It costs $5-8 million to build one kilometre of road. Until recently, we drivers have taken that for granted. Not much longer. All kinds of people are busily looking at how to extract money from drivers in new and different ways, in a user-pay world of funding for roads and transit. For BC Business, I […]

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Metro Vancouver has always been an odd beast, as politicians from 21 municipalities with weighted votes make decisions about all manner of issues that they sometimes have wildly differing opinions on. It has seemed even more fractious lately, with the tussling over the new growth strategy. And now the complete disarray, some say gong show, […]

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The suburbs are the most interesting places to watch these days. They’re where people are trying to create new forms of urban life — not the bedroom suburbs of yore, not the traditional cities of the past either. Something new, which no one quite knows what it will be. My story in the Globe this […]

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Why is the NPA having so much trouble attracting strong candidates? It’s conventional wisdom that the party is bound to attract more votes this year than in 2008, as people look for alternatives to Vision Vancouver. The reasons coming from people with the NPA now or in the past: Too many other elections, perhaps still […]

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The byelection to give B.C.’s new premier a seat is this week and I see that Christy Clark’s efforts to bypass the media and speak only to “regular citizens” are becoming a bit of a story. No surprise to me. At Vancouver magazine, we decided to do a profile of Ms. Clark, this perpetual firecracker […]

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Today is the final day for the NPA to receive applications from those wanting to run as candidates under the party’s banner. I’ve run a list before of the candidates who appear to be in the race so far, though I had to glean it from various bits of gossip. (So, sorry, Jason Lamarche, that […]

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Kathleen Bartels, Vancouver Art Gallery director. Sadhu Johnston, deputy city manager. Mike Shiffer, senior TransLink planner. Chicagoans (is that the right word?) all. So I finally decided to come here and see what inspired them. What do I see? – A city hall that looks like the world’s biggest secure bank, a massive building with […]

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Waiting to hear an explanation for this news release which has Vision and COPE agreeing that they will split the council slate 7-3. Of course, no guarantees who will be elected but, still, it means Vision is not going to go past the seven spots it has now. In 2008, you’ll recall, they had eight […]

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Unhappy condo owners at the Olympic village filed their lawsuit last month. Now the city’s fighting back. Maybe they should just do best out of seven games.

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Jesse Johl, we hardly knew you. For those who don’t recall, Johl was acclaimed as one of two NPA candidates acclaimed to run in the November election last fall, as a way of giving some support to lone councillor Suzanne Anton. Bill McCreery, the other acclaimed candidate, has been busy peppering blogs, emails and live […]

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