A storey in four acts as captured by local news media: 18 storeys is too high, we’d be fine with 4-6 storeys 6 storeys are too big, we'd be fine with multiplexes Multiplexes are monstrosities, we are fine with existing post-Second World War bungalows ...

I’ve always felt like covered shotengai would be perfect for Vancouver/Cascadia with the mild weather and frequent rain. Covered area in North Van’s Shipyards area (super popular) is the closest thing I can think of

Shopping streets

Before (2025) / After (2026) the planting of a dozen trees instead of car parking spots on Rue Pascal, in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. Actually, Street View already has a 2025 view of this street with leaves on the trees, but at least this angle is exclusive to me :)

very strange scene at Vancouver council last night with councillor Pete Fry attempting to call in and comment on a social housing building as a resident, not a councillor

Colleague @poppedculture.bsky.social came into the office today ranting about this which I hadn't even seen yet but: "the rule of law for land use in Canada" remains an absolutely revolutionary political objective that nobody is interested in. www.thestar.com/news/gta/six...

re: the Olympic Village school

19 years after it was first conditionally approved, all levels of government have finished signing off on the necessary steps to build a school in Vancouver’s Olympic Village. A final year of debate and planning was required to raise the number of floors for the school from 3 to 4.

not intending to be charitable to ABC here, but was there a real event (some kind of safe supply thing?) that got spun into this? or was it made up wholesale?

I've lived in a few places with a lot of wasted interior space far away from windows; at the time I blamed the architects but didn't appreciate how much that space is caused by things mostly outside their control (building codes, floor plates)

Looking at floor plates through the lens of the 7m rule. Double loaded vs townhouse (which approximates the plate depth of single stair buildings)

You tend to only see these mansion combinations in neighborhoods zoned/landmarked low-density. They thrive with R6 zoning and landmark districts – West Village, UES/UWS side streets, Boerum Hill. Not the UES/UWS avenues, Midtown, or DTBK. You can defeat mansionization through high-density zoning.

One in six small multi-family buildings in the West Village is now a huge single-family home, part of a mansion wave sweeping over NYC www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

fun* table showing how much federal ridings vary in # of voters, from @acoyne.bsky.social’s book about Canadian democracy *fun not guaranteed

my hottest take on this is that Kingsgate Mall is mid and 80% of the attention it gets is vaguely classist "haha, it's like a poor mall but in a cool area"

had a guy ask me what powers @discretionary-yvr.bsky.social so he can use it to sell high efficiency windows, and I think that's beautiful

1960: "More and more large luxury apartment buildings are being constructed" 1966: "Vancouver's West End Almost An Apartment City... The area has become filled with high-rise apartments during the past six years."

TIL where the name Fairchild (Chinese-Canadian business conglomerate) came from and whoa www.foodcourtinsession.ca/mall-1-aberd...

I'm ranking every mall in Metro Vancouver Every two weeks, Food Court in Session will profile a mall with a podcast and essay Our first mall is Aberdeen, and we're joined by @bychrischeung.bsky.social I hope you enjoy yelling about the ranking of your favourite mall, and the project as a whole

Before (2024) / After (2026) some greening Rue de Monceau in the 8th arrondissement of Paris

“If having too many pizza places in Summerland is our biggest problem, then we don’t have too many problems,” the mayor said.

CN's critically important Second Narrows Rail Bridge across Burrard Inlet is stuck, unable to open for large ships to pass through Second Narrows for days. Crews are working around the clock to fix the lift bridge's mechanical issue. #bcpoli #vanpoli dailyhive.com/vancouver/se...

I keep thinking about drunk driving penalties in Latvia (BA limit .05, .02 for new drivers). As of 2022, if you're caught with a BAC of .15 or refuse a test, your car is confiscated & either auctioned or donated to Ukraine. This new policy has (unsurprisingly) reduced DUIs

was reminded of the "Sam Sullivan let someone smoke crack in his van" scandal of 2006. I kinda miss that guy www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nationa...

UPDATE: Vancouver Lenny Zhou has apologized for a video he posted on WeChat where he said without evidence that multiple opposition councillors were drug users and dealers

rereading old William Gibson short stories, and man, this bit about Vancouver

It's hard for me to stay negative when Vancouver is sunny. Oh no, my oceans too blue, my mountains too high.

There’s a certain type of person who sees this as evidence that planning practice drives scarcity and a certain type of person who sees this as evidence that you could make housing cheaper if you never let anyone have a building permit

It’s usually a sign that you’ve frozen out all other kinds of development. It’s the kind of thing you find in places with hardcore development restrictions like Venice, Dubrovnik, or Barcelona. You can’t preserve a city in amber like a museum without it literally becoming one.

insane price history on this (2300 sqft!) penthouse near Birch+Broadway. still assessed at $2.3M somehow www.zealty.ca/property/bc/...

think I’m about to move to a single family house. you either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain, etc.

Huge new paper out today finds that developers in Los Angeles are willing to pay 50% more for land with building permits in place (The paper's author, Evan Soltas, doesn't appear to be on bsky, so read the screenshots of his tweets below) evansoltas.com/papers/Permi...

Before (2025) / After (2026) the brand new school street Rue Vaucanson, Paris Centre. This part of the street is pedestrianized with a barrier at each end of it.

Trying something to help visualize land usage per household (which I think is one of the most useful ways to think about cities)

Shelter-in-place order for Puerto Vallarta after Mex army kills Jalisco New Generation Cartel leader. Road blocks w/ burning cars in Jalisco State cities; shootouts w/ security forces; taxi, rideshare suspended. Air Canada, Westjet, Porter cancelling flights www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...

And in case anyone is not in tech, this is like making a living expounding on how restaurants should be run, without knowing the difference between a baker and a short order cook.

good morning hockey people

surely this will be the year that they finally include niche local microblogging accounts

Ehh. Ultimately this came down to the West Side's century-long veto on new development, a dearth of regional support is downstream of that

oh my god www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

At the City of Vancouver we are in the midst of a extraordinary volume of rezoning. In this Council term, in its first 3 years, Council approved just under 20,000 housing units, in its last 9 months of the term it will consider over another 20,000 housing units via rezoning applications…

Due to popular demand, Heritage Bricks and #TransLink are producing a 2nd run of #SkyTrain car brick-building kits made of LEGO. Five different models of trains are available for limited-time pre-sale, including the new addition of the Canada Line car. dailyhive.com/vancouver/sk...

For those not following along, when transit vehicles go faster they complete more trips in a day and you can get the same service level for fewer vehicles and a lower wage bill

Brodie: "I believe that this heralds the death of the single-family neighbourhood." This is how Richmond population changed in this time on council: High-density Greenfield/brownfield development (with sub-par urbanism) and single family stasis or decline. doodles.mountainmath.ca/html/yvr_pop...

I think this is a pretty good reason to have nothing to do with @kareem42.bsky.social and the "Vancouver Liberals"; they're NIMBYing new hotels using completely BS concerns about parks

Construction reaches a big milestone on the Broadway Subway with 100% of running rail now installed. South of the Fraser, rail installation will begin this spring on the Surrey-Langley SkyTrain. #bcpoli #vanpoli #vanre dailyhive.com/vancouver/br...

Nice video with aerial footage of Lyon's new T6 extension that clearly shows two key ingredients of French trams that make it difficult to replicate them here, unless we change the way we design streets: - accepting an extremely narrow single-lane street - accepting bending youtu.be/RMxHZDGYGc4?...

I had a similar feeling the first time I tried Google Earth in VR; gives you a remarkably good understanding of how an area is built up (compared to looking at a map)

one of the great things about taking harbour air is seeing the stark urban geography of metro vancouver from such a unique view

She wrote a letter to Trudeau demanding more immigration to Alberta! This is trumpian level incoherence. www.alberta.ca/system/files...