For weeks, I’ve been ranting to anyone who would listen to me (fortunately, there aren’t that many) that the BC Place roof was an architectural blight on Vancouver, with giant struts in heavy gray industrial steel going up that looked like some kind of homage to Dominion Bridge. Every time I went over the Cambie […]

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The city has been on a tear the last week, with city manager Penny Ballem and fire chief John McKearney talking about what they are doing to boost inspections, bring landlords of unsafe buildings into line and more. (Including almost a million for firehall upgrades.) Some of this is just reporters discovering ongoing activities, a […]

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I didn’t make it last night to the forum that West End Neighbours organized on Vancouver’s proposal to allow some taller new buildings on the downtown peninsula, an issue that council is going to vote on Jan. 20. However, others did. Here is one review, from architect and development consultant Michael Geller. I’d like to […]

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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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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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Twenty years ago, two city planners wrote a series of articles for the Vancouver Sun where they laid out what our region would look like in 2010 and what the region would be challenged by in those two decades. Michael Seelig and Alan Artibise predicted that the Lower Mainland would grow by a million people, […]

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Yes, I suddenly disappeared for a week. Baking, hunting down obscure gifts, knitting, and conducting my own private Alfred Hitchcock film festival took precedence briefly over other activities. Won’t happen again for a while (though next week could be a bit slow). But here is one enduring piece that I didn’t manage to post before […]

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