What can I say to this? Hope no citizens spot any city employees eating Boston cream pie.

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When there’s a big story in town, everything starts to connect to that big story. Therefore, a Canucks angle can be found for anything. In my case, it was urban space. I wrote this story after noticing how suburban hockey revellers and politicians alike seem to be looking for places where people can come together, […]

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A new regional carbon tax. A possible one-year delay on the line, which would mean it doesn’t get finished until 2015. The province blaming the mayors for not coming up with a solution. The mayors saying, “Hey, how could we do anything when you guys were so busy having leadership races that it was impossible […]

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The big planning talk these days is all about how to create density around transit, as transportation planning and land-use planning continue to merge with each other. But what happens in the real world often doesn’t match that ideal. Here in Vancouver, you can see very busy transit stations with not much around them and […]

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My friend Chad Skelton got a copy of the City of Vancouver’s submission to the Freedom of Information and Privacy Commissioner, who had surveyed various public agencies for their opinions about FOI policies. (He had to FOI it, of course.) The submission he got back showed all too clearly what the current administrators think of […]

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The Urban Futures people have helpfully posted links to the research they’ve been doing on recent house sales, looking at whether prices for houses paid at the high end are skewing perceptions of the rest of the market. When Bob Rennie made his recent speech at the UDI, he was relying on this info. Here […]

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Lots of howling about the story I wrote on Bob Rennie’s recent analysis, saying that prices paid for the top homes were skewing people’s perception of average housing affordability. Many people assumed he was spouting that off the top of his head, for nefarious reasons of his own and questioned my journalistic credibility for quoting […]

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The province’s news release last week that Richmond council would get special dispensation to give some of its commercial properties breaks on their taxes caught my eye. For years, Vancouver businesses have complained that they end up getting whacked by soaring assessments and taxes in particular areas where speculators have started bidding up local land […]

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Quirky George Chow has finally made his decision, it appears. He never did phone or email me back to say officially that he’s not running, but the news release about Tony Tang stepping up to take his spot on the Vision slate for the fall election makes it clear. With Tang, Vision seems to have […]

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We love to think homelessness only exists in Vancouver because people read about our gold-plated services, great weather, and free drugs. However, a recent twitter flurry prompted me to look up stats from a couple of other cities. For those who are curious, below is an excerpt from a recent fact sheet on homelessness and […]

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