Feels like the municipal campaign in Vancouver finally started to pick up some speed today, as the Greens launched their platform and Vision Vancouver had the first news conference with real news, announcing more money for school lunches for poor kids. (And the NPA sniping away at that.) I mostly covered the Green announcement, as […]

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I try not to fall in sentimental rhapsodizing about mid-rise European cities, as some of my fellow urbanists do. I know that for every chic French or Spanish historic town, there’s a ring of appalling towers on the outskirts that the immigrants and poor have been relegated to. But it is puzzling to me that […]

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  I was just fooling around on Twitter last night to wind down from a long day and then this erupted. 22h Duncan McCue and Wise Monkeys favorited your Tweet 22h: @kirklapointe Aren’t you supposed to be writing a speech or speaking with a large group of people about fiscal responsibility or something? Kirk LaPointe […]

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Because I have thousands of words to write in the next few days, this instead. There are 10 weeks left in the campaign. At the moment, this is how the various parties and their mayoral candidates rank on the social-media counters. Facebook: Gregor Robertson, by himself: 7,560 “Gregor Robertson and the Vision team”” 4,559 Vision […]

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Which was started in response to my story last week in the Globe

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I have to second the opinion of my colleague Mike Howell at the Vancouver Courier, who concluded his summary of this week’s election shenanigans with the question: Is it time for reporters to take a vacation until this campaign settles down to something reasonable? Vision’s Gregor Robertson held his first campaign news conference, accusing NPA […]

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I know many of you thought I’d just had it with the bike-lane posts and decided to blow up the post and all comments. Haven’t reached that point yet. My blog was down most of last week because of some kind of server/host problem. They’ve managed to restore everything up to Aug. 31. I’m hoping […]

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And now for a break from politics (though I expect some people will find a way to work it in even here): I noticed a while ago that one of the two big cedars in front of Vancouver city hall on the south side had turned completely brown. When I happened to ask about it […]

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I got a note from a Riley Park member yesterday asking why she had been notified about having to renew her membership and vote in a new meeting for directors. I received a letter from the Riley Park Association today because I am a member. It is very strange. It asks me to renew my […]

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This just out from city hall this morning: Track work suspended for talks between City and CP Rail   Senior officials at the City of Vancouver and CP Rail have agreed to meet to discuss the future of the Arbutus Corridor.   While the two sides meet, CP Rail has agreed to suspend all track […]

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