As the leadership competitions ramp up, candidates are starting to fling more and more promises: holidays, money, pledges to listen, really listen, this time. Being the urban wonk, I’m the most interested in the promises affecting cities. Which are starting to trickle in.  Kevin Falcon put out the idea today of giving municipalities half of […]

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For those who haven’t seen the coverage so far, there’s been a series of stories percolating out of Mission after some residents there got irate about being charged $5,000-plus for property inspections by the city when they were suspected of running grow-ops. As it turned out, some of them weren’t — just had problems with […]

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City engineers used to rule the world. Now they never get any attention. It’s the planners who typically get all the glory. That’s changed at Vancouver city hall in the last couple of years. The planning department is tangled in knots, as its members struggle with the Vision council’s imperfectly-thought-out plans to create rental housing […]

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Gastown has changed so many times in my life. When I was a teenager, I loved it for all the strange little hippie shops where I could buy scraps of fake fur, beads, and the weird jewelry that I imagined at the time made me look cooler than Joni Mitchell. In my 20s, it was […]

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It truly feels like campaign season, as various NPA types, in co-ordination with Citycaucus.com, try to get the media going on putting the blame on the Vision administration for the Pandora Street house fire that killed three men just before Christmas. (They’re really working this thing as four or five news releases have gone out […]

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Okay, with this letter from architect Nigel Baldwin, a former Urban Design panel member, to city councillors, the langorous Christmas season is now officially over. Mayor and Council, City of Vancouver Marine Landing: End of Term Report Three months ago various groups and individuals from the Marpole neighbourhood and the broader community, including me, appealed […]

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