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Archive for the 'affordable_housing' Category

What’s up with Vancouver real estate prices?

Friday, December 9th, 2011

In a kind of  yang-ish counterpoint to my last post about yin-ish Portland (and Victoria), here’s a pointer to a BC Business article, Housing has become Vancouver’s toxic asset, by Tony Wanless, that makes me think Vancouver’s yang is just a tad out of control. Wanless points to a blog post by Vancouver independent city […]

How to Save Downtown (Victoria BC)

Monday, May 30th, 2011

How to Save Downtown Victoria BC Canada: article submitted to FOCUS Magazine (June 2011), original and complete version. FOCUS online version is compromised, and the print version is rubbish. Read this for the real thing.

Gentrification 2.0?

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

The title of my post is semi-serious, semi-ironic. I’m ambivalent about gentrification: if it means unslumming, I figure it’s good; if it means homogenization toward a single class (typically privileged) at the expense of economic diversity, it’s probably not-so-good, right? When I write “Gentrification 2.0,” I’m saying that I’m not sure how this particular example […]

Unsorting

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort and Archie Bunker’s inability to avoid rubbing up against people explored as an issue of urban form and domestic architecture.

February article: Housing 2.0

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

It took a while for me to catch up with my own goal to blog about the articles I’ve posted to Scribd, but here (finally) is a quick pointer to Housing 2.0, the piece I published in the February 2009 issue of FOCUS Magazine. It’s a funny title in some ways, but this brief introductory […]

“Timber!” or “Timber?”

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

After attending today’s Urban Development Institute Luncheon on “The Story Behind the Six Storey Mid-rise Initiative” (with speaker Trudy Rotgans, Manager, Building and Safety Policy Branch in the BC Government), I have some additional thoughts on the topic (first broached from another angle here). As billed, the presentation’s topic was this: You heard about it […]

Canadian cities in a quagmire?

Friday, December 19th, 2008

We’re experiencing an exceptional cold weather spell in southwestern British Columbia, and last night a 47-year old homeless woman died in Vancouver.  She burned to death, trying to keep warm with a live fire; the police think her blankets must have caught fire. The story is all over the news of course, including here: Woman’s […]

Vancouver Sun article: “Shelters turned away homeless 40,000 times in nine months”

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Ok, tell me you don’t find this story by Vancouver Sun’s Frances Bula rather alarming: Shelters turned away homeless 40,000 times in nine months? I wonder if there’ll be follow-ups, and whether the count that people were turned away 40,000 times over a nine month period is accurate. If it is, then that’s proof that […]

Building taller buildings: in wood, not reinforced concrete

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

An article in today’s local media reports that British Columbia’s Premier Gordon Campbell is proposing changes to the province’s building code to allow wood-frame construction for buildings taller than 4 floors. Going higher … using wood Canwest News Service Published: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 A plan by the province to raise the minimum height for […]

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