Good column by Vaughn Palmer about the back and forth that’s been happening between the Christy Clark government and the group of people who represent the thousands of municipal politicians in the province. You can understand why city councillors might be feeling a bit wary of the province weighing in on how they run their […]

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Every new news bulletin from England seems more unbelievable — not to mention the news flashes from Philadelphia and Chicago about curfews being imposed there to prevent rioting. As I read the latest comprehensive story, I can’t help thinking of comparisons with Vancouver: the media fascination with the Twitter/Blackberry-led revolutions; the immediate jump to all […]

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The city’s 35-page housing plan is rich with tantalizing one-liners about new things that are going to be tried to create affordable housing for working people squeezed out of the market and homeless people just squeezed. I’m working my way through, line by line, and came across one on page 31 that said five neighbourhoods […]

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The New Yorker has a good round-up review of the latest spurt of books about cities, a popular topic these days as more and more writers weight on how cities should work in the future, are working now, didn’t work in the past and so on. One of the constant themes I’m struck by when […]

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We the media tend to focus on pedestrians killed or injured in Vancouver, except for rare, dramatic cases. But the reality is that, year after year, more pedestrians are killed and injured outside Vancouver proper, a point that I made in looking at the region’s record in a Globe feature on the weekend. I also took […]

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The latest Justason poll is out. My story is here, but there is already all kinds of mad spinning going on. City hall’s Kevin Quinlan has tweeted out that Mayor Robertson has risen in popularity as the main news, while CityCaucus’s headline is that the NPA is in a statistical dead heat with Vision. Vision […]

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I love numbers. I remember my waitress number from my university days, “8,” because it was my favourite. I wasn’t surprised to hear later in life that it’s considered lucky to the Chinese. One of my favourite memories of high school is my math teacher, Mr. Ryan (who encouraged me in math at a time […]

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Happy camping, all you municipal councillors who are fleeing this weekend for your annual break after having waded through an unusually large dumpster-load of city business. I couldn’t keep up. For those of you trying to so, a brief summary. – Councillors voted 6-4 to approve the Wall company’s plans for Shannon Mews on the […]

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Lots on the table this week, as Vision Vancouver moves to put forward big policy papers and get moving on various hot-spot issues. Pedestrian safety was one of them yesterday, with a raft of new initiatives as a result. This move to pay attention to pedestrians was kicked off last November (seems to me, partly […]

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Four weeks away reminds me, when I return, of the essential fact about Vancouver — that, like a river, it’s a city where it’s impossible to experience it as the same place twice because it keeps changing. When I was in Paris a few years ago, I was agog as a Vancouverite to see how […]

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