Many of those same Democrats are supported by the climate and environmental movements. A message to my friends: If we had a Democratic party that was focused on ending government mandates to own and drive cars, we'd have at least a somewhat easier time shutting down fossil fuels. But, we don't.

When you're so radical that you've worked yourself back around to defending mansion zoning, but somehow leftistly.

Housing policy may do more for the climate than climate policy itself. A new report finds that apartment residents emit 1/3 to 1/2 as much climate pollution as suburban homeowners—and that most US land still bans apartment construction. www.sightline.org/apartments-a...

Spending time in France and Switzerland, it’s clear that the “missing middle” in North America isn’t townhouses and duplexes. It’s mid-rises. Especially mid-rise neighbourhoods. Our denser urban fabric (Montreal, Chicago, etc.) is still mostly 2-3 storeys, not 4-8 like is so common here.

Watching Vancouver city council tonight, where the ABC Council is reviewing multiplexes. The NIMBYs are well-organized and they are angry. If 15% of Vancouver's renters watched this public hearing, their rage would transform this city.

Building dense new apartment buildings frees up much more affordable housing, including larger homes like detached houses! In this study, homes were a whopping 44% cheaper in the second round of moves/vacancies.

The mayor wants to get rid of Vancouver’s building code (effectively killing the city’s leading climate and single stair codes). Meanwhile they’re pushing to make plexes harder to permit. Pretty $#!+ all round.

Senakw Whale

CEREAL IS A PSYOP. THE BOX IS RECTANGULAR. THE BOWL IS ROUND. THE MILK IS WHITE. THE FLAKES ARE BROWN. NOTHING ABOUT IT MATCHES. WHO BENEFITS. FOLLOW THE GEOMETRY. THE GEOMETRY LEADS TO MICHIGAN. KELLOGG WAS A BIRDWATCHER. WHAT DID HE SEE IN THE TREES. WHAT DID THE TREES TELL HIM TO DO TO US

YTD in 2026, Metro Vancouver housing permits are down 38%! Led by townhouses! (but not duplexes, which are way up from a small base). N.B.: only 2 months of data & subject to revisions. (graphic is for all of BC) catalogue.data.gov.b...

too many stupid people have money; that's why I'm launching protein cigarettes

Do the people who blamed rising prices on greedy condo flippers think that home prices are down because the flippers stopped flipping?

the Vancouver Planning Regime likes to think of itself as a reaction to the freeway proposal but really it's a very negative reaction to the West End.

I wanted to take a moment to say a few things as directly as I could. Wanting to legalize apartments in the West Side of Vancouver isn't radical. A status quo built on exclusion is. If we want to move the needle at all, we'll need councillors committed to big ideas and real change.

The amount of opportunity we could create by opening up mansion zoning to apartments is hard for most of us to grasp. Most of us have no experience of such an expansion of opportunity in our lifetimes. We deserve to know what it feels like.

No turning on red lights will do wonders for everyone's safety and mental health.

Our sidewalks are already narrow and often crowded. While technology could be useful, it should compete with cars for road space, not with pedestrians and wheelchair users. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Building delightful, walkable cities with beautiful apartments is somehow still an overlooked climate solution: www.sightline.org/2026/05/05/c...

From @sightline.org www.sightline.org/2026/05/05/c...

In 2023 we did a quick rendering sketch for council motion by @christineboyle.bsky.social @onecityvan.bsky.social aiming to unlock new housing options in Shaughnessy... it didn't pass at the time, but here's the 2026 version to keep the dream alive.

What kind of a people would build such a place? What kind of gods would condone this?

maybe a hot take? not only is ziggy sobotka a great character and a great performance (RIP james ransone), but looking back from the vantage point of today, "young man struggling with his masculinity and yearning to be recognized as a man commits catastrophic violence" is incredibly prescient.

Check out my latest opinion piece! Public transit can save someone up to $15,000 per year. There is no other cost saving tool at any government’s disposal as powerful as public transit. @movementyvr.bsky.social

Socrates: and what is the purpose of a screen? Gloucon: to look at S: just so. And where does one look when driving? G: at the road S: and does a man’s gaze best view object at a time, or two? G: surely just one S: indeed - thus it cannot be proper for a car to have a screen

Far Beyond the Stars is a very good episode of Deep Space 9. There's some scifi shenanigans to get us there, but what it basically does is tell this tight little story about what the civil rights movement looked like in miniature, the micro level struggles and ordeals that constituted social change.

A drone just flew up to my 16th floor window and hovered outside for a minute. I did not like it at all.

My entry in the capture the essence of Vancouver’s West End in one photograph challenge

I've learned a lot from Danny not only about housing, but about how to be a better advocate. Thanks Danny. I'm looking forward to taking the lessons I've learned to City Hall!

One way to improve Vancouver would be to hire a bunch of city employees (we could give them uniforms) to enforce traffic rules, and to impose fines on drivers who violate the rules of the road. Wouldn't that be nice?

This is a great opportunity for a lesson about the importance of picking a terminal when designing a transit route. This proposed ferry to Gibsons and Bowen Island will terminate in Coal Harbour near the foot of Bute Street. Here's how that performs: 1/3

my high level policy goal for Vancouver is for our swagger-loving mayor to think it would be super swag to commit as a matter of policy to being the biggest city in British Columbia forever

The rat race used to be working too hard to buy a boat or a cottage. Now it's trying to afford enough bedrooms on a quiet side street. Housing really and truly is fraying the social fabric in a way longtime homeowners can't grasp.

Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think

Or follow the Milwaukee Ave model and turn the streets into parks!

Vancouver's empty-nesters yearn for large, walkable apartments on tree-lined streets with excellent sound-proofing and updated kitchens.

He just tweeted out the plot of War and Peace

Zoned capacity just measures the upper limit of the supply curve: it's the quantity of new housing that developers will produce when prices are infinitely high. I, for one, am not interested in paying $∞ for housing. 1/

I'm partial to having individual balconies, but in some cases a nice big shared roof deck might be the better option. This is the "Four/Five" single stair prototype, but this time with full height bay windows on each unit and a shared rooftop deck accessible by elevator and the shared stair.

Vancouver is selectively destroying its favourite businesses to build apartments above pharmacies on polluted streets. We do this because it's illegal to build apartments on the quiet streets.

British Columbians are deeply disturbed to see President Trump threaten “a whole civilization.” We want the people of Iran to be free from Iran’s oppressive regime. Threatening innocent Iranians does not achieve that goal.

it seems silly to say out loud but we're all adults here. whatever the preoccupations of the CIA / KGB we know that none of Gandhi, Nkrumah, Fannie Lou Hamer, the Viet Cong, the Mau Mau, uMkhonto weSizwe, the various mujahideen, the IRA were fighting for the sake of making either the USA or USSR #1

"If you invade persia, you will end a great empire." - The Oracle at Delphi

The Garden of Earthly Delights (detail), by Hieronymus Bosch, 1480-1505, 📸 by @alexbrandon

That's us, all of us, on the far right.

"...growth in advanced economies has become increasingly biased toward knowledge-intensive activities that prefer large cities. Second, Canada’s urban regulations make it unusually hard for those cities to grow."

This is a banger.

Americans are manipulated, abused, ripped off, injured, and taken advantage of by the auto industry complex in so many ways, large & small. Yet they just accept it so passively. It drives me crazy.

It's 10am on a beautiful spring morning and a driver is already screaming at me for riding a scooter. Why can't drivers just be nice and normal?

being able to sit patiently with other people's thoughts, sit patiently with your own, and make both of those processes legible to someone who is not you is very valuable. if you can find a new way to do this that is fantastic news but I suspect it will at least resemble the model we've inherited

Crossed a street (as a ped). Cars have a stop sign. Some dude in an Evo comes speeding up, so I wait for him to actually stop before crossing. He slow rolls through, mocking me. This is 1 block from where the nanny was hit while in a marked intersection. Vancouver, our drivers are not alright.