Wealthsimple

September 8, 2026

In This Issue

8 min read

We hope you had a nice holiday! This week, we’ve got something special: nine small but effective fixes for some of Canada’s thorniest urban problems. Senior reporter Jenna Benchetrit scoured the globe (research-wise, anyway) for smart ideas that could help our cities and towns flourish even more. We’ll be back with a normal TLDR next week. —The Editors

Major cities around the world are chipping away at big problems by thinking small. Read on for nine tiny touches making urban life slightly more liveable. | Illustration by Ben Denzer

The Week in Markets

Doom loop or boom times?

Perhaps you’ve read that bond yields — the interest rate that a government agrees to pay when it issues bonds — are at record highs in every major global economy, Canada and the U.S. included. Now fears are mounting that yields have climbed so high that governments will need to borrow even more to cover their mounting debt, pushing yields even higher — a doom loop that’s put the entire world “in the danger zone.”

Or maybe everything’s just fine? It’s a counter-theory best articulated by market watcher Matthew Klein in his recent piece, “Rising Bond Yields Are Good, Actually.” The gist: bond yields rise whenever the economy grows, because there are lots of exciting things to invest in other than, say, boring government bonds, and yields must rise to compete. And the global AI race has created all kinds of such opportunities. There’s no crisis here, according to this argument; in fact, “yields are right where they should be.” Whether high yields are a lagging indicator of a booming economy or kick-start a doom loop will become clear enough … at some point!

TSX:	+0.2% (+14.8% YTD)

S&P 500:	+0.4% (+12.5% YTD)

One Chart That Explains Everything

The FOMO Index

by Stacey Woods

Important

Rich Dad Poor Dad author reveals he’s $1.2 billion in debt. Stay tuned for his next book, Hi, Dad?
Source

Floating island in B.C. lake appears, disappears, then reappears. It’s like eczema. Or the Eagles. Or tariffs.
Source

MapQuest reaches No. 1 in the App Store after refusing to rename Lake Ontario. There’s still hope for you, Hotmail.
Source

The new $20 bill will be vertical and have a pic of King Charles. Sorry to any of you who wanted him horizontal.
Source

Crash & Burn

To the Moon

Carney tells the U.S. to “stop doing memes” and “start being serious.” U.S. is expected to comply so that he doesn’t “turn this car around.”
Source

Tell me you don’t respect me without telling me you don’t respect me: the new KFC/Cheetos Flamin’ Hot collab is only available in Canada.
Source

Dyson introduces a US$500 AI-powered toothbrush with a built-in camera. Use it to make your own experimental horror film: Plaquerooms.
Source

Scientists might have finally gotten their first glimpse of dark matter. At least that’s what your Dyson toothbrush thought it was.
Source

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The Big Important Story

Canada’s Cities Have Giant Problems. These Tiny(ish!) Tweaks Will Help Them Flourish

Mind-numbing traffic bottlenecks. Unaffordable housing. Bitter turf wars between drivers and cyclists. Canada’s cities face challenges so sprawling and complex that we often can’t agree on how to address them. But what if we started with small steps — really small, as in teeny tiny — to make our urban centres slightly more liveable? Little wins add up fast. So we surveyed some of the most innovative places around the world, consulted an urban-planning expert, and came up with a to-do list. Let’s think small, folks!

Barcelona, Spain:

Time-saving tech that scours for parking so you don’t have to.
Drivers on the hunt for parking are responsible for nearly a third (!) of urban traffic and one in five traffic accidents. To get those bonkers numbers down, Barcelona uses smart-tech sensors that feed information to an app, which drivers use to see open parking spots in real time. That, in turn, cuts the time spent cruising, helping to reduce accidents and CO2 emissions.

Atlanta, among other U.S. cities:

OK, a really nerdy one: tax land at a higher rate than buildings to encourage density. A new paper published in the Journal of Public Economics has a pretty lightbulb-y finding: when cities tax land at a higher rate than structures, a bunch of metrics — including population density, small-business formation, and even earnings — grow at a faster rate because lower taxes on structures can encourage density and development. And density, indirectly, often lowers housing costs.

Lugano, Switzerland:

Super-stealthy trash cans that hide litter deep underground. You gotta check out these garbage bins in Switzerland, which have hidden underground “silos” so they don’t overflow — a genius trick that also reduces the city’s total bin needs. When the bins approach capacity, a sensor alerts Lugano’s waste department, which dispatches a truck to lift the entire bin — silo and all — and empty it. The process is seamless, says urban designer Tiffany Chu, ex-chief of staff to Boston’s enterprising current mayor who globetrots and documents “tiny tweaks” like these on her Instagram.

Xiamen, China:

Bicycle skyways that zip riders over car traffic. Bikes, it’s been said, are the vehicle of the future — they’re good for your health, your wallet, and the environment. Some experts estimate that half of the world’s population will be biking by 2050. Our cities, though, are built for cars, so how do we retrofit them for bikes? One option: Xiamen’s “bicycle skyway,” an elevated pathway that soars above traffic, separating cyclists and drivers.

Columbus, Ohio:

Traffic signals that give first responders a green light. Emergency vehicles can’t afford to be delayed by stoplights, so a handful of North American cities have addressed the issue by syncing fire trucks, police cruisers, and ambulances with the traffic grid. Whenever one speeds toward an intersection, its traffic lights flip to green — and everyone else’s go red. A few Canadian cities (including Calgary) already use the technology, while others (like Winnipeg) have piloted it. In Columbus, smart lights have reduced emergency response times by 15%.

Copenhagen, Denmark:

Parks and sidewalks that transform rainy cities into sponges. Climate change has caused heavy flooding in wetter cities, so some of them are experimenting with parks that can retain and filter stormwater via underground tunnels and sidewalks that use porous materials (e.g., sand instead of clay!) to absorb and funnel rainfall into the earth. And they do it without clunky systems of pipes and pumps. Developed by Chinese landscape architect Kongjian Yu and embraced by Copenhagen, the concept has been floated for potential projects in Vancouver and Montreal.

Milwaukee and Atlanta:

Brighter street lighting to send criminals scattering. Here’s a layup of an idea: better-lit streets. It’s a simple fix that can reduce crime by up to 21%, which, of course, is a huge drop for such a minute change. One theory is that the brightness makes criminals feel like they’re being surveilled, and, no less important, it signals that the neighbourhood is a close community that invests in itself — kryptonite to potential ne’er-do-wells.

Sapporo, Japan:

Super-handy sand dispensers to stop snowy wipeouts. Who among us hasn’t fallen on our keister (or worse) during an icy winter? It doesn’t have to be this way! Forget that bag of salt in your garage; Chu, the former mayoral chief of staff, recently posted about a handful of Japanese cities, including Sapporo, that stock public sand-bag dispensers so that pedestrians can de-slick the path in front of them as they walk. You’ll (probably?) never have an embarrassing wipeout again.

Barcelona, Spain:

Traffic-free “superblocks” for quieter, greener neighbourhoods. A constant parade of cars can ruin a neighbourhood, so Barcelona diverts non-local traffic to the outer peripheries of its residential districts. That turns inner streets into a sanctuary for locals, with more room to build parks, courtyards, and pedestrianized spaces. Several admiring cities have designed, piloted, or proposed a similar concept, including Montreal; Vienna, Austria; Bogotá, Colombia; and Los Angeles.

—Jenna Benchetrit

The Big Read: Sports and Money Edition

The NBA Investigation Into the LA Clippers and Kawhi Leonard 🏀

Yes, we’re recommending a 35-page investigation summary by a white-shoe law firm — but, wow, what a page-turner! In America, this juicy tale of secret deals and brazen cheating will go down in sports history for prompting the harshest penalty ever levied against a major pro franchise. Five first-round draft picks! Clippers owner Steve Ballmer — ex-CEO of Microsoft, the world’s ninth-richest person — banished from his own arena for a year! Here in Raptor country, though, the report reads more like a high-stakes heist, one that ends with a clean getaway across the border and a dream reunion with our prodigal Finals MVP. Guess we won this round of the trade war!

The Wisdom of X

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This week’s newsletter contributors: Brennan Doherty (writer), Devin Gordon (writer), Stacey Woods (writer), Jenna Benchetrit (news writer), Ambrose Martos (fact checker), Ciara Rickard (copy editor), Maude Campbell (copy editor), Sara Black McCulloch (fact checker), Eva Grace Clement Cruz (specialist, product engagement), Lauren Edwards (production coordinator), Matthew Karasz (markets editor), Jared Sullivan (senior editor), Peter Martin (senior editor), and Devin Friedman (editor-in-chief).

TWIM: Total returns shown in local currency, via TradingView.

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🌆 Little fixes for big cities