The oldest building in Chinatown is going to be the gathering point for a collection of who’s whos tonight, as people from the art world, the media world, the developer world and the political world gather at Bob Rennie’s new art museum. My feature story on Bob and his new role, along with the museum, […]

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Just an update for those not watching other media, but this is what came out of the TransLink Mayors Council meeting today as reported in advance by the region’s hardest-working reporter, Jeff Nagel, and today by the Vancouver Sun’s transportation reporter, Kelly Sinoski.

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Mayor Gregor Robertson launched the city’s green plan at the Resilient Cities conference yesterday, plus it got presented at council. You’re welcome to peruse the multiple pages and post your thoughts. I have to say, I am still confused by some parts of it. Perhaps I need to do more homework, but it’s not intuitive […]

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Here’s the story I had in the Globe this week about the interesting business of taking over stalled condo projects. It’s a bit of a specialty area that’s developing for lawyers and accounting firms, as they work with companies willing to take the plunge. They’re not the easiest development deals, as there are lots of […]

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My story in the Globe today about the NY Transportation Commissioner’s visit to the city.

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Okay, this isn’t strictly urban issues but I just couldn’t help noticing this story about plans to open up campgrounds near (i.e. within a couple of hours) of Vancouver/Whistler so that Olympics tourists could stay there if they wanted. I have to say, the Games are starting to feel more and more like some out-of-control […]

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This internal email from parks general manager Susan Mundick just flew in my window. Now, instead of “helping with the transition for as long as needed,” she is now leaving immediately. Hmm, sounds like there’s unpleasantness going on. I’m sure the scuffling in the past month, when Mundick was on vacation part of the time, […]

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A reader sent in this link on interesting efforts to tinker with the carrots and sticks for drivers in order to get them onto transit. “Another interesting discussion for your blog perhaps? http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-parking-experiment15-2009oct15,0,2933172.story The article discusses Santa Monica’s plan to use market rates to manage their parking to short term stops, higher fees and programming […]

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This just in (or out) from city hall Mayor Robertson to travel to London, Greece to take part in Olympic Flame ceremonies Mayor Gregor Robertson will travel to Greece this week, where as Mayor of the 2010 Winter Olympics host city he will take part in the lighting of the Olympic Flame ceremony in Olympia […]

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I’ve been away in the Kootenays doing a media workshop in the town where I got my first-ever newspaper job 26 years ago, Creston, so excuse my lateness on various burning urban issues that broke out in the last few days. As a result of my sojourn (and digressively, I must say, was it ever […]

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