Today’s story, which tries to get at what was really going on behind this abrupt ouster of city planning director Brent Toderian, along with his own observations.

By the way, I have it on good authority that, despite what the mayor’s statement made it sound like, this was NOT Dr. Ballem’s decision. I’m not saying she disagreed. There’d certainly been endless rumblings of discontent from the higher-ups at city hall. But the impetus came from elsewhere.

Council is supposed to vote on it in camera today, but it’s widely known among those close to city hall.

Here’s the profile I did of Brent a few years ago, when he was already dealing with local hostilities in the first three years of his job.

As you can see from it, there are things to like about Brent and, if you were a developer with a project in front of him, potentially things not to like.

He has boundless, unsquelchable enthusiasm for his job and talking about urban design and planning. He held a steady line on resisting any efforts to remove industrial land, on promoting good urban design and more “exuberant” architecture in this somewhat bland city, and on the need for affordable housing and rental stock.

But he also, as Bob Ransford pointed out in that profile three years ago, had a hard time with the necessary political skills needed to keep developers on your side even while getting them to improve their projects or to connect with neighbourhood groups. He was happiest when he was with other urban-planner wonks and architects (or reporters), talking about urban-design ideas.

There has been some mixed reaction among the people I called. A lot have been cracking open the champagne all weekend, as one architect told me. And, unlike what some people might think, it wasn’t because Toderian didn’t approve their projects (though that’s certainly the motivation for a few).

But, said my Architect Friend, Toderian was a concern because he focused so much on policy and left the job of actually steering big projects — those physical objects that are the embodiment of policy — through the system. He, and others, worried about his ability to set out and stick to a big vision for the city.

And like many, he contrasted him with former planner Larry Beasley, who is not without his own flaws, but who set out clear rules for developers. He demanded that they give a lot back to the city, but he also would make it very clear-cut how they could get their projects approved.

On the other hand, another person in the development community said he’s saddened by Toderian’s termination and in the way others are cheering it. He says some of them were people who just resented being asked to make changes to bad projects and he didn’t like the way they piled on in criticizing Toderian. He saw Toderian growing into his job and keeping a clear focus on the city’s essential priorities.

One of the interesting facets of this story for me is that I don’t have a very clear picture of how Toderian was viewed by neighbourhood groups. All of the debate around him has come from the tight circle that works at city hall. I’d be interested to hear your experiences of him out in the real world, far far from mine.

One note before comments and anecdotes begin: Criticisms are fine, but please keep this respectful when you phrase them. This is a real person’s life.

As I discovered, the parking requirements are dropping there too. Not without some resistance, though. The resistance isn’t coming from the builders, who are delighted at every $20,000 to $50,000 parking stall they are able to eliminate from the building plans.

But sometimes the people leasing buildings, despite their best efforts, have a hard time convincing incoming clients that they don’t need a whack of parking stalls along with their office space. Those clients discover it themselves, as they find their company’s stalls sitting empty when it turns out the majority of their employees take the bus or train or SeaBus or bike or their feet to work.

In spite of that, though, the numbers are coming down.

On a personal note, I’m looking forward to seeing the new project that Graham McGarva talks about in this building, at Granville and Cordova. I worked across the street from that incredibly dumpy parking garage for 10 years and it will be great to see it replaced with a building that he is saying is going to be a small experiment in making an office building more playful and livable.

It’s going to be a bit of a bike-station centre for that area, if I understand correctly. Details to come.

We’ve tended to look at the flashing signs — and the local resident complaints about it — as just some local piece of whininess or outrageous and insensitive behaviour, depending on your point of view.

But, as I discovered when I got the exceptionally fun job of checking into the issues of urban light, this is far from a Vancouver-only issue. Digital billboards and digital signs are the new frontier of urban debate in cities all around North America, as I mention in my Globe feature here. I mentioned the anti-digital billboard fight in Los Angeles, where activist Dennis Hathaway told me all about his group’s opposition to a deal that LA city council cut with CBS Outdoors and Clear Channel Outdoors to allow them to convert 840 conventional bill boards to digital.

I didn’t get to squeeze in the fact that Denver and Tacoma, among several other cities, have banned digital billboards. That Arizona went to court to prevent them along highways and, I’ve been told, won the most recent round. That people in LA are also fighting the creation of new “sign districts” — commercial strips where advertisers can put up any number of corporate logos and digital advertising signs on buildings.

So the BC Place wrangle is just the beginning of what could be more fights over digital advertising, because the outdoor-advertising people looooove these signs. They allow for much more advertising in the same space, since the ads change constantly. They can be controlled from a remote computer. And they attract more attention.

And this, as I note, is coming at a time when cities are actually trying to minimize light pollution, by putting caps on streetlights, dimming them, trying new light technologies and so on.

Why? Because it was reported last October, when Vancouver city council endorsed giving the theatre a liquor licence, that it wouldn’t be able to show movies if it got the licence.

Several media outlets wrote about this. Here’s one story from the Georgia Straight and another from the Sun.

But somehow, when Rio owner Corinne Lea told everyone last week it was a “total surprise” to her that she wouldn’t be able to show movies, everyone went crazy over the story.

Just to be clear — I’d love to be able to have a drink while I’m watching a movie, so I’m not against the concept at all. My blog followers know that I wallowed in the overstuffed chairs of the Living Room Theatre in Portland last fall, swilling alcohol and watching movies I didn’t much care about, just for the pleasure of the experience.

But I don’t get why this story was a “surprise” or why it generated such media attention now, but not back in October. Is it just the fact that Councillor Heather Deal got into the act now, but she didn’t then? Or what?

I’d also love to hear an explanation for why the Rio owners didn’t just keep operating the way they had been. They were able to serve liquor at concerts by getting special-event licences for the nights they needed them. Then they were free to show movies the other nights.

I don’t know how much of a hassle it was to do it that way, but, simply as an interested neighbourhood person, I’d like to know how much of what has happened at the Rio came about because of the owner’s decision to choose a liquor licence over movies.

You can see the full schedule here. Come on down, all news junkies! Or anyone!

And, in honour of the occasion, I feel compelled to say that one of the weirdest things about working in the business these days if having to deal with the popular image people have that the mass-media industry is dying, if not already in the coffin. A popular image that is perpetrated by … the mass media.

(Recent low moment: Watching ‘Are You There, Chelsea?’ when her friend complains she has no money because “I studied journalism in university and now I’m working as an unpaid intern. Why did I study journalism?)

Which is all strange because what I see is a huge hunger for information — much more evident than it was when I started as a reporter back in 1983 — the increasing popularity of documentaries, the proliferation of incredibly interesting non-fiction books about topics no one ever dreamed of when I was starting out, and more.

Yes, the old business model of changing. The era when a particular type of news business had a monopoly is gone. Some news organizations are adapting well; others aren’t.

But the most encouraging thing I see is that the public seems to want news. Maybe not news as it was dished out previously, but news.

And there are young people who still want to find it. I teach in the Langara Journalism program, where we get a new crop of students every year who are actually passionate about discovering stuff and telling stories about it. They are also getting jobs in dozens and dozens of news outlets that are still functioning quite well, thanks.

As you’ll see if you come out to some of the films at this news festival, the news business changed a lot from the 1920s to the 1970s. (Just as it did from the 1840s, when most Canadian newspaperspapers were just organizing vehicles for one set of ranting political activists or another, to the 1920s.)

It’s changing again now. Sometimes I miss the old days a lot, when big, corporate, unionized newspapers dominated and we got to do whatever we felt like, because we knew people would buy our papers no matter what. (I tear up every time I watch the ending of State of Play, the recent movie with Russell Crowe and Rachel McAdams, when the presses start rolling, the papers start coming off and the trucks start getting loaded with them.)

But I — and many others — are also kind of enjoying this crazy, roller-coaster ride we are on where we’re exploring a new world, with our readers, through regular stories and blogs and tweets and everything else that comes along.

Now I’m looking for people who have feelings about our new glowing spaceship downtown, BC Place the building as a whole. Anyone? Email me or call please — see About for the contacts.

Second, it appears to be focused on some big-picture thinking. The invited speakers are architect Bing Thom, Vancouver Foundation vp Catherine Clement, and Metro Port Vancouver CEO Robin Silvester — people with strong stories to tell about the physical planning of the city, the social fabric of the city, and the economy of the city.

I presume there will be some discussion too about the kind of person who will replace chief bureaucrat Jonny Carline when he leaves Feb. 14. Whoever takes up residence at his desk will be a big part of whatever change Metro Vancouver sets its sights on.

As my Globe story notes, this is just a little more than a year after their Olympic Village development was placed in receivership and less than a year after the city took all their known commercial assets, 32 properties in five municipalities with a net value of $45 million.

(It’s also after they had their interests in the Evelyn Drive property in West Vancouver and the Alexandra development on Bidwell taken over by others.)

Some see it as a sign of resilience in a long-standing company that has produced good work. Others are somewhat startled.