I was inspired to write this story because of my own dealings with the critter invasion. Like Sheila and Carol in this story, I feel like life has become a non-stop low-level battle against wildlife. I’ve had much of it, though not (I’ve discovered thankfully) rats eating my car wires. But rats elsewhere (one strolled […]

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And now, amid the rubble post-vote, mayors are trying to figure out what next. In Surrey, Linda Hepner says at least half of the light-rail project is going to be built by 2018. That’s a tall order. Everyone keeps blathering about private-public partnerships, but those private partners do not donate money. So Surrey would need […]

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Oh dear. I come back from Paris, a transit paradise, to this: 62-38 vote against funding new transit through the sales tax. I have to say, I was surprised by the results. Not that it was No, but that the numbers were so far apart — that means that in months of campaigning, with bus […]

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As my alert Twitter readers (aka William Lee) have noted, I am in France, observing contemporary urban culture. Here, as in Vancouver, I hear some same themes and drumbeats: the magazine cover in the Midi Libre I bought two days ago was focused on urging people to buy real estate now, while prices are low, […]

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I’ve been intrigued with the Neptis Foundation, a privately funded group in Toronto, ever since one of their reports wound its way onto a Metro Vancouver agenda about five years ago. This group has looked carefully at how cities add new residents, using aerial surveys and other tools to examine exactly how much land is […]

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The tussle over the waterfront hub continues. That is the piece of land that sits between the old train station and The Landing, which Cadillac Fairview wants to develop an office tower on. It’s also meant to be the gateway to a new piece of the downtown that the city has envisioned creating by extending […]

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News seeping out this afternoon that TransLink called staff to a meeting to say that two top TransLink planners were gone. Both were very experienced people at the top of the heap and doing the actual planning. One, Brian Mills, was director of systems planning and research. The other, Tamim Raad, director of strategic planning […]

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So a little dust storm of media reporting this week, once again, on the foreign ownership issue after UBC geography professor David Ley spoke at a conference last weekend put on by Simon Fraser University’s Urban Studies department. Ley, who has done extensive research on the impact of Canada’s immigrant-investor program and published a book […]

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As downtown office development continues to attract various people, in spite of a building boom that is sure to drive up vacancy rates, two big owners have approached the city about getting extra density for their sites. The sites? Sinclair Centre, home of the 1910 post office in one of its corners, and the 1958 […]

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Got to tackle the land-assembly craze that people have been noticing around the city lately, as signs have sprouted all all over the place with whole blocks for sale. As any number of land-assembly specialists told me, this is all about people stampeding to redevelop when a community plan changes to allow for more density. […]

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