The tremendous natural beauty that surrounds us bestows a false sense of entitlement, although we’ve done nothing to earn natural beauty. Stewardship lets us earn it, but now Victoria must at last wake up to earning built beauty.
Another very interesting entry in Seth Godin‘s (free) PDF e-book compilation, What Matters Now, is Unsustainability by Alan M. Webber (co-founding editor of Fast Company). Now, this one had me thinking about negative externalities, the book Natural Capitalism (and its authors, Paul Hawken and Hunter and Amory Lovins), and a provocative article by Frank Furedi […]
It seems everyone is going green, or will be. Today I went to Victoria’s UDI (Urban Development Institute) luncheon to hear Terasen Energy Services‘ Gareth Jones present “All About Geo-Thermal: Learning from Local Projects.” Some basic take-away points: unless I severely misheard, British Columbia prices for energy (or electricity) will rise 80% in the next […]
While there’s much to be said for routine and regular habits, there are other times that require smashing the status quo. I went to City Hall this morning, expecting to participate in a workshop/ presentation by city staff on the implications of BC’s Bill 27 on revenue earned by the city through DCCs (Development Cost […]
I missed this when it was published on 11/13, but my letter in response to Les Leyne’s Times-Colonist column on the carbon tax (see my blog entry about it, Cracking cement: Industry and municipalities could work together) did make it into the paper. The editor came up with a witty title for it: Cast a […]
Les Leyne had an interesting article in today’s local paper, Cement industry fears carbon tax squeeze, which prompted me to write a letter to the editor in response. It seems to me that this problem offers an opportunity for some disruptive creative thinking, which could create a win-win situation for municipalities and industry. Some key […]
Prefab-ulous: New Development in England Goes Up Green — and Fast Brief article by Andrew Blum about Oxley Woods, a development of “90 eco-friendly homes, with 55 more planned to fill its seven acres.” The key aspect? They’re all pre-fab, relatively cheap to build, can be built quickly, and have in-built green features. If Canada […]
Transmaterial 2: To Redefine Our Physical Environment – PingMag – The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” – Annotated PingMag interview with Blaine Brownell, architect and sustainable materials researcher, whose focus is on green building. “From repurposed materials that act as surrogates, to recombinant ones that fuse several materials into a hybrid, making them […]
As it happened, Christopher Hume’s follow-up story today in the Toronto Star on the Leslieville big-box debacle, Wal-Mart and the city an uneasy mix (which I blogged about here), made some points that coincided nicely with a story by Shannon Proudfoot, which appeared in yesterday’s Province (Vancouver), about food deserts in cities: Suburbs cause ‘food […]