternative options like satellite.How to Buy Undeveloped LandDan Reynolds Photography//Getty ImagesBecause buying undeveloped land is a more technical process than purchasing or building in a pre-existing neighborhood, you’ll want to assemble a team of professionals that can help you navigate the process. Work with a real estate agent who has experience with land deals and can help guide you through the many steps, like zoning research, soil testing, and well and septic planning, Bush recommends. Experts also recommend working closely with surveyors, builders, a real estate or land-use attorney—and, in some cases, a local planner or civil engineer—to help ensure there are no surprises leading up to closing.Here’s some key steps to take when buying undeveloped land with the intention of building a home on it, according to Novak. 1. Understand zoning and land use regulations.Start by confirming the property is zoned for residential use and investigating any limitations that could affect your building plans. “Not all residential-looking land is buildable,” Novak says. “A buyer should visit the local planning department to verify what can legally be built, whether permits are available, and if there are restrictions like easements, flood zones, or conservation overlays.” A land survey can also help you confirm property boundaries and flag any encroachments or easements.2. Coordinate soil and percolation tests.This is especially important in rural areas where a septic system may be needed.3. Consult with an architect and builder Bring in professionals to assess the land’s buildability based on slope, layout, and access. “Land might appear perfect on the surface, but hidden challenges can be expensive,” Novak says. “For example, steep slopes may require retaining walls, and wetlands or protected species on-site can limit where and how you build.”4. Have a title search and legal review performed This step helps uncover any liens, boundary disputes, or rights-of-way that could delay or derail your project, Novak says. It’s also worth noting that fraudulent listings of vacant land have become a common scam tactic. A proper title review can help protect you from being caught in one of these “title pirate” schemes.“Land deals are more technical than buying a home,” Novak says. “But with the right team, the right checks, and a bit of patience, it’s one of the most rewarding ways to create a home that truly reflects your values and lifestyle.”How to Finance Undeveloped Land RyanJLane//Getty ImagesThe most common path to financing undeveloped land is securing a lot loan, which typically requires a larger down payment and carries higher interest rates due to the lack of collateral, since nothing has been built yet.You’ll start by going through a pre-approval process, says Loren Fellows, Vice President, Mortgage Production Manager at Johnson Financial Group. The last thing you want is to sell your current home or be in the middle of drawing up plans before learning that you don’t qualify for the loan.Once you’re ready to build, your lot loan can often be rolled into the financing of the construction loan, she says. If you already own the land, you may be able to use the existing equity in your lot toward the down payment required on the construction loan.Construction financing usually happens in two phases. First, there’s short-term financing that covers the cost of building the home. During this phase, borrowers typically make interest-only payments based on the amount the builder has drawn so far. Once the home is complete and the final draw is made, the loan can then be converted into a long-term, fixed-rate mortgage.Follow House Beautiful on Instagram and TikTok.

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Summer officially starts in a few weeks, but I’ve already ordered and preordered the books that will keep me company on airplanes and trips to the beach. The first Modern CEO reading list was heavy on buzzworthy titles. Last year’s edition was a bit more dutiful, highlighting three works that explored the complexities of capitalism. This year, I’m diving into the lives of the ultrarich, whose impact on culture, society, and policy continues to rise. The Haves and the Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich by Evan Osnos Thanks in part to social media, consumption—of luxury goods, five-star resorts, rare wines, and the like—is increasingly conspicuous. One place where the ultrarich can avoid prying eyes? Aboard their superyachts. As Evan Osnos, a staff writer and podcast host at The New Yorker, writes of such floating mansions: “These shrines to excess capital exist in a conditional state of visibility: they are meant to be unmistakable to a slender stratum of society—and all but unseen by everyone else.” Osnos’s collection of essays promises to shed light on the excesses but also on how the rich amass and keep their wealth and the power that it affords. Personal History: A Memoir by Katharine Graham and Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist by Roger Lowenstein One of the biggest business stories of the year—Warren Buffett’s announcement that he will step down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway—and the ongoing struggles of The Washington Post under Jeff Bezos (a superyacht owner), are prompting me to reread two great books on my bookshelf. Personal History is Graham’s candid memoir of the personal and professional hurdles she had to overcome en route to becoming CEO of The Washington Post Company and one of the most admired executives in media. Lowenstein’s masterful portrait of Buffett is part biography, part investing tutorial. Graham and Buffett were longtime friends, and Lowenstein seems to credit Graham with leavening some of Buffett’s thrifty instincts. Stories of Buffett’s frugality—his primary residence is a home he bought in Omaha in 1958 for $31,500—will surely be a good palate cleanser after the Osnos book. Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao Hao, an Atlantic contributor, is one of the leading journalists covering artificial intelligence (AI), and her book promises to be an unflinching look at the potential and perils of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s ambitions for generative AI, which seem to mirror the “move fast and break things” ethos of many tech companies. Luckily for readers, Hao seems willing to explore the unintended consequences of unfettered AI expansion, including the environmental impacts of water- and energy-hungry data centers. So Far Gone by Jess Walter Walter’s latest book—my one fiction pick—has many of the things I love in novel: a road trip, multigenerational conflict, and a gruff former journalist as the protagonist. In So Far Gone, Rhys Kinnick sets off to rescue his daughter and grandchildren from a radical militia group. It’s a world Walter knows well: As a journalist for the Spokane, Washington Spokesman-Review, Walter covered the 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge in Northern Idaho, which is credited with fueling the anti-government militia movement. Challenging stuff, but an early review from Ann Patchett confirms why I love Walter’s writing: “Jess Walter managed to build such a warm, funny, loving novel out of so many horrible parts.” What are you reading this summer? What’s on your summer reading list? Please send the name, author, and a sentence or two about why you’d recommend it to modern leaders to stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’ll publish a bonus newsletter with reader suggestions before the official start of summer. Read more: summer reading roundup 24 books to read this summer, according to The Atlantic The Economist’s latest “beach friendly” reads The 15 books USA Today says you should read this summer

The Resilient House Multi-Generational Housing / etal.Save this picture!© Federico FarinattiSocial Housing, Residential•München, Germany Architects: etal. Area Area of this architecture project Area:  930 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2024 Photographs Photographs:Federico Farinatti Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers:  Persiana Barcelona More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Text description provided by the architects. The multi-generational house with communal forms of living was realized for and with a "Baugruppe" (a group of people who commission their own housing development, here: together with the "Mietshäuser Syndikat"- https://www.syndikat.org) in Munich, with the aim of providing long-term affordable, self-managed rental housing. Through a concept selection process, the group was selected by the city to lease the land for the next 80 years. This marks the first new construction project of the Mietshäuser Syndikat in Munich. The building is a socially subsidized residential project under the "München Modell-Genossenschaften" funding model. The cooperative planning process was facilitated by the architectural office etal. All decisions by the group were reached through a consensus-based approach.Save this picture!Save this picture!The plot, located in the southeastern part of Munich, is situated in a predominantly residential area characterized by single-family homes and terraced houses. The three-story, barrier-free building accommodates one cluster apartment on each floor, with a communal living and dining area. Each individual housing unit is equipped with its own bathroom and the possibility of a kitchenette connection. On the ground floor, a multifunctional room serves both the building's residents and the local community as a space for multifunctional purposes. The basement contains further shared spaces, including a bicycle storage area, a wood workshop, and a laundry room. The building presents a three-story facade towards the street, while the garden side features a mansard roof forming a two-story facade. The remaining roof area is extensively greened and accommodates photovoltaic panels. The building was designed as a timber construction. All above-ground floors are constructed using timber frame construction, while the elevator shafts and ceilings are made from glued laminated timber.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The roof is designed as an open rafter structure to make it visible throughout the residential spaces of the top floor. The vertically, story-wise stacked cladding made of local spruce and steel trapezoidal sheets as weather protection for the exterior wooden sunshading defines the suspended facade. To reduce costs, the external walls, insulated with cellulose and wood wool, were constructed without an additional shell for electrical wiring. The cement screed flooring was also left visible, only being sanded and oiled. The group's desire for individual rooms of approximately equal size deeply influenced the design concept. The distinctive yet simple structure offers long-term flexibility for various forms of living. Seven rooms, each approximately 18 sqm in size, are arranged around a central hallway and a bathroom core. The water connections are positioned in such a way that kitchens can be flexibly installed in six of the rooms without significant modifications.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!The walls of the rooms are designed as partition walls between apartments, providing the necessary soundproofing for possible reorganizations. So-called "breakpoints" consisting of lintels and thresholds allow for the addition or removal of rooms. These elements also make the potential for alterations visible to the residents. Functional elements, such as the wooden sunshading, allow residents to carry out alterations, maintenance, or repairs themselves through simple construction and installation techniques. The participatory process and the high level of self-involvement during construction strengthened the residents' identification with their house, ensuring that the knowledge about the building's adaptability remains accessible to future generations.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less Project locationAddress:Görzer Straße 128, 8154, Munich, GermanyLocation to be used only as a reference. It could indicate city/country but not exact address.About this officeetal.Office••• MaterialsWoodSteelMaterials and TagsPublished on May 24, 2025Cite: "The Resilient House Multi-Generational Housing / etal." 24 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030454/the-resilient-house-multi-generational-housing-on-gorzer-street-etal&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Double Villa Bukovac / njiric+ arhitektiSave this picture!© Bosnić+DorotićHouses•Zagreb, Croatia Architects: njiric+ arhitekti Area Area of this architecture project Area:  360 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2024 Photographs Photographs:Bosnić+Dorotić, Danijel Krznaric Manufacturers Brands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers:  Sika, ACO Drainage, Beton Lucko, Caparol, Ervojić, Ferolignum, Galeković PPS, Marlex, Proalarm, Spina Lead Architects: Hrvoje Njirić, Iskra Filipović More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! A Dialogue with the Urban Master Plan - The concept for the house emerges as a direct response - and critique - of the General Urban Development Plan of the City of Zagreb. The lots on which the house stands intentionally diverge from conventional urban planning guidelines regarding building density, land utilization, building height, and parking requirements. Rather than conforming to these norms, the project embraces a vision of reimagining the green foothills of Zagreb for a lower-density residential typology—favoring smaller volumes, lower structures, a gentler footprint and larger plots with a minimum area of 1200 m2. In this way, the house becomes a case study proposing a new form of urban decency for the city.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Downscaling and Typological Shift
- Instead of maximizing the permitted Gross Built Area (GBA) of 600 m² per lot, each of the two residential units contains just 180 m² of living space. Departing from the typical vertical distribution by floors, commonly used for multigenerational housing in this context, the project establishes a horizontal multigenerational living arrangement across two adjacent lots. The houses a positioned side by side rather than stacked, with a space between them acting as a cohesive, integrative communal zone.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!A Dual Character - A defining wall along the street creates a threshold, establishing a transitional zone that generates an interactive space on the opposite side. The northwest façade, facing the street, remains largely closed, shielding the interior from noise, wind and unwanted views. ensuring privacy. In contrast, the southeast side of the house opens fully toward the garden, embracing greenery, sunlight and panoramic city views.Save this picture!Architectural References and Inspiration
- The design draws from personal encounters with influential buildings within architectural discourse. Villa Barbaro by Andrea Palladio inspired the disciplined symmetry of the house, while the Eames House/Studio influenced the concept of a unifying atrium and spatial duality. Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia campus influenced the relationship to the terrain and the classical rhythm of the façades. The LA Case Study Houses provided reference points in tems of construction techniques methods and dynamic relationship with the urban landscape, particularly panoramic vistas toward the city.Save this picture!Save this picture!Materiality and Construction
- The house's façades are defined by their contrasting material expressions: the ground floor, in contact with terrain, adopts an earthy, robust presence, constructed with brick to express weight and permanence. In contrast, the upper floor, in dialogue with the sky, is lighter, more transparent and reflective. It features unconventional materials, including repurposed cable tray mesh, which lends the façade a subtle, ephemeral quality.Save this picture!The Significance of Section
- The natural slope of the site allows direct access from the street into the underground garage, while the ground floor opens seamlessly into the garden. The double wall of the atrium, positioned between the two homes, functions not only as a spatial divider, but also as a practical niche housing garden tools, a summer kitchen and a barbecue area, making it a central element for family gatherings. The garage beneath the house is designed not only for parking but also doubles as a party venue and an exhibition space for heavy-duty artworks displayed in lightboxes and on metal panels.Save this picture!Energy Efficiency and Sustainability
- The house functions as a solar pavilion, with minimal energy demands in winter, while in summer, it utilizes passive shading systems such as retractable awnings, regulating interior temperatures during summer months.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less About this officenjiric+ arhitektiOffice••• MaterialsMaterials and TagsPublished on May 16, 2025Cite: "Double Villa Bukovac / njiric+ arhitekti" 16 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030126/double-villa-bukovac-njiric-plus-arhitekti&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

OpinionMay 14, 20255 min readFederal Budget Cuts Would Sabotage NASA’s Plans to Find Alien LifeNASA’s astrobiology ambitions are at risk of collapsing under the White House’s proposed budget. But your voice can make a differenceBy Michael L. Wong An artist’s illustration of a potentially habitable exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf star. NASA's Goddard Space Flight CenterWe’ve never been so close to discovering life beyond Earth. Our generation could be the one that finds it—provided two essential ingredients exist. First, that there’s life out there. Second, that we’re willing to look.Alien life’s existence is outside our control, but the universe seems to encourage our attention. Many people rest their optimism about alien life on the remarkable fact that our cosmos is brimming with planetary possibilities. To date, we’ve discovered nearly 6,000 exoplanets, most of them around only the nearest of the Milky Way’s hundreds of billions of stars. That means all our astonishingly successful planet-hunting surveys have studied just a mere teardrop of a vast cosmic sea—and implies there are at least as many planets as stars in our galaxy alone, plus some 1025 worlds in the rest of the observable universe. Chances are we’re not alone—so long as the probability that planets spring forth life is not astronomically miniscule.Discovering alien life, on the other hand, rests squarely on us. For the first time in human history, we can meaningfully answer once-timeless questions. Countless generations before us could only ask “Are we alone?” as passive stargazers. Today our rockets reliably reach otherworldly destinations, our robotic emissaries yield transformative knowledge about our planetary neighbors, and our telescopes gaze ever farther into the heavens, revealing the subtle beauty of the cosmos.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.NASA has led the way on this work, but it now faces an existential threat in the form of short-sighted budget cuts proposed by the White House. If passed into law by Congress, these cuts would axe critical space missions, gut NASA’s workforce, and abandon one of the most captivating quests in all of science. Additional sweeping cuts planned for the National Science Foundation would be similarly ruinous for ground-based astronomy and a host of other endeavors that support NASA’s work at the high frontier.Led by NASA, for more than a half-century the U.S. has been building toward a golden age of astrobiology, a field of research the space agency helped invent. The groundwork was laid on Mars, beginning with the Viking missions of the 1970s and continuing into today, where the agency has “followed the water” to dried-up lakebeds. In 2014 NASA’s Curiosity rover uncovered clues pointing to an ancient, life-friendly Mars, and more recently NASA’s Perseverance rover has been caching promising rock samples for return to Earth. Researchers eagerly await their arrival, because if Mars ever did harbor life, then some of Perseverance’s specimens may well contain some sort of Martian fossils.Besides our own familiar Earth, Mars isn’t the only promising incubator of life around the sun. In the outer solar system, NASA’s Galileo probe and Cassini orbiter lifted the icy veils of Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus, respectively. Beneath thick shells of ice, both moons harbor global subsurface oceans, which could be teeming with bacterial or even macroscopic denizens. NASA’s Clipper spacecraft launched in 2024 and is hurtling toward Europa, where it will make close flybys of the moon to assess its habitability. The agency has developed concepts for follow-on missions to land on both worlds and taste the chilly chemistry there for the telltale signs of life.Every organism on Earth requires liquid water, but perhaps that’s not a strict requirement elsewhere. Astrobiologists speculate about “weird life” in Venus’s sulfuric acid clouds and in the liquid hydrocarbon seas of Saturn’s frigid moon Titan. NASA plans to visit each of these worlds with state-of-the-art spacecraft—two to Venus and one to Titan—in the 2030s.And then there’s the great expanse of exoplanets. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has furnished unprecedented data about exoplanet atmospheres, most of them hot and puffy—the easiest to observe. But the most alluring exoplanets for astrobiologists—those the size and temperature of Earth—are just beyond our sight. Currently, teams of scientists are conceptualizing NASA’s next great eye in space, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, whose mission is as its name suggests: to image and examine dozens of notionally Earth-like planets for the global exhalations of alien biospheres.Taken together, these recent developments mean we could be at the doorstep of the next Copernican revolution, the next paradigm shift, the next epoch of human discovery.But the president’s recently proposed budget for the 2026 federal fiscal year strikes NASA’s Science Mission Directorate with a devastating 47 percent cut. Many of the boldest, most transformative space missions will be on the chopping block if the proposal passes. It specifically defunds the Mars Sample Return project, a cancellation that would squander billions of dollars and decades of investment. It also cancels the upcoming missions to Venus, which would investigate how the only other Earth-sized planet in our solar system turned out so drastically different from our own. And it scraps the launch of the already-built Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, a project which among other things is a proving ground for imaging technologies essential to future exoplanet investigations; the loss of Roman would render prospects for the Habitable Worlds Observatory perilously dim. Also at grave risk are funding sources for brilliant early-career scientists working to make astrobiology’s future as bright as can be.NASA simply cannot continue its trend of breakthrough discoveries on only half its present budget. As talent departs the U.S. and organizational memory fades, brain drain will doom its global leadership in space science in what experts have called an “extinction-level event.”And because there is no profit-driven incentive for discovering life on a distant world, corporate entities cannot and will not fill NASA’s void. SpaceX is great at building rockets, not robotic geologists on wheels. Commercial rocket companies hone their success by reliably building the same product over and over again, but most every NASA exploration mission must do something new.A mentor of mine once described astrobiology as “a gateway drug to science.” Astrobiology invites anyone—regardless of age or background—to cultivate curiosity, creativity, humility and patience. It motivates collaboration across fields and across borders. Even if we never discover life beyond Earth, astrobiology would still offer humanity a profound gift, allowing us to marvel as never before at our existence on this lonely and precious blue-green dot.So, we must choose to do astrobiology. That means you, dear reader, have the power to influence this field’s fate. Whether through contacting elected officials, informing your friends and family about NASA’s precarious position, or simply sharing your love for space exploration, your actions can make a difference in humanity’s search for life in the universe.In the best of times, we have only a few opportunities per generation to launch revolutionary space missions, let alone ones that could forever change our sense of place in the cosmos—and perhaps even our destiny. Now we have just a fleeting moment to prevent a multigenerational disaster. If we fail, we’ll lose the future of astrobiology and all the insight it could bring.Worst of all, we wouldn’t even know what we’d be missing.This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are solely their own and not those of any organization they are affiliated with or necessarily those of Scientific American.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.A surprisingly endearing sitcom about an American football coach moving to the U.K. to coach the other kind of football, Ted Lasso was Apple TV+'s first breakout hit, but it's long over by this point. While few of their other shows have commanded even a fraction of the zeitgeist, over the past few years Apple's streaming service has built a small but solid library of other original series that are at least interesting or pretty good, and occasionally more. Apple's offerings still can’t quite compare to what you’ll find on Netflix or Hulu, at least in terms of volume, but there’s enough money in the tech company's bank account that they’ve shown a willingness to experiment, particularly when it comes to high-cost genres like science fiction, and that’s not a bad thing. Here are 40 of Apple’s best original shows so far. I'm highlighting the ones you may not have binged yet, so Ted Lasso isn’t on the list—but consider him mentioned here. Apple TV+ $9.99 Per Month at AppleTV+ Learn More Learn More $9.99 Per Month at AppleTV+ Dark Matter (2024 – , renewed for a second season) Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, and Alice Braga star in this high-concept sci-fi thriller from the novel by Blake Crouch (he's also the showrunner). Edgerton plays Jason Dessen, a former physicist living a fairly decent life with his wife, Daniela (Connelly) in Chicago when he's drugged and kidnapped before waking up in a Chicago where he'd never married Daniela. It seems that a version of himself invented a device allowing for travel between infinite alternate universes—and that version of Jason wants the life that our Jason has, and who's now on a quest to make his way home. You can stream Dark Matter here. Foundation (2021 —, renewed for a third season) Foundation frequently misses the point of its source material (a series of influential Isaac Asimov novels), but that doesn’t make it any less of an impressively realized science-fiction epic on its own terms. Lou Llobel and Lee Pace lead the centuries-spanning series that sees a group of scholars and rebels working to bring down a galactic empire in order to save it (in the very, very long run). The first season was pretty great, the second season was even better, and ads for the third season look promising. You can stream Foundation here. Dope Thief (2025, miniseries) Ray and Manny (Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura) are a couple of childhood friends from Philly who've been supporting themselves by impersonating DEA agents and robbing low-level stash houses in the inner city. Manny's looking to move on while Ray's eccentric mother, Theresa (Kate Mulgrew, clearly having a great time) needs a lot of money fast. And so, as you've probably guessed, we're about to enter "one last big score" plot territory, which, in this case, involves robbing a meth lab that is, it turns out, part of a large-scale operation that the real DEA has in its sights. The setup is nothing new, but everyone here is at the top of their game. You can stream Dope Thief here.Slow Horses (2022 – , renewed for fifth and sixth seasons) With nods to the great spy dramas of John le Carré, Slow Horses updates the setting without losing either the thrills or the style of a time-honored genre. The “Slow Horses” of the title is a group of has-been MI5 agents—they’ve all made messes of significant jobs, but are still seen as having some use, if only in dull administrative tasks. Naturally, the group (lead by Gary Oldman and Jack Lowden, with their spymaster played by Kristin Scott Thomas) finds themselves in deeper waters than anyone had expected of them. The show has a sly sense of humor, and balances a cynical tone with a conviction that redemption is more than possible (it's also probably my personal favorite Apple TV+ show). You can stream Slow Horses here.Sugar (2024 – , renewed for a second season) Sugar doesn't try to obscure or downplay its reliance on old-school Hollywood noir tropes: Its characters are driven to emulate the style of antiheroes of old, and clips from old movies even play alongside the action as a means of driving the point home. The central mystery sees detective John Sugar (Colin Farrell) summoned to the mansion of a rich movie producer (James Cromwell), whose granddaughter has gone missing. The first few episodes are intriguing, and  the premise is unique in that Sugar is kind of an anti-anti-hero—he's an actual nice guy in a world where he's expected to play the tough guy. The sixth episode, though, drops an absolutely wild, love-it-or-hate it plot twist that drives the remaining episode and, presumably, the forthcoming second season. The series comes from writer Mark Protosevich (The Cell, I Am Legend) and smartly directed by City of God's Fernando Meirelles, so it has style to spare. You can stream Sugar here. Pachinko (2022 – , third season renewal pending) Pachinko is technically an American production, but its largely South Korean cast and crew place it in very much in the wheelhouse of the K-dramas that have found success in the U.S. in recent years. The multigenerational saga follows one woman (Youn Yuh-jung and Kim Min-ha) and her family from the Japanese occupation of Korea through the decades of the Korean diaspora. It’s as personal as it is epic, with better location cinematography than most movies—and it’s got an all-time great opening credits sequence. You can stream Pachinko here.Palm Royale (2024 – , renewed for a second season) Kristen Wiig stars here as Maxine Dellacorte-Simmons, an endlessly inventive social climber in 1969 Palm Beach, Florida who sets out on a road to the top of the local hierarchy when she manages to nab herself a membership in the exclusive private club of the title. It's soapy and silly and occasionally over the top—which all just means that it's thoroughly entertaining and relatively stress-free. The cast here is among the best that streaming money can buy: Alongside Wiig, we get Laura Dern as a helpful hippie, Allison Janney as a demanding matriarch, Carol Burnett as mysterious (and initially comatose) local royalty, and Ricky Martin as the sexy bartender (with Bruce Dern, Julia Duffy, and Mindy Cohn among the recurring cast). You can stream Palm Royale here. Bad Sisters (2022 – , third season renewal pending) The comedy/murder mystery genre is having a moment, with Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, Apple’s own The Afterparty (to which I’ll return later in this list), and the Knives Out movies all doing brisk business. Bad Sisters is in that same category, but set apart in interesting (and significant) ways. The Dublin setting and the dark comedy stand out, and the show is as much about solving the core murder as it is about rooting for the killer, whomever they may be. Among the title sisters, one has a particularly odious husband. When he turns up dead, each of the sisters (one played by Catastrophe's Sharon Horgan, who co-created) is revealed to have had good reason for doing the job. You can stream Bad Sisters here. Severance (2022 – , renewed for a third season) Late-stage capitalism encourages “work-life balance” while simultaneously making it impossible, and then makes us feel guilty about it. In Severance, biotechnology giant Lumon Industries has a solution: They split your consciousness between your life at work and your life outside of it. For our lead characters (played by Adam Scott, Patricia Arquette, Britt Lower, and more) the work- and home-based consciousnesses grow apart to the point that they become entirely different people. The show blends the conventions of office-based dark comedies with movies like Brazil and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and dives into the dangers of modern American-style totalitarian capitalism while providing a reminder that technology often promises to improve our lives while only making them worse. You can stream Severance here.The Buccaneers (2023 – , renewed for a second season) The sassy, revisionist period drama (think Bridgerton) is having a heyday and, with the success of HBO's The Gilded Age (itself an Edith Wharton pastiche), it's only natural that things have come back around to the source—in this case, an unfinished Wharton novel telling the story of five American nouveau riche daughters being shuffled off to Europe to unite (in marriage) their family's ready cash with old European titles and lands. It's a fun, women-led show that splits the difference between The Gilded Age's relative faithfulness to history and Bridgerton's joyful anachronisms. You can stream The Buccaneers here. Hijack (2023 – , renewed for a second season) This solid action thriller stars Idris Elba as a business negotiator who finds himself among the passengers on a flight from London to Dubai that's been, well, hijacked. He's the only one onboard with a shot at saving himself and the other passengers, but will have to use his experience, brains, and brawn to do it. The show takes place in real time, more or less, adding to the suspense, and also making the second-season pickup slightly confusing. I'm not sure how a followup series will work, but if 24 could run for nine seasons, I'm sure that Elba's Sam Nelson can sustain at least a couple more. You can stream Hijack here. For All Mankind (2019 — , renewed for fifth season) I love a high concept—but execution is what counts, and For All Mankind makes good on its premise, thanks in large part to the involvement of writer/co-creator Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica). The show runs with a tantalizing "what if?": What if Soviet space pioneer Sergei Korolev hadn’t died prematurely in 1966 and instead helped bring his country’s space program to full flower, extending the space race indefinitely? If we’d been forced to continue and expand upon the space program, our past (and present) would look quite different, and this show dramatically imagines how that might go, jumping across decades to reveal our alternate past (and future). A spin-off involving a Soviet space program, Star City, is in the works. You can stream For All Mankind here. Dickinson (2019 – 2021, two seasons) Dickinson is so scrupulously weird that it gets points just for being unexpected. The most surprising thing about it, though, is that it's not merely idiosyncratic—it’s good. The show imagines the life of 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson, with the conceit that she didn’t fit especially well in her own time, a fact the show reflects through the casual use of anachronisms and more modern sensibilities. Think Netflix’s Bridgerton or Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette for similar vibes—but neither of those is about a person nearly as haunting or mysterious as Dickinson. Bonus: It’s also beautifully filmed and acted. You can stream Dickinson here.Visible: Out on Television (2020, miniseries) An effective update to The Celluloid Closet that takes us up to date for the Peak TV age, Visible brings that sweet Apple money to bear in gathering an impressive assortment of talking heads. Going back to the earliest days of television, when queer characters and themes were either ignored, heavily coded, or mocked, the docuseries traces the ups and downs of queer representation on TV right up until the present moment. It entertainingly documents how far we’ve come, and makes clear there’s still work to do. You can stream Visible here. Manhunt (2024, miniseries) Based on James L. Swanson’s book Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, Manhunt reenacts (in detail) not just the night of Abraham Lincoln's assassination by John Wilkes Booth (Anthony Boyle), but the hours, months, and years that followed, examining the political and cultural fallout at the dawn of Reconstruction. The surprising star here is Tobias Menzies' Edwin Stanton, the war secretary who fought to preserve Lincoln's legacy, with mixed results. The show also offers strong parallels, intentional or not, between Booth—violently racist, bombastic, and vainglorious while also somehow a perpetual victim—and modern-day political figures with whom you might be familiar. You can stream Manhunt here. The Last Thing He Told Me (2023 – , renewed for a second season) Critics and audiences are divided over The Last Thing He Told Me, the crime drama earning only mixed reviews while also ranking as the streamer's most watched limited series ever. Based on the bestseller by Laura Dave, the popularity of the book might have something to do with that, as might Jennifer Garner's sensitive performance. While it scored those impressive numbers as a limited series, the series has subsequently been renewed for a new season, to be based on a forthcoming sequel novel, currently scheduled for release in 2025. Co-starring Angourie Rice, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and David Morse, the series finds Garner's character trying to forge a bond with her stepdaughter in order to help solve the mystery of her missing husband. You can stream The Last Thing He Told Me here.Monarch: Legacy of Monsters (2023 – , renewed for a second season) Monarch does a surprisingly effective job of telling its own story within the universe of all those American Godzilla movies of the past decade or so, bringing those big stories back down to Earth while building out an entire monster-verse mythology in the process. Anna Sawai stars as a young teacher searching for her father, missing since Godzilla's attack on San Francisco (depicted in the 2014 film), and finds herself drawn into the past and present of a secret government agency. Wyatt and Kurt Russell play the past and present incarnations of the Army colonel who helped set the whole thing in motion. You can stream Monarch here.See (2019 — 2022, three seasons) The pitch meeting for this must’ve been a hoot. “We’ll do ‘The Country of the Blind’—but, you know, in the future!” Just as in that H.G. Wells story, we learn here that being one of the only sighted people among the blind doesn’t necessarily grant you any special privileges. A few centuries from now, humans have lost their senses of sight, and the few born sighted are hunted and despised. As high concepts go, it’s a little goofy (and the reviews have been a little rough), but the beautifully produced and entertaining show blends Game of Thrones vibes with dystopian sci-fi, and boasts Jason Momoa and the always brilliant Alfre Woodard. You can stream See here.Central Park (2020 — 2022, three seasons) Central Park, from creators Loren Bouchard, Josh Gad, and Nora Smith, retains much of the look and feel of Bouchard’s beloved (and long-running) Bob’s Burgers, which is probably enough of a recommendation to get many adult-leaning cartoon fans onboard. It differs, though, in its ambition: Unlike Bob’s, this show invests more heavily in serialization to tell the story of a park manager fighting to save the titular Central Park from greedy developers. It’s also a true musical, incorporating big numbers into each and every episode. (The more sporadic musical numbers in Bob’s Burgers are always the best part, so upping that quotient here is all to the good.) You can stream Central Park here.Silo (2023 —, renewed for third and fourth seasons) The casts of many of these shows are pretty extraordinary, but this one is at least a small step above: Rebecca Ferguson, Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, Common, and Tim Robbins are all included in the main cast. The science fiction series, based on High Howey’s self-published sensation Wool, is set in a post-apocalyptic future; the show’s characters live in the 144-story silo of the title, a sealed environment sustaining (and imprisoning?) the last dregs of humanity. Societal politics blend with elements of mystery (nothing in the silo is quite what it seems) in an impressively conceived dystopia; the series is set to conclude, but not before two further seasons are produced. You can stream Silo here. Schmigadoon! (2021 — 2023) There’s a big theater-kid vibe to Schmigadoon, no question, with references and in-jokes not everyone is going to get. I’m not sure it matters. When Melissa (Cecily Strong) and Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) set out on a camping trip to strengthen their relationship, they instead stumble into the title town, where everyone sings their feelings, just like characters in a... you get it. The only way out? True love—which Melissa and Josh thought they already shared, but maybe not so much. It’s both a tribute to classic musicals and a satire of the common tropes and the more problematic aspects of those old productions. The second season switches location and eras to “Schmicago,” taking on the darker-tinged musicals of the 1970s. You can stream Schmigadoon here. The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin (2024, one season) The Great British Bake Off's Noel Fielding stars in this wildly ahistorical British import involving the real-life highwayman of the title, who lived in the mid-1700s. Truth and legend are impossible to sort out when it comes to Turpin, so the show defers to the legend, adding a bunch of inspired silliness to the mix. It's not quite Our Flag Means Death, but it takes a similarly loose and fun approach to history. The well-received show shut down for good during production of a second season, under slightly mysterious circumstances, but the existing season is still worth a run. You can stream Dick Turpin here.Masters of the Air (2024, miniseries) A spiritual successor and companion to earlier WWII minis Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), Masters of the Air focuses on the “Bloody Hundredth,” the 100th Bomb Group—pilots tasked with bombing targets inside German-occupied Europe. Austin Butler (Elvis), Barry Keoghan (Saltburn), and Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who) are part of the impressive ensemble. You can stream Masters of the Air here.Constellation (2024 – ) Severance, Foundation, For All Mankind, and Silo have established Apple TV+ as a home for high-concept, big-ish budget science fiction. Which is cool, given that even the SyFy channel is't filling that niche anymore. This one finds astronaut Noomi Rapace returning to Earth after an accident, and discovering that the reality she's returned to isn't quite the same as the one she left behind. You can stream Constellation here.Criminal Record ( 2024 – , renewed for a second season) The apparently IRL-delightful Peter Capaldi is one of our most effortlessly menacing actors, imbuing even The Doctor with an unpredictable inscrutability, so it's no surprise that he excels at playing a hardened police detective with a checkered past. He's joined here by Cush Jumbo's June Lenker, a by-the-book and far more idealistic detective who's as suspicious of Capaldi's DCI Hegarty as she is of the facts involving the cold case the pair are investigating. Think of them like a twisted version of Mulder and Scully (minus the aliens, of course). You can stream Criminal Record here.The Morning Show (2019 — , renewed for a fourth season) Less high-concept than some of Apple’s other originals, The Morning Show still serves as a solid drama led by an out-of-character performance from Jennifer Aniston. She plays Alex Levy, co-host of a major network morning show. “Co-host,” that is, until Mitch (Steve Carrell), with whom she’s worked for 15 years, is fired due to sexual misconduct shortly before the show goes on the air one morning (a la Matt Lauer), leaving Alex to explain the situation. The resulting shake-ups and power grabs (including by an up-and-comer played by Reese Witherspoon; the star power in this thing!) were inspired by Brian Stelter’s real-life book Top of the Morning, about the (perhaps) surprisingly dramatic and cutthroat world of morning television, so with the TV-ready drama comes an air of verisimilitude. You can stream The Morning Show here. The Me That You Can’t See (2021, miniseries) An Oprah Winfrey/Prince Harry co-production might inspire understandable cynicism, but the effort here is worthwhile: Approaching both stars and non-celebrities, the miniseries explores issues related to mental health, particularly the stigma and difficulties in finding care. The celebs are all impressively frank, and the less-famous individuals come from a wide array of backgrounds and face a diverse set of issues. Naturally, the presentation is highly polished, but the mere fact that the streamer is putting its money into expanding conversations about mental illness make it worth checking out. You can stream The Me That You Can't See here.Truth Be Told (2019 — 2023, three seasons) Honestly, they had me at Octavia Spencer. It’s not just her, though: The cast here is uniformly first-rate (Lizzy Caplan, Aaron Paul, Mekhi Phifer, and Kate Hudson also star). The premise is also solid, and timely: Spencer plays a true-crime podcaster who condemned a now-convicted killer with her reporting, but who now learns that she might have gotten some crucial details wrong. The execution stumbles a bit in the first season, but picks up in the second and into its concluding third. You can stream Truth Be Told here.The Afterparty (2022 — 2023, two seasons) At a high school reunion afterparty, a murder occurs that, naturally, sets the series in motion—a scenario rife with possibilities, given the dramas that swirl around any real-life reunion. The spin here on the comedy murder mystery is its Rashomon-like structure: Each episode explores the night from the POV of one of the participants, shifting genre styles to suit the character in question. Tiffany Haddish and Sam Richardson are great as the leads. You can stream The Afterparty here.Little America (2020 — 2022, two seasons) With a sense of humor, the anthology Little America dramatizes a series of Epic Magazine pieces telling the stories of immigrants in America. Each 30-minute episode plays like a movie in miniature, and each is packed with emotion—sometimes heartbreak, often joy. Seriously, they cram a lot of heart into these little episodes. Each one ends with a tag about the real people on which it is based, which serves to ground the emotion in reality. You can stream Little America here.Home Before Dark (2020 — 2021, two seasons) I love, love, love that this one’s based on a true story. Home Before Dark dramatizes the story of Hilde Lysiak, award-winning crime reporter and the youngest member of the Society of Professional Journalists, who began her career at age nine (she’s now a whopping 14). Here she’s fictionalized as Hilde Lisko (Brooklynn Prince), who moves with her mother to a Twin Peaks-esque coastal town where she slowly, doggedly, uncovers the truth behind a long-forgotten cold case. You can stream Home Before Dark here.Servant (2019 — 2023, four seasons) Creepy nanny meets creepy doll in this utterly strange psychological thriller, co-executive-produced by the occasionally brilliant but notoriously inconsistent M. Night Shyamalan (the show was created by Tony Basgallop). The horror here isn’t really overt, but the show plays some interesting and disturbing games centered on the relationship of the lead couple, played by Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell. Following the death of their 13-week-old son, the pair acquires a lifelike doll as a therapeutic tool. Naturally, something’s not quite right with the doll (or Dorothy’s attachment to it), and something’s definitely not right about the young live-in nanny who they hire (rich people, amirite?) to take care of fake baby Jericho. You can stream Servant here.Ghostwriter (2019 — 2022, three seasons) This new, updated Ghostwriter goes in a different direction than the ‘90s-era original, focusing a little bit less on the mystery elements of the stories and more on reading fundamentals. Operating out of a bookstore belonging to the grandfather of two of the main characters, four kids are brought together by a ghost who brings characters from classic and modern literature to life, with CGI that’s sometimes great —and sometimes less so. Where the show really shines is in its depiction of kids who are believably smart and savvy, unlike an awful lot of shows that can’t seem to tell the difference between a 12-year-old and a fivr-year-old. It’s definitely for kids, but that’s to its credit. You can stream Ghostwriter here.Defending Jacob (2020, miniseries) Based on the book by William Landay, this one’s premise is clever, and harrowing: In an upper-class Massachusetts suburb, Andy (Chris Evans) and Laurie (Michelle Dockery) learn that a classmate of their 14-year-old son has been murdered in a local park. What happens next is even more shocking: their son is arrested for the murder. The show sometimes leans unnecessarily into melodrama, but the performances are solid and the central mystery is so compelling, it’s hard not to get drawn in. You can stream Defending Jacob here.Black Bird (2022, miniseries) Novelist Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River) developed the based-on-a-true-story miniseries, and his touch is evident if you’re familiar with his books, or with the movies they’ve inspired. Taron Egerton plays Jimmy Keene, a former football star given a 10-year prison sentence for drug dealing. Before long, he’s given another shot: His sentence will be erased if he transfers to a much higher security prison for the criminally insane and gathers evidence against a suspected serial killer incarcerated there. That’s a killer premise, and Egerton is great here. You can stream Black Bird here.Trying (2020 — , renewed for fifth season) After having difficulty conceiving a child, Nikki and Jason begin the adoption process, and find themselves in a bind. Were they able to conceive, there’d be no other qualifications necessary to have a baby. Adoption, on the other hand, is long process full of screenings, classes, paperwork, home visits, and money. This is one of those rare comedies that’s both genuinely funny and gentle—the show even revisits all of its characters at the end of each episode so that we know how everyone has made out. You can stream Trying here. Mythic Quest (2020 — 2025, four seasons) It might sound a little (or a lot) niche, but we’ve seen enough headlines about the working conditions at many video game production houses to understand why a workplace comedy set against such a backdrop would make for effectively dark and juicy comedy. Charlotte Nicdao and Rob McElhenney are the leads here, as a brilliant and driven workaholic and an unsociable egomaniac respectively, and the chemistry between their two characters give the show more than enough spark. There's also a four episode spin-off: Side Quest. You can stream Mythic Quest here. Acapulco (2021 – , renewed for a fourth season) Inspired by the 2017 film How to Be a Latin Lover, the ambitious English/Spanish-language comedy spans generations in telling the story of Maximo Gallardo Ramos (Eugenio Derbez), a Malibu mogul who began life as a pool boy at a fancy resort hotel. The sweet, sun-drenched show has a gorgeously retro visual style. You can stream Acapulco here. Disclaimer (2024, miniseries) Created, written, and directed by four-time Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón, Disclaimer has as impressive a pedigree as you could hope for on streaming TV: It stars Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline (both, incidentally, Oscar winners), alongside Sacha Baron Cohen and Leila George. Blanchett plays Catherine Ravenscroft, an award-winning journalist who receives a mysterious manuscript—it's a novel in which she, herself, appears to be the main character, and which reveals secrets of her past that she thought were long buried. Cuarón moves deliberately through a story that takes its time, even as each episode shifts through points of view and timelines to offer up consistent and impressive surprises. You can stream Disclaimer here. The Studio (2025 – , renewed for a second season) Industry exec Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) loves movies, and when he signs on for a high-profile role at the fictional Continental Studios, he's feeling like his time has come, like he can make a real difference in fixing an increasingly IP-driven movie industry. That is, until about a minute into his new job when the CEO (Bryan Cranston) lets him know that his first job will be marketing Kool-Aid Man, a thin attempt to rip off the success of Barbie. Hollywood satires of yore have focused on the industry as one that eats people up and spits them out, but the spin here is that Remick yearns for those days. This very funny, often intentionally cringe, comedy finds Hollywood in a state of decline and focuses on a man who'd love nothing more than to rebuild the movie industry of old. Catherine O'Hara, Ike Barinholtz, Chase Sui Wonders (Bodies Bodies Bodies), and Kathryn Hahn also star, and the show boasts a seemingly endless list of celebrity cameos. You can stream The Studio here.

Both Canada and the United States have deep-seated affordability problems, but only the former is doing anything substantial about it. Forthcoming housing cooperatives at 2444 Eglinton Avenue in Toronto, and in Upper Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia, are helping put a dent in Canada’s affordable housing shortage. Vancouver’s home prices today are close to $1 million, and rental prices in Toronto are equally astronomical. To buck this trend, Canada’s Co-operative Housing Development Program (CHDP) unlocked $1.5 billion in federal financing to support new cooperative housing. This is all happening as part of Canada’s National Housing Strategy, a $115 billion plan to boost affordability.  “In Toronto, the housing crisis is as severe as it’s ever been,” UT Daniels professor Keisha St. Louis-McBurnie, a Toronto-based urban planner at Monumental, told AN.  “We’ve seen real growth in housing encampments, especially during COVID-19,” St. Louis-McBurnie said. “There’s been very limited new transitional and supportive housing across [Toronto]. Households are getting priced out of the market, including professional middle-income ones. Folks who are low-income that require the most housing support are not able to access new affordable housing, especially in consideration to what’s getting built in Toronto.” A Brutalist housing co-op on Eglinton Avenue in Toronto (Ken Lund/Flickr/CC BY 2.0) Claire Weisz’s office, WXY, as of this year has locations in New York and Toronto. Weisz recently spoke at the Canadian Club Toronto, in a round table moderated by Alex Bozikovic, about urbanism. “Huge troves of affordable housing in New York has, in recent years, been taken from people who can’t afford down payments on co-ops,” Weisz told AN. “We’ve sacrificed so much. Some organizations have tried to stop this, but without policy support from the city, it’s really in vain.” “My big worry is that right now, like Toronto, New York is starting to be like the rest of the U.S. and rely on developer-led for-profits, versus not-for-profits,” Weisz added. “There needs to be a reawakening of not-for-profit development coalitions.” “The Co-operative Housing Sector is Booming” The Canadian National Housing Strategy’s longterm goal is to build 156,000 affordable units and repair over 298,000 existing ones. Housing cooperatives are getting built all over Canada as part of the program, from British Columbia, Ontario, and Nova Scotia. Planning departments are prioritizing the needs of First Nations communities and Black Canadians to help rectify past injustices. This is happening as rent prices skyrocket, and Toronto’s skyline is populated with new landmarks by Frank Gehry, Studio Gang, BIG, and others. Cooperative housing was first built in Canada in the 1930s. Regent Park in Toronto was the country’s first public housing campus, finished in 1949. This legacy continued through the 1960s and ’70s, when radical co-ops like Rochdale College and Neill-Wycik were built for University of Toronto students. Willow Park Housing Co-op (1966) went up in Winnipeg thanks to CHF Canada, a joint initiative by the Canadian Labour Congress and the Co-operative Union of Canada. The New Democratic Party (NDP) constructed abundant cooperative housing in Vancouver. Milton Park got built in Montreal in the 1980s. Between 1973 and 1993, CHF Canada built a total 92,000 cooperatively-owned units. (This history was captured by Leslie Coles in Under Construction: A History of Co-operative Housing in Canada.) All this momentum was brought to a halt during successive Brian Mulroney and Jean Chrétien Premierships, however, when government support for supportive housing was cut, much like what was happening in the U.S. at that time under the Clinton administration with the Faircloth Amendment. Regent Park’s original architecture was demolished in 2005 as part of the Regent Park Revitalization Plan, and replaced with a private, mixed-income community. (Kevin Costain/Wikimedia Commons /CC BY 2.0) A regime of state-imposed austerity ensued, leading up to the affordability crisis both Canada and the U.S. have today. Unlike the United States, however, Canada seems to have learned from its past mistakes. Thanks to Canada’s Co-operative Housing Development Program, eight co-ops are getting built right now. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow has prioritized new affordable housing construction and land trusts, and is doing much to fight gentrification. BC Builds is an initiative helping fast track cooperative housing in Vancouver City Council. “Since the 1990s there’s been a shift in liberal to conservative and neoliberal federal governments,” St. Louis-McBurnie said. “This resulted in reduced public investment in significant social programs, including public and not-for-profit housing. These successive governments devolved responsibility for funding affordable housing to provincial governments across the country, Ontario in particular. Places like Regent Park now have a public-private partnership model, meaning it’s now on the private market. Alexandra Park is going through a similar privatization process.” “But now, there’s interest in alternatives” to market rate development St. Louis-McBurnie affirmed, “and the co-operative housing sector is booming.” Provinces and cities are also implementing “communal land trust models to support the scaling and retaining of assets,” she said. “They’re trying to figure out ways for bringing independently-owned co-ops into the land trust model.” Housing as Human Right The largest co-op underway in Canada today is 2444 Eglinton Avenue by Henriquez Partners and Claude Cormier + Associés. The Toronto development will yield 918 homes, including 612 affordable, rent-geared-to-income (RGI) units. Retail offerings will be sited at the base level. From afar, 2444 Eglinton Avenue will stand out thanks to its polychromatic porthole windows. Further afield in Perth, Ontario, 38 new cooperative units will be built. Farther east in Upper Hammonds Plains, Nova Scotia, a co-operative housing development will yield 136 row house units primarily for Black Canadians. That project is happening through a partnership between the Upper Hammonds Plains Community Land Trust and the Upper Hammonds Plains Housing Co-operative. Curtis Whiley, a sixth-generation African Nova Scotian, is steering the housing cooperative project in Upper Hammonds. Meanwhile in New Minas, Nova Scotia, there will be 32 more cooperative homes. Rendering of 2444 Eglinton Avenue Co-ops (Courtesy Henriquez Partners) Africville was a close-knit Black community in Halifax located on Treat 1 territory destroyed by the City of Halifax in the 1960s. Today, land trusts like the one in Nova Scotia are effective means for establishing housing secure communities of color. The Toronto Chinatown Land Trust likewise empowers people to stay in place, an outfit helmed by Chiyi Tam who is a planner and UT Daniels faculty member. “We have not seen any investment like this, I would say, in terms of housing development almost exclusively for Black communities in Canada’s history,” St. Louis-McBurnie said. Hogan’s Alley’s Black community was displaced by the Vancouver government to make way for the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts in 1971. Now, members of the NDP and Hogan’s Alley Society—a Black-led, not-for-profit developer of Afrocentric affordable housing—are working together to shore up Black land stewardship in the old neighborhood and help rectify the past injustice. “Transferring land over to the Hogan Alley land trust will allow for the Black community to return and for greater autonomy in housing construction,” St. Louis-McBurnie added. “What If We Built a New Co-op City in Brooklyn?” Federal spending was allocated in the Biden administration’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to dismantle highways that ripped through inner cities and destroyed African American neighborhoods, like I-81 in Syracuse, New York. But this week, House GOP members moved to cancel the I-81 highway removal project. The Trump administration’s proposed 2026 national budget has slashed spending on projects that “fall outside [the President’s] new priorities” and “promote radical equity policies,” the White House said. Is it possible for architects, politicians, and planners in the U.S. to replicate Canada’s success given the current political climate?  It seems, for now, it would have to happen with aggressive leadership at the city and state levels—trade unions and nonprofits would also have to step up. This is already taking place, for instance, at Penn South, a sprawling Mitchell-Lama housing cooperative in Manhattan by the United Housing Foundation (UHF). Today, Bernheimer Architecture (BA) and the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust are helping upgrade the handsome midcentury campus. Penn South’s rehabilitation is in conjunction with BA, the AFL-CIO, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). “Penn South is a very unique campus, and its needs are different from most other campuses in New York City,” Andy Bernheimer told AN. “NYSERDA is helping us inform design and construction moving forward, which will entail reskinning the buildings and making them more energy efficient.” Co-op City is situated on a sprawling 320-acre site in the north Bronx. (Zara Pfeifer) Co-op City shopping plaza (Zara Pfeifer) In New York today, mayoral candidates are increasingly interested in revisiting the Mitchell-Lama Program’s success, a UHF campaign that built 135,000 cooperative housing units between 1955 and 1978, like Penn South and the Bronx’s Co-op City, another historic campus by Herman Jessor. In Albany, New York State elected officials have proposed a new Social Housing Development Authority, which would allocate government spending toward public housing, co-ops, and land trusts to battle gentrification. “I don’t think there’s enough money to simply restart a program like Mitchell-Lama, as far as I can tell,” Weisz told AN. “But if you look at all of the older Mitchell-Lamas flipping to the market, it’s clear we need to preserve the ones that are left, and there needs to be a new generation of co-ops. All over the city, when people have to pay market rates instead of mortgages, they’re rent burdened.” Homes for Living is a new book by Jonathan Tarleton that speaks to the tumultuous privatization of New York’s cooperative housing stock, a burgeoning problem. “Maybe there’s a way to build a funding and oversight mechanism for existing co-ops worried about going under water, and for households to sign up for a program that helps them to stay in [Mitchell-Lama],” Weisz elaborated. “Maybe there could even be a program for rental apartments to get into that program?” WXY is currently working on a Mitchell-Lama campus in the Bronx, Stevenson Commons, together with Habitat for Humanity. The goal is to maintain Stevenson Common’s affordability with rent-stabilized flats at very low rates. Parking lots at Stevenson Commons were rezoned to allow for new housing, which helps maintain affordability, while new public spaces and tennis clubs were added. There will be incentives to help seniors age in place, and for multigenerational households. Rochdale Village in Queens (Zara Pfeifer) Weisz sees opportunities to finance cooperative housing with ulterior means, like capital raised from Habitat for Humanity, but also congestion pricing. “We should be using new lines and TOD to actually support neighborhoods and co-ops, and people that are ultimately the ones who stay and support neighborhoods,” she said. “Why not subsidize co-op structures? The only way to do that is if there’s city-owned land, because, otherwise, the land cost is so expensive, you have to develop it at market rate.” “There’s a lot of city sites that have been identified for housing,” Weisz noted. “There’s all sorts of sites in the city’s hands right beside the Manhattan Bridge, for instance, or along the BQE. All of those sites could become new co-ops. What if we built a new Co-op City in Brooklyn?”

Looking back, there are a few mistakes I made while traveling internationally with my grandma. Emily Schlorf 2025-05-13T14:12:01Z Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? In summer 2024, I traveled with my grandma, mom, and sister to Montreal. I wish I'd thought more about my grandma's physical needs when planning the itinerary. It would've been nice to have more downtime in our schedule, too. Despite living 1,800 miles apart, my 81-year-old grandma and I have always been close. We share a love for "Downton Abbey," cross-stitch, and strong coffee, and I couldn't imagine spending weeks in the summer anywhere but her sunny kitchen table in central Minnesota.Of course, I'd be naive to assume my time with her is unlimited. That's one reason my grandma, mom, sister, and I decided to embark on a trip to Montreal together last summer.Although I'm grateful we were able to take this trip, it could have gone a lot smoother had I known these three things about traveling with an older relative. The itinerary should have reflected everyone's physical needs, not just my own I should've considered how long it would take my grandma to get to excursions like our afternoon tea. Emily Schlorf I'm the most frequent traveler in my family, so I took on all the planning myself and approached the task the same way I do for solo travel: leaving no stone unturned.I thought my grandma would be well-prepared for the long days, given that she walks 3 miles a day and eats a far more balanced diet than I do.What I failed to consider, though, was how difficult it would be for her to walk on the uneven cobblestone streets. On our first day in the city, we nearly missed an afternoon tea reservation since I didn't factor in the slower pace we'd have to take to accommodate my grandma's careful steps.I also didn't realize just how exhausting a full-day Three Pines tour would be. Although fantastic — with stops at a monastery, local museum, and five-star resort for lunch — our visit to the villages that inspired the fictional location of my grandma's favorite mystery series was nine hours long. My family and I went on a nine-hour tour of Three Pines. Emily Schlorf As the day progressed, we took turns snoozing in the back seat of our tour guide's van. Upon arriving back at the bed and breakfast, my grandma exclaimed how long of a day it was; and I didn't disagree.Similarly, I didn't consider my grandma's physical limitations when choosing restaurants. Although they weren't lacking in ambiance — picture patios swallowed in bougainvillea and cool, brutalist interiors overlooking Lake Saint Louis — the dim lighting and small font sizes made it challenging for her to read the menu.My mom, sister, and I mitigated my grandma's vision issues by taking turns reading the menu aloud, line by line, but that got old fast.In retrospect, I wish I'd shown up equipped with solutions, such as finding the menu online so she could zoom in on my phone or reminding her to bring her readers, to improve everyone's dining experience. A long trip means extended time away from routinesEveryone gets to a point on vacation when they're ready to return home, but I would argue that the feeling is stronger for older adults like my grandma, who travel once or twice a year and may be used to a strict daily routine.Although my grandma never expressed this feeling to me outright, I noticed as the days went on, she became less game for her granddaughters' plans.For example, on our last evening, my sister and I wanted to check out the shops lining Saint-Laurent Boulevard, but my grandma preferred to have takeout in the hotel.We compromised, and my sister and I walked to the boulevard to pick up dinner, but we ditched our shopping plan since we felt bad keeping my mom and grandma waiting.I wish we'd had more downtime together One of my favorite memories from the trip was when we spontaneously visited a speakeasy. Emily Schlorf Instead of jam-packing every day with new experiences, I wish I'd taken my foot off the gas as the trip progressed — for my grandma's sake as well as my own.As we reached days five and six of the trip, my excitement for the activities I planned dwindled, and I found myself wishing I hadn't planned them at all.Besides, the memories I cherish most from the trip weren't the museums or guided tours, they were the unplanned ones: a shared bottle of wine with our bed and breakfast hosts, a visit to an outdoor antique market, and a nightcap at a speakeasy.Despite the challenges, I'd love to travel with my grandma again I would love to go on another trip with my grandma. Emily Schlorf To anyone contemplating a multigenerational trip, I say do it, but be more considerate than I was. Take time to plan the trip together, think of everyone's needs, and be content with slowing down.Strolling through the city hand-in-hand with my grandma, I learned that it's OK to leave some stones unturned, because the real joy comes from who you're turning them with. Recommended video

A farmer in Azamgarh, India gathers fresh chamomile blossoms, part of Organic India’s commitment to ... More regenerative agriculture and community empowerment.Organic India Across the globe, agriculture is at a crossroads. Land use contributes to 23% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which are primarily driven by deforestation and agricultural activity. Meanwhile, the WWF estimates that habitat destruction and overexploitation have led to a staggering 73% average decline in global wildlife populations over the past 50 years. Nearly 40% of the world’s land is now degraded, directly impacting the livelihoods of 3 billion people. Faced with climate instability, biodiversity loss, and the exploitation of both natural resources and rural communities, the industrial food system is being forced to confront its ecological and ethical costs. At the same time, a countercurrent is gaining momentum—one rooted in indigenous knowledge systems, farmer autonomy, and land stewardship. Among the companies charting this alternative path is Organic India, a wellness brand that has woven regenerative organic agricultural practices into its DNA long before the term became a mainstream badge of sustainability. Starting as a grassroots movement in 1997, Organic India is deeply intertwined with the land and farming traditions of India. Its work revolves around cultivating native herbs like Tulsi (Holy Basil), Ashwagandha, and Chamomile through partnerships with thousands of smallholder farmers across rural India. In a recent discussion, Ori Ornstein, Chief Commercial Officer at Organic India USA highlighted for me how the recent achievement of the Regenerative Organic Certified® (ROC™) label across multiple products reflects decades of practice. The ROC™ seal, which represents the highest global standards for soil health, animal welfare, and farmworker fairness, is a natural extension of the company’s long-standing model. From crop rotation and composting to direct trade and farmer equity, Organic India’s approach exemplifies a deeply integrated strategy for rebuilding agricultural ecosystems. Rather than driving down costs through opaque, globalized sourcing, Organic India maintains local, vertically integrated operations with year-round agronomic support and premium payments—often 3 to 4 times higher than the conventional market. Their herbs are not just Certified Organic or Fairtrade Certified; they are the result of enduring, respectful relationships between people and place. Our discussions also highlighted the challenges Organic India has faced. Competing against price-driven brands with superficial sustainability claims requires justifying a premium model. Yet their steady expansion, now under the ownership of Tata Consumer Products, suggests that values-led business models are gaining traction, especially when aligned with consumer demand for transparency, integrity, and environmental responsibility. In an era when so many businesses externalize social and ecological costs, Organic India stands out for doing the opposite—internalizing responsibility and investing deeply in ecosystems and people. Their journey is a reminder that meaningful regeneration is neither quick nor easy, but possible when rooted in long-term vision and authentic relationships. Christopher Marquis: Tell us a bit more about Organic India and its approach to providing organic herbal wellness solutions.Ori Ornstein, Chief Commercial Officer at Organic India USA Organic India Ori Ornstein: Organic India was founded with the vision to be a “vehicle of consciousness” – a purpose-driven company that has a positive impact on consumers, farmers and the planet. It actually started as an organic grassroots movement in 1997 to heal ancient farmland by growing native herbs like Tulsi (Holy Basil) with traditional organic agriculture practices. By 2001, the growing movement evolved into a holistic wellness company that crafts Certified Organic herbal products inspired by Ayurveda. Our approach is to offer consumers time-tested herbs directly sourced from small family farms in India and grown in the best possible organic conditions. There are many benefits of directly sourcing herbs from their native landscape; one, you honor the legacy of these traditional herbs; two, you support multigenerational farmers, their farmland and their villages; three, the geographic and climatic conditions are ideal for herbs to thrive sustainably with little inputs; and four, you provide authentic, efficacious herbal products that nurture the global wellness community. It’s not just about the tea or supplement; it’s a holistic understanding that corporations need to be responsible for their impact on the world and lead by example. We are able to do this by cutting out the middleman and having a direct, integrated supply chain that upholds high, equitable standards at every stage, from seed to shelf. Marquis: Can you tell me more about the recent news that Organic India achieved the Regenerative Organic Certified® label across multiple teas and supplements. Why did Organic India decide to pursue the rigorous certification? Ornstein: We pursued Regenerative Organic Certified® Our partner farms have always been small-scale and self-sufficient, with grazing animals that are treated with respect, a reflection of deeply held cultural values of the region. The independent farmers we contract with grow a variety of native herbs, as well as food like legumes for their family, adding to their land’s biodiversity. They also practice composting, companion planting, agroforestry – all core components of regenerative agriculture. The reason we were able to release seven new ROC™ products so quickly is because from the get-go we were regenerative farming. If we weren’t it would take several years; that’s why we are so far ahead, which is a testament to our founders’ vision. This certification really encompasses the way we’ve been farming since the beginning and we’re proud to help carry its mission forward. Marquis: Can you tell me a bit more about the ROC™ seal and what it stands for? Ornstein: The Regenerative Organic Certified® seal represents the highest standard in the world for soil health, animal welfare and farmworker fairness. Its aim is to create a healthy food system that regenerates soil health and the whole farm ecosystem with practices like cover cropping, crop rotation, low- to no-till, compost, agroforestry, companion planting and more, as is appropriate for each unique farm. These practices reap more nutritious and abundant crop yields to build healthier communities and help conserve resources and sequester carbon to combat climate change. Certified Organic and Fairtrade Certified are both prerequisites to become Regenerative Organic Certified®, making it the most comprehensive and cohesive layer of validation and accountability for earth stewardship within the food, textile and personal care industries. The certification is overseen by the Regenerative Organic Alliance, a nonprofit that we’ve been allied with since 2021. Marquis: How long did the entire certification process take? What does the process involve? Ornstein: So far, we’ve certified our oldest farming co-op in Uttar Pradesh where we grow Tulsi, Chamomile, Bacopa and more; and our newest co-op in Madhya Pradesh where we grow Ashwagandha. Our Uttar Pradesh co-op was already Certified Organic and Fairtrade Certified, so we were ahead of the curve as far as the timeline. The certification process involves tracking regenerative key performance indicators (KPIs) as they relate to tillage, biodiversity, soil health, crop rotation, water retention; many of which we had already implemented. It took about one growing cycle for our Uttar Pradesh co-op to become ROC™. To go from conventional to organic is a longer process and would take just about 5 years if you’re very streamlined. When the Ashwagandha co-op formed, the first step was to transition the land to organic. This involves a 36-month transition period where use of prohibited substances like synthetic pesticides is discontinued and organic methods are implemented before certification can be granted. Fairtrade takes about a year and involves training and policy implementation, as the farms must align with Fairtrade standards, wages and premiums. Then you can start the ROC™ transition, which takes about another year. Marquis: Can you say a bit more about how you implemented regenerative organic practices since the founding of the company, before certification? How do USDA Organic and the Fairtrade Certified label fit into your model? Ornstein: Organic India was the first company to bring USDA Organic to India back in the early 2000s. Organic is the foundation of our brand, it’s our origin story, it’s in our name and it doesn’t just fit our model, it is our model. There are many parallels between traditional farming of India and regenerative organic farming. It’s not large monocultures spanning miles, our partner farms are small-scale and biodiverse with different herbs, food crops, trees and grazing cows. We don’t clear forests; we embed our farm plots into the native landscape. Fairtrade is also inherent to our company, and we produced the first Fairtrade certified supplements on the market, starting with Tulsi and most recently with Ashwagandha – which again is the first Ashwagandha to become Fairtrade Certified. Farmworker fairness and respect are central to our values and we are proud to directly trade with farmers and help them with all paperwork, costs and training involved in the transition to Organic, Fairtrade and ROC™. It’s great because these are investments for their own land, not company land. They are independent, own their land and choose to partner with us each year. For us it’s really not a series of practices, protocols and certifications that we strive to reach, it’s who we are as a brand and what we consider our responsibility as a business to safeguard present and future generations. Marquis: Can you tell me a bit more about your farming partners throughout India? How are the herbs grown regeneratively? What do you mean by ethical sourcing? How does the company maintain direct partnerships with thousands of family farms? Ornstein: I will use Tulsi as an example to illustrate how it’s grown regeneratively, as there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Tulsi is native to the land where we grow it and regenerative in nature. It’s highly resilient, grown during the rainy season and requires no irrigation, greatly conserving water. It also attracts pollinators, improves soil fertility and is crop rotated with Chamomile to build soil health. We directly procure roughly 500 metric tons of dry Tulsi leaves annually from nearly 300 partner farmers. We pay 3-4x above conventional market price, plus an additional 15 percent Fairtrade premium to support the community. To give context on how we maintain direct relationships with thousands of farmers – Organic India is headquartered in India and brings traditional herbal wellness products to 40 countries. We employ an internal organic agriculture expert team, local to each of our farming co-ops across India, to trade directly with our farmer partners and provide 24x7 support year-round. We set up procurement centers during the harvest seasons to purchase directly from farmers in their villages at premium prices and then process the raw materials at our own LEED platinum facility located within a 200-mile radius of our partner farms. Marquis: What are the long-term goals for Organic India? What challenges do you think will stand in the way? Ornstein: The founding idea behind the Organic India name is to help manifest a fully organic India. Our goal is to continue to transition more acreage in India to Organic and Regenerative Organic Certified® and bring more farmers into our direct supply chain. We are at 2000 farmer partners and have been there for a while, so we’d love to see that increase by continuing to scale our herbal wellness offerings. We are fortunate to have been recently acquired by Tata Consumer Products, an India-based company dedicated to sustainable sourcing, natural resources management and climate leadership. They share and support our goals and are helping accelerate our positive impact. As our business grows our mission grows so these are exciting times. Our biggest challenge is competing against companies that prioritize having the lowest price, while sacrificing quality, environmental stewardship and social responsibility. Organic India is dedicated to offering premium, organic, fairly traded products at the most affordable price possible. However, we can’t be the cheapest option when competing against products with minimal quality or ethical standards, or that boast "green" marketing rather than offering transparency into their practices. We care about the whole spectrum from paying farmers fair wages to procuring the high-grade herbs to providing affordable wellness options for our end consumers, and at the same time, we're up against a growing market of brands cutting corners to present the cheapest product positioned as “natural.” It’s a challenge, but a good one, and we’re committed to continuing to lead by example, be transparent for our customers and stay true to our values. ROC™ is the gold standard in helping consumers spot brands that verifiably go above and beyond for people and the planet.