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What are green jobs anyway?

November 24th, 2009 · 35 Comments

As anyone not currently dead knows, one of the mantras at Vancouver city hall these days is that Green Jobs are the Economic Future. That has a few insiders scratching their heads, wondering what the heck green jobs mean anyway, as opposed to, say, just jobs that pay money. Mayor Gregor Robertson really lights up […]

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Relentless champion, Art Cowie, dies

November 23rd, 2009 · 11 Comments

For those not reading other blogs, the sad news came over the weekend that Art Cowie died. Cowie, a one-time TEAM councillor during the new wave that swept in to town in the 1970s, was a tireless advocate for having the city try new housing forms. That didn’t win him many friends on the west […]

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Goodbye to my friend Sandy Korman

November 22nd, 2009 · 22 Comments

Goodbye to my friend, Sandy Korman I went to the Kootenays this week, a part of the vast province outside our little urban corner that we often forget. It was beautiful, as it has been every time I’ve gone there for the past 26 years. The deep  cobalt-green mountains that enclose Castlegar in its narrow […]

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Vancouver’s new convention centre: “Better than we expected.”

November 19th, 2009 · 29 Comments

This just out in Canadian Architect, my look at the convention centre expansion along with assessments from various architects and people who care about buildings around town. Please excuse the paucity of posts on other issues. I’ve been off this week for personal reasons. Feel free to take the threads where you want in order […]

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Council gets letter missiles from both sides on Northeast False Creek debate

November 17th, 2009 · 34 Comments

Council is going to decide today on whether to generally endorse the NEFC high-level review, permitting staff to carry on in the same general direction towards a mixed residential-office zone geared to the “entertainment district” being created down there. I would note, for those who seem to think this is some kind of irreversible decision, […]

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Malware warning

November 16th, 2009 · 4 Comments

Hi all. I’ve seen myself and had messages from several of you that when you attempt to post a comment on the site, you get a warning from Google saying it is an attack site. (Doesn’t show up if you just look at the main site.) This only happens if you are on Firefox, not […]

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Vancouver mayor reflects on first year, successes and mistakes

November 15th, 2009 · 2 Comments

Ah, the one-year anniversary, here it is already. There was a round of media interviews and analysis of the Vancouver Vision council’s first year. Here’s my interview with the mayor and his thoughts on his record. The Province’s Jon Ferry took this tack. For the truly obsessed, I transcribed my interview with him, editing my […]

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Much agreement, a few punches thrown at Vancouver politics session

November 15th, 2009 · 5 Comments

It was a pretty civilized session Saturday morning at the Wosk Centre as the Michael Geller-organized panels analyzing the past year of Vancouver politics mostly agreed with each other — including the observation that the two main political parties, Vision and NPA, have so few policy differences that they seem to be reduced to picking […]

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Library, police, parks, everyone tightens belts in Vancouver

November 13th, 2009 · 12 Comments

You can tell it’s a serious economic crisis when even the Vancouver police are cutting back on . But that’s what’s being proposed, along with some serious choices at the library and elsewhere as everyone buckles down for the storm. The budgets for some of those departments were made public or were at least talked […]

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Tags: City Hall Talk

When this blog isn’t enough: Vancouver politics panel Saturday

November 12th, 2009 · 25 Comments

All of you civic-politics junkies who were wondering what to do with your Saturday morning this weekend, your troubles are over. Michael Geller, with Gordon Price and Bob Ransford, has organized a morning of panels to discuss and debate Vancouver politics of the past year, as we approach the one-year anniversary of the civic election. […]

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