The Canada Line continues to work its magic up and down the tracks, encouraging office builders to locate nearby, prompting condo developments here and there.

The latest site to re-consider itself is the Oakridge shopping mall at Cambie and 41st. A report going to council tomorrow recommends letting Oakridge go through with another rezoning process (after just having completed one in 2007), as the owners, now partnered with Westbank and Ian Gillespie, contemplate something much denser than they did six years ago.

The proponents and staff are also talking about something much more than a simple mall expansion with a few towers in one corner. They’re talking about re-making that whole site, with roads through it, parks, a library, and a feeling of not a mall.

It won’t be a quickie. That community is famous for its turnout to neighbourhood planning meetings. But it will be a fun watch, to see what they come up with in the end.

There’s nothing the world loves more than a futuristic gadget, a truism that was illustrated when the joint endorsement of a new kind of cell-phone transmission stand by Mayor Gregor Robertson and city-defining writer Doug Coupland happened in Paris this spring.

The news of the yet-to-be-invented-as-reality concept, the V-pole, went off like a small nuclear bomb in tech-journalism circles.

Coupland captured something about the changing nature of cities when he came up with the idea, the way their infrastructure is no longer the heavy and concrete (roads, sewers, garbage disposal) but the wireless world. Which, as it turns out, needs a lot of wires.

I took a closer look at the way the city and the wireless world are coming together in this month’s Vancouver magazine, which involved a trip to the a downtown highrise rooftop that I managed not to fall off of or vomit near. (Vertigo issues) As it turns out, the V-pole will not exactly eliminate our need for more technology to support our social-networking habits. We’re all just consuming and producing too much of that intangible stuff.

This post, copied below, from independent planner Lance Berelowitz, adds to the commentary following speeches by the city’s three former planning directors last week, reported by Jeff Lee at the Sun.

I suspect this kind of commentary is getting traction because of the way the Vision council approaches its job, which is to see it as a set of goals: affordable housing, check; homeless shelters, check; bike lanes, check; food trucks, check; another World Cities Summit, check.

That can be an extremely efficient strategy for accomplishing key goals and we’re seeing this council get a lot done that way. But it can start to go off-key if it’s not accompanied by a big, global sense of how the city should develop overall, which it sounds like a lot of people feel is missing.

Lance’s thoughts (and here’s the direct link):

Answer on the City Plumber box. Comments should go there too.

That’s the interesting topic of a blog post by Coquitlam Councillor Terry O’Neill, inspired by an American study that looked at the idea.

Would it work? First question. Second? What is the downside?

Planners finally put a price tag to the community-amenity contribution dollars the city won’t get as a result of Aquilini deciding to build rentals, not condos, in its 400,000 square feet of residential space in three towers around Rogers Arena.

Strangely, though, that wasn’t the topic of many questions at the public hearing last week. As I noted in my Globe story today, the local residents association said that they were okay with that as long as they did get the key amenities funded in the neighbourhood that they want: the Canucks practice rink that will function as a part-time community centre, the daycare, and the pedestrian skybridge over Pacific Boulevard.

It wasn’t clear to me, from listening at the meeting, how the loss of $35 million of CACs from the originally projected total of $125 million from all Northeast False Creek development will affect city plans for other amenities. Originally, there was talk of using amenity dollars to upgrade the Aquatic Centre. Perhaps that’s no longer an option? I’ll have to check.

Oddly enough, in spite of criticism from some groups about the lack of truly affordable rental units in the area (the Aquilini’s 614 will rental at standard rates for new apartments), most of the questions at the public hearing were about the new noise-bylaw standards the city is allowing in the area.

Instead of the usual 70 dBC limit that applies in the rest of the city, this area will allow 82 dBC measured from the roof of Rogers Arena (the usual maximum noise of a concert), although demanding that Aquilini ensure that the noise level in people’s living rooms is no more than 50 dBC and in their bedrooms, no more than 40 dBC. Buy your noise monitors now, future tenants!

I fell in love with Minneapolis, thanks to its bike-share system and its amazing bike routes. Some of you have read bits and pieces about that on previous blog posts. Here’s my Globe story on same.

The one negative I experienced, which I had to cut out of my story for space reasons, was that the city was good about providing bikes and routes that I came to expect they would have mapped perfect routes out for me everywhere.

So I was startled when I found myself on a busy commuter road, riding along in the left-hand bike lane on the one-way street, and suddenly realized that no one had indicated a way for me to get over easily to the right at Nicollet Mall.

I ended up crossing three lanes with frequent nervous shoulder checks for speeding cars coming up from behind. I asked a Minneapolis bike person about what I should have done in this case and learned a new term. I could have tried a “Copenhagen turn” — a turn into the crosswalk when the light was right and go across like a pedestrian but riding.

I had actually employed that technique a couple of other times when the bike lane suddenly ended and I wanted to avoid getting out into a busy street with no protection. That, plus riding down the sidewalk if it was empty, if the street looked too scary.

Something to think about for route planners here.

And, ah yes, the helmet thing. Yes, I rode around for two days with no helmet, which is not required there. Given that I’m a slow rider and was mostly on the very separated bike routes, it felt really like no problem. But if I knew I was going to be using a bike share system that much, like if I went to Paris for a few weeks, would I be tempted to pack my helmet for the trip? You bet.

One more for the TransLink annus horribilus. At least this problem got fixed.  Still awaiting word on the other multi-million dollar issues.

The Olympic Village’s neighbourhood energy utility was the first in North America to extract heat for the plant from sewage.

The planners were a little antsy at the time, but felt they had to go with it because nearby residents had gone nuts over the idea of generating heat by burning biomass, i.e. woodchips. To some, that brought images of a beehive burner to mind (inaccurate, but whatever).

However, now that it’s been in operation for two years, other municipalities are looking at tapping into the sewer system for their own neighbourhood utilities, whose construction could potentially be shared by developers.

Metro Van, as a result, is trying to figure out what the rules are going to be for that, as well as looking ahead to a time when the region might set up its own neighbourhood energy utility.

I wrote this story to find out a bit more about what’s going on.

Watch out, residential permit buyers. People are noticing that you’re getting a discount rate. City engineers among them. Check the answer on City Plumber.