If you’re a reader of James Kunstler’s books and blog, you’re familiar with his argument that “the suburbs have no future.” Indeed, he predicts that even if the current subprime mess is resolved, the suburbs aren’t coming back.
Kunstler has never been very good with the timing of his predictions, but his casandra-like pronouncements seem to [...]
My column in Business in Vancouver last week:
Vancouver culture now meeting newcomers halfway
In Vancouver today, there’s a lot of hapa happening. In Japanese, “hapa” means leaf. In Hawaiian, half. It also means people of mixed racial ancestry.
But hapa culture is bigger than that. If you live or work in Vancouver, it includes you. Because living [...]
As I learned on Council, when it comes to the issue of housing, especially in the Downtown East Side, advocates are fearful of too much success. Some fear resources and sympathy might dry up if the problem is addressed. So the problem is played up and the progress played down.
The danger is that we might [...]
It took awhile - but at last we figured it out: closing a street to vehicles when the sidewalks are crammed with people is a civilized (and civilizing) thing to do.
Granville strip closure curbs violence
Street closure ‘test run’ kept revellers happy, rowdies subdued
Matthew Ramsey, The Province
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Vancouver police say shutting down a four-block stretch [...]
By, in this instance, the Washington Post:
Vancouver’s Olympic Challenge
City Faces Pressure to Fulfill Social Pledges That Helped It Win 2010 Winter Games
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 23, 2007; A11
VANCOUVER — Rob Skish is looking forward to the 2010 Winter Olympics. A “binner” who plumbs garbage containers to fill his shopping cart with food [...]
How and why Melbourne beats out Sydney when it comes to urban design, the arts and cultivation of the creative class - here.
A Price Tags reader was reading Michael Geller’s blog entry on Australia’s Gold Coast, and one of the things that jumped out at him was this:
There is a 50-per-cent cap on the number of foreigners who can buy into any new multi-family building in Australia.
“Very interesting,” he thought, “particularly given the apparently high rates of foreign/absentee [...]
Find out why: here.
One of my favourite e-newsletters is Civic Strategies: Every few weeks, about a dozen short, well-written blurbs, albeit with an American focus, that keep me up to date on civic trends and personalities. Here’s an example: comment on a Brookings report dealing with rising suburban poverty.
Hard to believe, but more poor people live in America’s [...]
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 [...]
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