I've got a kid this age and this hits hard. But I'm also so here for the "teachers were heroes" story. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

“A free society respects exercises of freedom without suspicion or hostility. Freedom of movement is a freedom as basic as other core human freedoms like freedom of speech, freedom of faith, or freedom to choose one's occupation.” www.liberalcurrents.com/abolition-am...

Wow! Left my door to pick up the kid & took my camera just in case I saw the hawk again. And there it was at the top of the street! Still singing as per below, but pretty sure it's a Cooper's now (red on the chest). Brazenly hanging round the 'hood, thumbing its beak at the crow mafia. #birds

Decent sized white-bellied hawk in Vancouver near Lord Byng this morning with a really distinctive call. Figured maybe it was a Coopers, which I've seen hunting in the area before, but when I compared songs, sounded a lot more like a Goshawk? (sadly no good pic!) www.bird-sounds.net/northern-gos...

Public policy debate: dedicated housing vs. rental assistance! NYTimes helpfully stacks the problems facing each (& new mayor!) in NYC coverage. Both housing shortage & the trickiness of sustaining support through shifting politics & budgets make things worse. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/n...

Congrats to @wazaroff.bsky.social as Vancouver's mayoral candidate from @onecityvan.bsky.social! This thread is worth a read summing up where he's coming from and where he's taking a "Pro-Growth, Pro-Housing, Pro-Worker, Progressive Majority on City Council!"

Just putting in a plug for Taylor's "The Environment and the People in American Cities, 1600–1900s." Great read & really helped me figure out how to draw history through my own work in urban sociology & built environments. www.dukeupress.edu/the-environm...

Wealth inequality is a growing issue in Canada and our tax system must be overhauled to tax high-end wealth and capital income more effectively in order to benefit the public good, shows a new report by Silas Xuereb & Alex Hemingway

NEW from me today: Tumbler Ridge is mourning a horrific loss. But how the shooter's identity is being talked about online, and the dangerous links being made to trans people at large, will have resounding and dangerous impacts in the months and weeks to come. xtramagazine.com/power/tumble...

I have a new paper. We look at ~all stats articles in political science post-2010 & show that 94% have abstracts that claim to reject a null. Only 2% present only null results. This is hard to explain unless the research process has a filter that only lets rejections through.

It's already started, hasn't it? www.lakelandtoday.ca/lac-la-biche...

"Alberta separatism, a resurgence of Quebec separatism and extreme right-wing populism have made a lot of people worried about our future." Hmm... Floor-crossing might not be quite done yet...

This kind of smart, walkable, mixed-use urbanism is illegal to build in most American cities.

The big game is on at the Plaza of Nations

Some stunning blues up there right now

This was always the best case for Western Alienation

I have been writing letters of recommendation for just shy of thirty years— 17 students this year alone— in ratios that more or less track the majority-women population of liberal arts students. Obviously I have never commented on a student's looks... and no recipient has ever called me to ask.

February vibes in Vancouver (from yesterday down at Kits Beach)

Sen̓áḵw on the water. Past the marina from the bridge to Granville Island. Such a pretty thing, now registering its first renters! Still not sure this little bit of Squamish Reserve land (Kits 6) will have its first residents by the 2026 Census, but here's hoping. senakw.com

So it really was like the Aurora, CO case. Sure looks like neglectful race-baiting landlords are being well supported by the administration of President Neglectful Race-baiting Landlord.

So it’s broadly recognized that Vancouver needs more hotel rooms, that high room rates driven by high occupancy are a drag on the local economy, that the city needs to facilitate the construction of more hotels. All of this is true I want speak to the human importance of hotels

Are "pre-rebuttals" a thing, like "pre-zonings"? If so, here's a pre-rebuttal from @jensvb.bsky.social and I to the latest argument that supply doesn't matter (from CCPA, sigh). The Key: Doubling up is the demographic indicator demonstrating our shortage. homefreesociology.com/2025/07/06/h...

Strongly agree. From our 2023 Housing Nationalism paper: "[R]eactionary nationalism operates as part of a cultural toolkit for solving problems, where entrepreneurs practiced in the tool can advance their own interests by seeking out and magnifying problems to solve." hdl.handle.net/2429/87373

There was never any reason to believe the tactical sophistication of orcas wouldn't evolve further. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Bonus: replacing subsidized ethanol corn with solar panels would leave even more room for baseball fields.

The group bike ride for Alex Pretti is about to depart in Minneapolis, stopping at his memorial, then Renee Good’s, and finishing at the VFW. If you can join, hop on anywhere. It’s a warm 17° & sunny! I’ve never seen this many cyclists for a group ride. ⚡️✊🏽⚡️🚲⚡️✊🏽⚡️ #RIPPretti

Thousands of people filled the streets of downtown Minneapolis in protest of federal immigration enforcement for the second consecutive Friday. 📷️: Aaron Lavinsky

Ack! I was just around the corner from all this drama last week, and I had no idea! Would've made a field trip down the next block had I known...

"[T]he city is allowed to use the church and gym as warming sites under the B.C. Building Code, as long as those accessing the space do not fall asleep." I see, so as long as people are regularly poked with sticks, they could stay there. The Code's not helping... www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Been awhile since I've tracked it down, and I don't think I was fully attuned to just how much Georgism was snuck into Howard's "Garden Cities of Tomorrow" scheme influencing so much subsequent suburban development. Also: cool cover pic, man! en.wikisource.org/wiki/Garden_...

Very solid housing advocacy from Zoe here. Her (adorable) home should be legal.

FWIW, this story is ultimately about a campaign against redevelopment for housing, and it takes some pretty interesting turns. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Great to see Andy Ramlo's liquid demography contribution below! Wish @jensvb.bsky.social and I had been able to include it in our post criticizing the solid demography alternatives (i.e. his red lines)... homefreesociology.com/2025/12/08/t...

It shouldn't cost $200M in this day and age but we should've started a long time ago too; it's better late than never. There's limited road space and it's critical to maximize the use of that space. That means making buses, which carry a lot of people, faster.

Hoping this Be Fresh opens soon! Really looking forward to having a little grocery store nearby that carries organic stuff and doesn't seem, you know, evil...

I wrote about my childhood friend Alexi Pretti. Please read it and share it and remember him as a human being. @theverge.com

Victoria (City) v. Adams decision on right to shelter: if there's not enough shelter space you can't stop people from sheltering in public Seems like a start for right to housing: if there's not enough housing, you can't stop people from housing themselves in RVs. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Updated population projections out from StatCan this morning. A good opportunity to reiterate that net NPR is a stationary process that’s essentially zero except for policy change induced short term fluctuations. canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=88837...

brass solidarity band performing “stand by me” in the streets of whittier next to alex pretti’s memorial. the crowd started chanting “the people united will never be defeated” so they incorporated it into the song. i love minneapolis

Small town Kimberley rallying in support for Greenland matches well their progressive history also rallying in support for zoning reform. True story: we used their 2022 code for modelling possible results from BC's Small Scale Multi-Unit Housing legislation. news.gov.bc.ca/files/bc_SSM...

Tip to self for next December: Don't put lights on the squirrels' favourite hazelnut tree.

Kare 11 local news just read, in full, this statement from Michael and Susan Pretti, the parents of Alex Pretti. "Please get the truth out about our son."

Super interesting peek at inheritance as a portion of property transfers in the US, amounting to 7% overall and 18% in pricey California by cotality data. @jensvb.bsky.social and I saw some similar patterns in Canadian data looking at non-market transfers. homefreesociology.com/2021/08/13/c...

Interesting look at property controls and anti-competitive practices in the grocery business (i.e. how commercial landlords attract anchor stores). (housing scholar hint: Competition Bureau might also want to peek at municipal corporation property controls on housing!) www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

With 2025 housing starts data in a quick check where select metro areas are at, and how that fits in historically. Montréal, Calgary, and Vancouver beat out Toronto for 2025 starts. Live version: canviz.mountainmath.ca/plot?v=42127...

I met an absolutely lovely academic who asked whether my department back home is affected by ICE -- a question dramatizing how little info is getting out. For the record, the small example I chose: My dept has a carpool to pick up grad students of color who can't safely commute to campus alone.

Still a dual citizen, arriving to Vancouver by way of Minneapolis. And as I suspected, making a call to oppose ICE funding to my particular US House Representative has proven unnecessary. This represents my position quite well.

1911 real estate advertisement from the Coquitlam Archives suggesting they'd see "a population of perhaps 250,000 in a few years" www.coquitlam.ca/760/Coquitla... And... a short 115 years later, we're ALMOST there. (Note: Coquitlam still contained PoCo in 1911, so it's only fair to include it!)

This is a pretty interesting corporate collision between City of Vancouver, CAPREIT, and Harrington Housing (hadn't heard of before). There's a very real gap between short-term and long-term rentals that needs filling, but this looks like a really dodgy way of filling it.