I’ve been curious about how Surrey will evolve ever since former mayor Dianne Watts set out to transform the city’s image and its reality. Besides the music festivals and the beautification and the stunning new pools and other facilities built in the city, Watts also promised to create a downtown for Surrey out of almost […]

[Read more →]

I love community pools, as I think many of you know. I mourn the loss of the Mount Pleasant pool near me and I’m an ardent fan of New Brighton. The NPA campaign promise that got me the most excited was the one to build three new outdoor pools. As a result of all that, […]

[Read more →]

This was a strange one that no one could understand the timing of. BC Hydro, in the last week of January, suddenly announced it wanted to build new electrical substations under a couple of downtown Vancouver parks — but it needed an agreement from parks, school board, and the city by March 31. CEO Jessica […]

[Read more →]

This was a surprise move by the city’s new director of planning. Gil Kelley, who was supposed to be just giving an update on feedback to the city’s proposals for ways to protect “character houses,” also announced last week that it was removing one city tool from the package — the proposal to drastically limit […]

[Read more →]

Vancouver planners are looking at a raft of ideas to increase housing in the city. One that didn’t get as much attention as the mayor’s statement that the city was going to look at more ways to do gentle density in single-family zones was his reference, in the same speech, to new strategies for densifying […]

[Read more →]

When I was first heard about Adriane Carr’s motion to have staff looking at why the city is still shutting down illegal suites, I thought she was surely wrong. After all, when COPE and Larry Campbell swept to power in 2002, one of their first major actions was to declare that all secondary suites were […]

[Read more →]

Okay, we haven’t even started on the major projects for this 10-year plan (Broadway subway, Surrey LRT, new Pattullo Bridge). But that doesn’t mean people aren’t thinking about the 10 years after that already. I was at a transportation conference at the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade last Friday where, as moderator, I got to […]

[Read more →]

There have been times in the last year when I’ve wondered whether Mayor Gregor Robertson is just phoning it in. He seemed absent, even when he was here, and disengaged. But that person was not in evidence last week. The mayor, in one of the strongest speeches I’ve heard from him in a long time, […]

[Read more →]

What is the province’s message to cities these days? Hard to tell, as we seem to be getting multiple messages. There’s a lot of chatter in the background about how the province wants cities to boost their density around transit and help speed up supply by reducing the time to get permit. But on the […]

[Read more →]

I used to hear the term “community land trust” about once a year. Now, I seem to hear about it almost every month. Cities like New York and London are looking to community land trusts as a way to deal with the general real-estate insanity that appears to be prevailing in key cities around the […]

[Read more →]