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Archive for the 'housing' Category

Do green and make green

Monday, October 11th, 2010

There are times, I think, when having a tumblr (vs a blog) would be cool – then it would be enough just to post, free-standing, the smack-down that Peter Busby (“one of Canada’s leaders in green architecture”) gives Bob Rennie (“the influential Vancouver condo marketer who is the last say for many developers on what […]

Dirty Wall Project: slums and cities

Friday, September 24th, 2010

I saw an amazing photograph in the temporary gallery Ryan Kane of the Dirty Wall Project has set up on Fort Street. The photo is one of many that Kane is selling to raise funds for his venture: it’s a flat, saturated, picture-edge-to-picture-edge frontal view of one small piece of a slum in Saki Naka […]

Gentrification 2.0?

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

The title of my post is semi-serious, semi-ironic. I’m ambivalent about gentrification: if it means unslumming, I figure it’s good; if it means homogenization toward a single class (typically privileged) at the expense of economic diversity, it’s probably not-so-good, right? When I write “Gentrification 2.0,” I’m saying that I’m not sure how this particular example […]

Thinking about built form

Monday, February 8th, 2010

An aerial view street view brings into clear relief the house I was born in – prompting some observations on urban density and what makes it appealing to me.

Unsorting

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Bill Bishop’s The Big Sort and Archie Bunker’s inability to avoid rubbing up against people explored as an issue of urban form and domestic architecture.

February article: Housing 2.0

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

It took a while for me to catch up with my own goal to blog about the articles I’ve posted to Scribd, but here (finally) is a quick pointer to Housing 2.0, the piece I published in the February 2009 issue of FOCUS Magazine. It’s a funny title in some ways, but this brief introductory […]

Front-line/Downtown – Community Solutions

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

On Monday March 30, the Downtown Residents Association (DRA) hosted a public meeting, On The Front Lines: Community Solutions for Homelessness and Social Issues, at City Hall. Moderated by DRA chair Rob Randall, we heard from Victoria City Councilor Charlayne Thornton-Joe, the Coalition to End Homelessness‘s Jill Clements, the Downtown Victoria Business Association’s Ken Kelley, […]

“Timber!” or “Timber?”

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

After attending today’s Urban Development Institute Luncheon on “The Story Behind the Six Storey Mid-rise Initiative” (with speaker Trudy Rotgans, Manager, Building and Safety Policy Branch in the BC Government), I have some additional thoughts on the topic (first broached from another angle here). As billed, the presentation’s topic was this: You heard about it […]

Canadian cities in a quagmire?

Friday, December 19th, 2008

We’re experiencing an exceptional cold weather spell in southwestern British Columbia, and last night a 47-year old homeless woman died in Vancouver.  She burned to death, trying to keep warm with a live fire; the police think her blankets must have caught fire. The story is all over the news of course, including here: Woman’s […]

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