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Entries from January 2016

Why you should be wary of stories saying “census proves rich Asians live in mansions and pay no taxes”

October 29th, 2015 · 45 Comments

Someone sent a question to my blog a few weeks ago, asking what I thought of the then-recent news stories saying that census information indicated that areas with wealthy Asians were reporting low incomes and/or housing costs exceeding their incomes and therefore must be avoiding taxes in some illegal way. (And maybe even collecting welfare […]

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Why I’ll miss the viaducts if they go

October 25th, 2015 · 53 Comments

I’ve been accused before of judging the city on the basis of looks, rather than function. This is another example. But how the city looks sometimes does have a bearing on how it functions. How it looks is the physical representation of us, the people who live here, and what we value, who we are […]

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What do the federal elections results mean for this region? Your say

October 20th, 2015 · 75 Comments

The floor is yours. Thoughts? I personally would like to know who the Liberal replacement will be for Colin Metcalfe. For those who aren’t up on the arcana of local federal politics, this former campaigner manager for mayor Sam Sullivan became the Conservative point person in B.C., running the local office and co-ordinating Conservative interactions […]

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At long last, B.C. reaps some bonus profits from Expo land sale. And now Vancouver wants it.

October 20th, 2015 · 3 Comments

A delicious find in the Vancouver viaducts report going to council today. (That would be Tuesday, Oct. 20, the day after the federal election and when the world started spinning in a different direction.) Which was: Long ago, when the province sold the Expo lands to Li Ka-shing for what many called a fire-sale price, […]

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As Metro Vancouver grapples with homelessness everywhere, new-style winter shelters spread to suburbs

October 20th, 2015 · No Comments

Fall. The leaves fall, the days get shorter, the City of Vancouver and Housing Minister Rich Coleman get into a tug of war over how much money for winter shelters for the region’s homeless people. This year, things are a bit different. The minister is spending almost a million dollars to fund the Vancouver-style shelters […]

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Live in a super-dense neighbourhood? You won’t get a Conservative MP any time soon

October 14th, 2015 · 26 Comments

I did a fun wonk and water-cooler story in today’s Globe, based on stats analyzed by Andy Yan at BTA Works, all about how our voting preferences correlate with density. The numbers show a dramatic difference in the types of ridings that Conservatives win, compared to Liberals and New Democrats. Liberals win in some of […]

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Vancouver viaducts on the road to demolition, to be replaced by park, housing, new roads

October 7th, 2015 · 205 Comments

Media got a snap invite yesterday morning to attend a “technical briefing” about the viaducts. It turned out to be not so technical, as there were still quite a few details missing (no answers to: when will exactly the park be built, are there hard targets for affordable housing, how much extra density will Concord […]

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Oh my goodness, more rules for recycling

October 5th, 2015 · 52 Comments

This just out from Vancouver. I guess they are not that impressed by this argument published in the New York Times recently, saying recycling is mostly inefficient. Oh well, more opportunities for me to feel virtuous, aside from peeling the labels off my cans and putting cans in one place, labels in another. The City’s […]

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Vancouver Art Gallery design: Have your say

October 5th, 2015 · 7 Comments

The city architect/planner who used to oversee the big moves and small details of Vancouver’s major buildings — Ralph Segal — weighs in here on the art gallery. I myself am still trying to understand the design (it looks somewhat better seen close up than in Twitter pictures), so I have no strong thoughts. I’m […]

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