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Entries from January 2016

City enters the battlefield of affordable housing with a task force

February 7th, 2012 · 59 Comments

Your thoughts on this? Mayor Robertson announces members of Housing Affordability Task Force Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson announced the members of the Mayor’s Task Force on HousingAffordability today, having assembled a diverse team of industry and community leaders with expertise ranging from non-market housing and sustainable urban planning to finance and real-estate development. “The members of the Housing Affordability Task Force bring a broad and diverse array of experience, leadership, […]

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Metro Vancouver not ready for a euro zone any time soon

February 7th, 2012 · 5 Comments

A group in Langley has been pushing to amalgamate the two Langleys (Township and City) for a few months now. Their efforts appear to be in limbo, after their 6,700-name petition was presented to both councils and went nowhere. But I had fun talking to various mayors around the region about why they think small […]

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Branding Vancouver as a business city the real goal of Cities Summit

February 5th, 2012 · 57 Comments

The two-day Cities Summit last week was a tweet-orgy for urban wonks, such as myself and everyone I know. But, as I noted in my story, the real purpose of the get-together was to act as a giant flashing digital billboard for Vancouver: We’re more than just mountains and glass condos, honest! Come here and […]

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The last director of planning, the next director of planning

February 5th, 2012 · 20 Comments

There’s a lot being written about what led to the end of Brent Toderian’s time as Vancouver director of planning and, connected to that, what the next director will need to do or not do. To sum things up briefly, 1. Developers did him in (if you believe developers control the city 2. Vision did […]

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City planner ousted because city wants someone who can help sell affordability initiative

February 1st, 2012 · 64 Comments

And the latest chapter on this. Today’s story, which tries to get at what was really going on behind this abrupt ouster of city planning director Brent Toderian, along with his own observations. By the way, I have it on good authority that, despite what the mayor’s statement made it sound like, this was NOT […]

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