“Today, new arenas — even those in tiny towns — cost tens of millions of dollars to operate and are built by multi-national engineering firms. They have fold-down seats, rubberized flooring, and few ways a young, roaming child may hurt themselves. They are functional and safe and boring as hell.”

NYC has its problems but man, more cities (including Vancouver) should aspire to be so big, dense, and cosmopolitan

Granville is really lively and popular, and people keep stopping just to take pictures. Let's keep it this way! A 24h bar street is a perfect candidate for a permanent pedestrian space, and the Seymour/Howe bus lanes are working well other than some kinks with the stop in front of the Art Gallery.

ABC isn't on here but they're over on the other site spreading misinformation about the VZ Action Plan, and also making it abundantly clear that they are choosing driver speed over human life. (1/3)

Give a nerd a chart or a map and they will waste a day. Teach a nerd how to make charts and maps and they will waste the rest of their life.

It doesn’t feel like this is true. Much of Asia is very pleasant and human scale despite having large buildings. It seems that road width Matters far more than building height

Beyond passenger elevators, Europe has way more freight elevators than us. On the left, a dumbwaiter at a small Tibetan restaurant in Paris. On the right, a NYC worker about to carry the better part of a ton of beer down into a basement by hand. High elevator costs are a worker safety problem.

Have you seen how cheap Spanish metros are to build? Well actually, I have and I will tell you all about it! I had the chance to visit the extension of line 11 in Madrid, where I learned a lot about their construction methods, peculiarities and processes. Let me take you along! A thread 🧵 (1/11)

(5/11) The second factor is vast standardisation: walk into any modern Madrid metro station and they all look the same. This will also be true for the new line 11 extension. Madrid always tries to design stations in the „hammerhead“ shape (their words not mine)…

re-open the [french] schools

trying to imagine what the chief divides in the internal political spectra of individual tolkien realms would be

🎯 High salaries are an outcome. We need the agglomerations that make higher pay possible. Toronto needs to make it easier to grow, and Vancouver needs to do that + build high-speed rail w/ Seattle (or maybe it's just not possible for Van to compete with SF).

A little personal news. Next August, I will join the Urban Planning school of the Université de Montréal as an assistant professor. Petite nouvelle. À partir de août, je vais rejoindre l'école d'urbanisme et d'architecture de paysage de l'UdeM en tant que professeur adjoint.

NZ land use reforms remain one of the most amazing experiments we have and they appear to work great

Relevant to City of Vancouver’s desire for an MLB expansion team (a successful expansion bid would require a stadium)

I’ve covered waste and elevators. Each is a huge topic and wins you double digit dollars per unit per month in savings. You need to do this for every system of the building to fix the problem. It is fixable though – HOA fees in Europe are a small fraction of ours.

I've dug into this and unfortunately, it appears that nearly all single stair buildings remain illegal in B.C. under the B.C. building code. I don't know if the original @bcndpcaucus.bsky.social announcement missed this, or if it was just politics, but here's why they still can't be built...

What an absolute gift from @chittimarco.bsky.social Go read it now: tpa.transitcosts.com/journey/speed

I cannot emphasize enough how much anyone interested in infrastructure and public transport should be reading this. People ask time and again why things cost so much and this is one of the biggest reasons. We solve coordination problems by throwing money at them.

wooohooo, got the long-form census

Good peice by Joseph Heath (odd title aside) on the issues with a government grocery store and the failures to learn from the past. josephheath.substack.com/p/naomi-klei...

I have endorsements from activists, an academic, a musician, a non-profit housing developer...I'm proud of that, I think that says a lot about my advocacy and who I am. But this is the sort of message that really makes me think--yeah, it's all been worth it!

I think the OG Victoria AAA routes (Fort and Pandora) are still my favorites in the region

Thank you to the Clover Point Picnic Club for organizing this birthday party for the Pandora Street Bike Lane! Turning 9 years old today!

Very cool that this bot now posts Lime ridership (h/t @mike.raccoon.bike) Also pretty striking how despite having fewer stations, Lime has ~50% more trips than Mobi

There's a neat project coming to Oak Bay council tomorrow: it's a historic revitalization of the old Lawson Residence at 960 Foul Bay combined with a large townhouse project to fund the revitalization work. Here's staff's *supportive* recommendation of a project that's been in the works for years:

Should be an interesting read

Is housing demand fake? Absolutely not, writes Will Dawson #bcpoli #housing #yyj #vanpoli

visited Whytecliff Park for the first time neat little place, if somewhat undercut by the fact that some great views are obstructed by mansions

always fun to see the baby sweepers around town

Building on this thread with a visual to show how much more uncommon roundabouts are in the Netherlands than many people assume (it sure surprised me when I visited!)

always find it incredible how the visuals of LPC events are incredibly regime-coded

New Burnaby Lake overpass looks fantastic (also saw a beaver)

PHOTOS: Colwood officially opens Galloping Goose pedestrian, cycling bridge. Read more at: goldstreamgazette.com/2026/04/10/p...

The official version of Washington, DC's laws are also stored on Github. It's a good idea! arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

we'll see how it shakes out over the course of years, but as of right now, mamdani is definitely showing how the future of good progressive governance means "use government to do good things and then post about it" both parts are important!

surrey is at the current terminal of the expo line (20+ km away from downtown vancouver) and you'll see trains running every few minutes, lots of people getting on/off. makes you really think what a grade-separated rail line from toronto to mississauga city centre, for example, could do.

Coun. Rebecca Bligh's motion to un-freeze supportive housing in Vancouver finally went ahead yesterday, after being delayed by Mayor Ken Sim's false allegation against Coun. Sean Orr a few weeks ago. #vanpoli @kehyslop.bsky.social reports on how that went: thetyee.ca/News/2026/04...

This is really quite good. Short and to the point.

Visited Port Moody for the first time

Look at this (120mm is shorter than the common "standard" in the US of 6"): - the scare quotes! - "It is difficult to create accessible dropped kerbs associated with 120mm kerbs as associated gradients will usually be too steep" (so in the US we contort ourself with ramp design-fu) - bollards!

new vancouver special?

The news that YVR is raising its transit fee yet again has me really annoyed. While full-on road pricing is a political non-starter for the moment, tolls (as @bushfield.ca suggested) into Sea Island would be a great start. So here's a little dashboard to play with how it could work. A short 🧵

traffic circles make for good stump speeches (this was very fun, learned a ton)

I want to add I think these surveys are not useful. Where do we see the highest housing prices (especially per sq ft or per acre?) it’s urban cores not the suburbs. Other factors (prestige, office park access) can distort that but it’s a surprisingly clear picture over dozens of metro areas.

Never really sunk in that the city of vancouver expects people to bike between general traffic on the left and buses on the right Seems safe

Oddly NIMBY-coded sign for something put up by local government

New FOI release: This document is a summary of Briefing Notes for the Ministry of Transportation and Transit for the time period of December 2025. View on Open Gov

while I am fanatically in favour of quick-build safety improvements, it's nice when cities spend a few extra bucks to buy nicer bollards that _look_ more permanent, or use precast concrete components for traffic calming examples from victoria + new west