Trying to get people to take a closer look at conventional wisdom is one of the hardest jobs around. One of the unshakeable beliefs Vancouverites have these days is that housing prices here are more disconnected from local incomes than almost any other city. I have to say, I’m prone to that thinking myself. That’s [...]

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As the counting of homeless people ends, the politicking begins. I see that the province and the city and homeless advocates are trumpeting the lower homeless numbers, while the Non-Partisan Association has sent out a news release saying that homeless numbers are actually up in Vancouver. For those who’d prefer just to go to the [...]

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Still waiting the full numbers from Metro Vancouver, but in the meantime, I’m hearing that regional homeless count showed the number of homeless people was down by one per cent from 2008 to 2011 — an accomplishment considering the region adds 40,000 new people every year — and down six per cent in Vancouver. In [...]

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Kind of a shocker when the NPA list of candidates was released yesterday. Unless I’m really missing something, they’ve essentially handed control of the school board to Vision/COPE for the next election, since they’re only running four candidates for the nine-member board. At park board, they’re field four candidates for seven positions. And at council, [...]

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That’s the main news I saw from the

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It’s tough to unseat an incumbent mayor unless that mayor’s party is splitting behind him, but Suzanne Anton is going to try anyway. And she’s finally got some team support — something she’s struggled without until now — with Norman Stowe (last seen at the Kevin Falcon leadership campaign) heading up her campaign. That should [...]

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The news release just went out that NPA Coun. Anton is going to hold a news conference tomorrow to make an “important announcement about city politics.” This can only be the announcement that she’s running for mayor, which I’ve been hearing about via various sources for the last two days. Some say she’s been arm-twisted [...]

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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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