“Staycation” seems to have caught on. The idea of staying home for your vacation may be a new concept for those who have reason to get out of town, but, really, where better a place and time to be than Vancouver in the summer.
The streets of the West End are blissful: quiet, green, uncrowded. And there [...]
This just in from Rick Cole, the City Manager of Ventura, California - and one of the most articulate voices for Smart Growth in America. (He was also a councillor in Pasadena. A great speaker, too)
Take a read of this interview in which he discusses “the triple-witching hour - heating up the planet, running up [...]
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What do the residents of False Creek North think of living in one of the largest centrally located, high-density, pedestrian and family-oriented mixed-use neighbourhoods in the world?
Hardly anyone thinks to ask the people who move in after a project is designed and built. In this case, graduate students at UBC’s [...]
There’s no doubt that False Creek is one of the most admired locations for planned residential communities in North America - from the South Shore project designed in the 1970s, to the South East ‘Olympic Village’ now under construction. But the largest of them all can be found on the North Shore - Concord Pacific [...]
Or at least Christopher Hume, the Toronto Star’s urban critic and VIA Architecture Urban Design lecturer for the City Program a few weeks ago. Here, on reflection, are some of the comparative thoughts he had about our two cities.
Want a new urban model? Go west.
Vancouver’s approach to city-building is now a global export. We’ve distilled [...]
Just came across Past Tense - a new blog on Vancouver’s history. A welcome addition, though I’m not sure who the blogger in question is.
Currently there’s an in-depth post on slum clearance in Strathcona - in particular a forgotten report by Leonard Marsh. Fascinating read, well illustrated.
Proposed redevelopment of Strathcona
Apropos to 1960s planning (below) and the talk tonight by Toronto urban critic Christopher Hume at SFU Harbour Centre, here’s an intriguing project underway in TO, sent in by Matt Blackett from Spacing:
I was recently hired by ERA Architects here in Toronto to help them develop a blog for one of their projects. It’s called the [...]
This is a classic documentary by the National Film Board from 1964, done for CMHC (known then as Central Mortgage and Housing), to promote an ‘enlightened’ approach to urban renewal. That is, identify blight and tear it down. Good-bye Strathcona.
As fascinating for its views of the city as the mindset of the planners.
Part 1
Part 2
Don’t forget: this year’s VIA Architecture Lecture on Urban Design is coming up this Thursday at SFU Harbour Centre , featuring Toronto Star urban and architecture critic Christopher Hume. Details here.
Hume’s current column is here. Appropriately, it’s about demolishing a waterfront freeway - the Gardiner - something Vancouver has never had to consider, because we [...]
I sit on the board of the Sightline Institute, so I’m always pleased to see the Seattle-based organization get good coverage in Lower Mainland media. The release of their report on compact urban form in the region certainly did that, as evidenced by Jeff Nagel’s piece in the Surrey North Delta Leader.
The best part of [...]
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