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The archive of by-election coverage

November 8th, 2017 · 1 Comment

Catching up on posting some older stories here. First up: the stories before and after the Oct. 14 by-election, which provided a story with endless interpretation possibilities (Vision dead; no, progressive vote on the rise; no, NPA on the rise; no, people-power politics on the rise; coalitions the politics of the future; yada yada). First […]

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As Vancouver’s old industries leave “Mount Pixel,” city struggles to define new meaning of industrial

April 6th, 2016 · 11 Comments

Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant industrial area is undergoing a profound transformation. For years, the old steel-plating, gadget-manufacturing, and garment-producing businesses had been leaving slowly. But that speeded up three years ago when two things happened. Hootsuite, the city’s bigfoot digital company, moved into a building in the area. (It was a building zoned for office use, […]

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Yes, the street litter and alleyway garbage really is worse. But a ban is not the answer, says city

February 15th, 2016 · 7 Comments

Catching up on a story from last week: The woes of litter and decomposed guck for Vancouver. Some media interpreted the city report on “what to do about this” as calling for a ban. But the city’s head of “les ordures,” Albert Shamess, says that’s probably not the answer. What ever will they come up […]

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Vision/COPE councillors vote against uncertain tree-preservation plan

June 10th, 2010 · 24 Comments

In spite of a valiant effort by a whole group of people hoping to save the 120-foot tulip tree in the West End, it was a no. Architects Bing Thom and Michael Heeney, the former head of real-estate services for the city, Bruce Maitland, an arborist and a landscape architect were not enough to convince […]

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Upcoming talks on new transportation plan contemplate “road diet”

May 7th, 2010 · 21 Comments

We’ve been seeing a lot of action at city hall lately when it comes to bike lanes in a few areas. But there’s a much bigger, more comprehensive re-think coming in the fall, when the city will start talking about an update to its 1997 Transportation Plan. One topic for sure that is going to […]

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Commercial Drive struggles to find formula for weekly car-free days

August 3rd, 2009 · 28 Comments

As anyone who reads this blog even passingly knows, I love markets and street stuff in cities. So I’ve been watching with interest to see how the city’s car-free Sundays, aka Summer Spaces program, is going. I went down to Commercial Drive yesterday, where they had their first non-car-free day of the summer (Main also […]

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Vancouver moves to “open source” government

May 15th, 2009 · 9 Comments

I had a story in the Globe this morning about the Vision Vancouver council’s move to promoting open-source government, which is already generating quite a buzz in certain nerdy info-tech circles to judge by my Google alerts. Ironically, the Globe had a glitch that prevented several stories in the B.C. edition from getting posted to […]

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Vancouver green plan not about being your nanny

May 5th, 2009 · 6 Comments

One of the aims of the city’s plan for becoming the Most Greenest City, though it wasn’t spelled out anywhere, was not to moralize about how everyone should be a better environmental person. To that end, they focused on incentives and opportunities rather than scolding and penalties, as I note in my Globe story here.

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Vancouver ponders pay, hiring freezes to keep budget in line + Thoughts on manners

February 4th, 2009 · 15 Comments

It looked like it was going to ho-hum day at city council, with councillors Suzanne Anton and Raymond Louie continuing their energetic pillow fighting over the the budget, the Olympic village, the kinds of candies given out for free in the mayor’s office, and so on. But, instead, at the end of the budget presentation, […]

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Tags: City Hall Talk

Robertson creates a Green City team

January 28th, 2009 · 12 Comments

I feel bad that I’m not on an advisory committee to the mayor. Everyone else in town seems to be. First, there was the homelessness action team, a high-powered group that meets Sunday afternoons to figure out how to get 1,500 people out of shelters and off the streets ASAP. Then, there was the developers’ […]

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