I spent all day yesterday at a Stakeholder Transportation Forum - part of the public consultation process for Transport 2040, to help shape TransLink’s 30-year strategy.
And lest your eyes glaze over and your brain turn numb when contemplating such a wonk-fest, be assured, this was one of the best such processes I’ve attended - certainly the best use [...]
This Friday, I’ll be interviewing Ray Spaxman - Vancouver’s City Planner from 1973 to 1989 - as part of the City Program’s Paradise Makers series.
[November 2 at SFU Harbour Centre (515 West Hastings) at 7 pm. Email cstudies@sfu.ca or call 778-782.5100 for a reservation.]
This should be an extremely informative evening for anyone interested in how [...]
My current column in Business in Vancouver:
Twenty buses in six years.
That was the extent of the commitment the Premier made as part of the Gateway project for service south of the Fraser. When the twinned Port Mann Bridge opens around 2013, there will be an express bus service running across it.
If you were a planner [...]
The Times of London got their hands on the proposed transport plan for the 2012 Olympics:
Olympics chiefs set to ban all car travel
The team organising the London Olympics in 2012 is adopting the most aggressive anticar policy ever applied to a major event in an attempt to deliver a permanent shift in people’s travel habits. The [...]
It may not be news to us - but the New York Times just ran a story on how expensive condos are in Vancouver:
“When I try to explain to friends in the States how much it costs here, they don’t believe me,” Ms. Gill, 29, who is a real estate broker, said of the city’s [...]
“There’s never enough” - that’s the first rule of non-market housing. Advocates for affordable housing in a tight market like ours have no difficulty making that case: the evidence is abundantly apparent, whether in the media or on the streets.
So it’s easy to lose perspective. In fact, the list below (circulated by the Mayor’s office) [...]
Join me for this Friday’s City Program “Paradise Makers Lecture Series - Those who shaped Vancouver in the Post-war Era” This month, we profile Rand Iredale (1929-2000): Pioneer, Architect, Mentor.”
October 19 at 7 pm - Fletcher Challenge Theatre at SFU Harbour Centre (515 West Hastings). Reservations required. Please call 778-782-5100 to reserve.
The bell curve that marks a change in history:
This is the original sketch of M. King Hubbert - a petroleum geologist based in Houston, working for Shell Oil - who in 1956 predicted that U.S. domestic production would peak sometime in the early 1970s. Not a message Shell (or anyone else in Houston) wanted to [...]
Early Vancouver
It’s a classic: a view from a streetcar circulating through downtown and the West End in 1907, set to some cheesy music.
A couple of thoughts: parts of Vancouver (Hastings, in particular) don’t look that much different today. And why did they run the utility poles along the main streets when they [...]
For several decades, there has been this idea in Vancouver for an institution that would document and celebrate the changing city. The ‘Urbanarium’ concept was promoted by City Planner Ray Spaxman and others in the design and development community, and some may remember the exhibition in the old motor-vehicle testing station on Georgia.
But alas, nothing [...]
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