My goodness:
The first thing to know about Vancouver, British Columbia, is that it resembles the last, if not no other, place on earth. A sinewy swoop of land framed by mountains and water, it’s the final terminus of the North American frontier, half post-industrial pan-Asian metropolis and half primeval nature. The beacon city of [...]
That big ‘whoompf’ you heard this morning was the arrival of the 700-page report on climate change authored by former World Bank economist Nicholas Stern for British Chancellor Gordon Brown. Titled “The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change,” it will unavoidably be known as the Stern Admonition.
There’s already an additonal entry under Stern’s [...]
It’s so gratifying to see the responses coming in from readers, particularly the recent posts under “More or Less’ below. My thanks.
And further to the discussion, here’s an arrival from Joe Urban in Minneapolis, aka Sam Newberg (www.joe-urban.com):
Even urbanists agree that certain improvements need to be made in suburban development, especially since suburbs will absorb [...]
Chris Leinberger, an urban land-use strategist, developer and fellow at the Brookings Institute, makes an almost paradoxical point in an interview in Model D, a development newsletter out of Detroit:
CL: We now know that drivable suburbanism, as you build more, you get less quality of life. The very things that you build suburbia for get [...]
Everyone likes a good demolition. There’s just something perversely gratifying about an implosion. And ever since they blew up Pruitt Igoe back in 1972 live on television, failed public-housing projects have made remark- ably satisfying targets.
Glasgow, Scotland, built more of these tower blocks than anywhere in Europe, and some years ago started a program of demolition and replacement with [...]
Khenko - the Great Blue Heron - flying above False Creek in George Wainborn Park.
Off to Spokane for a few days. See you later.
There’s one good reason why City Council will never disband the elected Park Board. If it did, Council would have to deal with dog conflicts in city parks. The latest territory soon to reach critical mass: George Wainborn Park, where the off-leash dogs are claiming more and more of the territory.
Now Seattle, like Portland, is wondering whether it’s possible to raise children downtown. The Post-Intelligencer explored the issue in this article: “Parents want more family-friendly downtown living.”
The 2000 Census found that just 4 percent of households in Seattle’s urban core, which includes downtown and South Lake Union, included a child, compared with 20 percent in the [...]
I just came across this:
There’s a rule of thumb that a building is considered attractively slender if it has an aspect ratio (which is to say, height to width) of 8:1.
Who came up with that? Is there an iconic building of precisely that ratio?
And what is the most attractive ratio of street width to building [...]
When I moved to Vancouver in 1978, the English Bay Seawall ended at the Aquatic Centre. The path itself was only about eight feet wide; pedestrians and cyclists shared the route - and the roller blade hadn’t even been invented. Most people circumnavigated Stanley Park and called it a day. This would not have been [...]
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