We are all on pins and needles, awaiting word any day now from the mayor’s office about the radical changes in communication, accessibility, and general user-friendliness about to take place as a result of the mayor’s pre-election apology and post-election promise to do better. I ran into an old city-hall fellow traveller recently, who reminded […]

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There was a little one-liner that kept surfacing during the recent Vancouver election, one that I’ve heard from more than one letter writer, which is that Vancouver is actually becoming less environmentally friendly by putting in bike lanes. That’s because the complicated lanes and lights and subsequent congestion are forcing drivers to idle longer as […]

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For those who didn’t see it, Barb Justason released the results of the poll she’d done in days just before the election at 8:45, once everyone had voted. Interesting to see how the three Green Party candidates both saw their actual votes down compared to the poll estimates. That meant Adriane got 41 per cent […]

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When the Vision Vancouver team got into the elevator at the Wall Centre to travel down to the basement level where the victory party was going on, things looked pretty good. They were in charge of the school board, they had three people apparently in line for seats on the park board, and the councillor […]

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I’ve been getting a lot of City Plumber questions recently that aren’t really questions, but more like opinions, so I thought I’d just put them up as is. If anyone has any answers, feel free to weigh in. How can Kirk Lapoint be sending out letters to Kitsilano voters telling them that he will negotiate […]

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Several weeks ago, I asked the city communications department if they could pull numbers for me to help quantify what kinds of housing Vision Vancouver has been instrumental in creating since its was first elected in 2008 and what stats were available on the rents. Here was my request: Does the housing centre have any […]

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I’m hearing from more than one person that this election is very confusing for them, especially those who are young and/or who are not regular political junkies. They aren’t sure what the parties really stand for, whether some candidates are better than others, and whether they should vote strategically — or even how to do […]

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Whoever wins control of Vancouver’s council, if anyone does, here is a short list of changes I’d like to see, changes that mostly didn’t get mentioned during the campaign. I’m sure all of you have your own favourites you’d like to add. Please join in. 1. A readable yearly accounting of what is happening with […]

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This comment is buried far down in a post on Gord Price’s blog, Pricetags, (the one about the death of residential real estate) but of course it’s attracting a lot of interest. For those who don’t know, Scot Hein ran the urban-design department inside the city’s planning division. It was a position that had been […]

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This is a Vancouver magazine story that I wrote last year, but everything in it is relevant — 100 times more — today, when it comes to Vision’s difficulties talking to the public. BTW, when this was published, a Vision insider passed along the message to me that it was a piece of crap, or […]

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