My favourite thing. I got to work for a month on a story about how commuting is changing (or not) in the Lower Mainland. It was an eye-opener. I heard a lot of stories about how people make their transit choices with factors I hadn’t thought about. Childcare is key. (Living close to a daycare […]
Entries from January 2016
The next dilemma in the commuting and transit challenge: Peak millennial?
May 20th, 2016 · 58 Comments
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Province, cities need to decide where their 50% transit funding will come from in next five weeks
May 20th, 2016 · 3 Comments
I will admit straight up that I don’t fully understand the negotiations going on between the province and cities over how they will come up with their $370 million to match the $370 million the feds are willing to put into transit locally from this year’s budget. I had a long interview with Minister Peter […]
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Social-action groups, residents push governments to take action on housing
May 18th, 2016 · 3 Comments
People who have worked on housing issues for decades haven’t seen this much fear and anxiety about housing in Vancouver ever. When it was just working-class people and the homeless who were having trouble, there was a kind of low-grade concern. But now that middle-class people working two decent jobs feel like they’ve been priced […]
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Developers put their efforts into most urban, most transit-oriented, most expensive ‘hoods
May 13th, 2016 · 5 Comments
No wonder Vancouver is always in an uproar about some development or another. There’s just so much of it in the city, as I was made aware when someone pointed me to the statistics on housing starts in the region. Vancouver, in spite of being an almost built-out city and with very little greenfield (never […]
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A first for Vancouver: City issues a heritage inspection order for historic house
May 13th, 2016 · No Comments
Huh, never seen this before. The city is really being pushed into doing something. I’ll be curious to see what happens next. May 13, 2016 Heritage Inspection Order issued for 1550 West 29th Avenue The City of Vancouver Director of Planning has ordered a heritage inspection of the property located at 1550 West 29th Avenue, […]
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Metro looks at tax changes to encourage agriculture, discourage lifestyle farming on ALR land
May 8th, 2016 · 2 Comments
Metro Vancouver is unique among North American cities when it comes to farmland. It has more farm-designated land in its boundaries than any other North American city. And that land, when it is farmed, is very productive. Metro Vancouver farms have the highest “farmgate” revenue of anywhere in the province, due in part to their […]
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Chinese investors open schools, shellfish hatchery, more to come in former resource town
May 2nd, 2016 · 2 Comments
I heard that a Chinese private school was looking to partner with the local school board in Powell River to start a new kind of venture, where the Chinese company would build a school and dormitories for 400 students while the district handled all the teaching. That was interesting enough. But once I started calling […]
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City asking for your (many) opinions on what to do about vacant houses
May 2nd, 2016 · 2 Comments
I know this crowd will want to weigh in. Announcement from city below. The City invites residents to participate in a public survey to seek their opinion on possible government actions to discourage empty homes in Vancouver. Following the City’s study on empty homes in March 2016, which showed 10,800 homes in Vancouver left unoccupied […]
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