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 […]
Old vs. New: Extreme Edition | weeasssuburb Dan Bertolet of Seattle-based blog “Huge ass city” spent some time visiting Medfield, Massachusetts (where I gather he was raised). He temporarily renamed his blog “Wee ass suburb.” This particular entry looks at two houses — one, the Dwight-Derby house from 1621, the other a 2005 “Extreme Makeover” […]
(Note: might add some links/ photos later, but no time now — written on the fly…) Dan Bertolet of Hugeasscity hits all the right points in his discussion of what makes a good urban plaza. He includes a “wow!” photo of Seattle’s Garden of Remembrance, which, with its relatively steep grade, allows for steps oriented […]
“Pay your voluntary carbon taxes: Move into the fashionable high-rise city,” by John Barber (globeandmail) Barber’s article links the ideas expressed around the demise of suburbs due to rising fuel costs, the benefits of densifying the cities (by building up, not out), and discussions around carbon taxes. “Meanwhile, the free market is applying its own […]
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 […]
…courtesy of further reading in Robert L. Bish’s Local Government Organization in the Capital Region (and continuing somewhat from yesterday‘s entry). Bish is concerned with explaining the need for and importance of economic development in the region, which is a necessity for Victoria since it relies for over half of its property tax revenue on […]
Here’s a “must read” piece by Edward Glaeser, just republished in the CEO for Cities blog, The Greenness of Cities, and first published in the New York Sun on January 30/07. It explains why, from an environmentalism perspective, it’s far better to build highrises (and use land efficiently) than to oppose development (and force development […]