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Entries from January 2016

COPE dumps Cadman, chooses anti-Vision advocate Louis, plus moderates Woodsworth and Aquino

September 18th, 2011 · 60 Comments

Political junkies, fill your boots figuring this one out. Here’s my story. This changes the look of the chessboard.  

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City rescues Vancouver Playhouse with $1 M debt-relief package

September 16th, 2011 · 21 Comments

Good scoopola by Jeff Lee at the Vancouver Sun, thanks to someone clearly unhappy about this going on behind the scenes. What do you think? Should the city have bailed them out or not? Done it in camera or not? (Jeff’s blog post indicates the vote was unanimous.)

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Former NPA councillor wants politicians not to attack urban agriculture

September 15th, 2011 · 33 Comments

Lots of tweets and emails flying around about this column, posted below, in BIV from former NPA councillor and NPA mayoral candidate Peter Ladner. While never naming the NPA directly, he warns that it’s a “mug’s game” to mock and attack efforts at urban agriculture. Ladner did not write this column in response to the […]

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Civic election starts with attack ad, promises of accountability, Green Party scuffling, more

September 14th, 2011 · 59 Comments

Civic election campaigns don’t usually get going until after the Thanksgiving weekend, so as not to bore us to tears and cause candidates to drop from exhaustion like overworked horses. This year is different. The Non-Partisan Association is fighting like mad to get more than one seat on council, which they were reduced to in […]

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Tags: 2011 Vancouver Civic Election

Warning: News about bike lanes in Los Angeles, New York

September 12th, 2011 · 68 Comments

Consider this blog post my once-monthly quota on all things bike-related. People who don’t like noise or violence should stay away from the comment section. That said, I continue to find stories that make me think about the incredible worldwide push on to make bicycles a significant part of urban transportation systems. Is this part […]

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Transportation group campaigns for TransLink plan to get transit expansion going

September 12th, 2011 · 40 Comments

A scary headline on my Globe story today says the Sustainable Transportation Coalition is campaigning for property-tax increases to kickstart the $700-million transit expansion that TransLink has proposed. Are they really? No, people like former NPA councillor and Business in Vancouver founder Peter Ladner are not in favour of permanent property-tax increases to pay for […]

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Where Portland does better than Vancouver

September 8th, 2011 · 44 Comments

Portland is not the nirvana that urban planners and Portlandia fans would have you believe. It’s got persistent high unemployment that its own economic development commission has noted is worse than other cities. The famous streetcar and light-rail transit? I’ve concluded that that is the only option the city has, since it has about 60,000 […]

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If the viaducts come down, will cars disappear? Or does there need to be a plan for them?

September 7th, 2011 · 104 Comments

A really thoughtful email came to me over the summer from Frank Ducote, a former Vancouver planner who now lives in a neighbourhood near the viadcuts, about the proposal to take down them down. As I’ve said on CKNW in the past, this is a trendy idea that has spread from Seoul, Korea, and San […]

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NPA social media strategy II

September 7th, 2011 · 4 Comments

People identified as possible attack tweeters for the NPA are not too pleased about the email that went out recently from NPA campaign organizer Scott Harrison to them, as many of them had not agreed to do anything of the sort. (This just in at 5 pm Wednesday from one on the list, Diamond Isinger: […]

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How the illegal-drug industry affects our housing prices (or not)

September 6th, 2011 · 18 Comments

One of the most persistent myths in Vancouver is that a driver of the high housing costs here is the illegal-drug market. What’s the science on this, I wondered. My story in Vancouver magazine looks at whether the drug industry has the financial clout to wreak any more havoc than any other profitable sector of […]

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