Jens von Bergmann
@jensvb.bsky.social
š¤ 9655
š„ 607
š 2184
Data, analysis, visualization,
#CensusMapper
, transportation cyclist. šVancouver, BC
reposted by
Jens von Bergmann
GRIDS Vancouver
about 7 hours ago
I used
@jensvb.bsky.social
's Vancouver street tree map to find a 4-block stretch of giant magnolia trees in East Van (Inverness between 29th and 33rd) and it is lovely
mountainmath.ca/vantrees
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Planners understanding that allowing something as an option is not the same as requiring everyone to choose that option challenge impossible.
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1 day ago
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LOL, this is about people not wanting multiplexes in their neighbourhood
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4 days ago
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Minimum lot size regulations have done a lot of harm. How much harm?
@lausterna.bsky.social
and I ran estimates for Vancouver and the numbers are staggering.
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4 days ago
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John Holbein
5 days ago
There's one trait where economists clearly outperform the other social sciences: Hubris.
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Peter Waldkirch čÆå½¼å¾·
5 days ago
The cool thing about municipal politics is, we could just...not do that
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Anthony Floyd
7 days ago
Lol, NPR has a feature on SenĢÔḵw titled "The skyscrapers that NIMBYs and zoning couldn't stop"
www.npr.org/2026/03/27/n...
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The skyscrapers that NIMBYs and zoning couldn't stop : Planet Money
LIVE SHOW TOUR INFO HERE. New stories, live tapings, special guests, book signings and more.Ā What would you build on a piece of land when all the normal rules go out the window?On todayās show, how th...
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/27/nx-s1-5764334/squamish-nation-senakw-vancouver-indigenous-construction-housing-nimby
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When people say āhousing is not affordableā they often donāt mean that they canāt afford their current housing. Instead they mean that they canāt afford to achieve their preferred living arrangements in reasonable proximity to jobs and amenities they value. We need measures that capture that.
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8 days ago
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Michael Wiebe
8 days ago
Saying zoning is not a constraint because some homes get permitted is like saying your personal budget is not a constraint because you bought some groceries.
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Unpopular opinion: All choice moves are welfare enhancing. And if your affordability metric registers choice moves as a clear net negative then your affordability metric has a problem.
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10 days ago
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Andrew Gelman et al.
12 days ago
How earthquake safe are Vancouver condos?
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/23/h...
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How earthquake safe are Vancouver condos? | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/23/how-earthquake-safe-are-vancouver-condos/
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Michelle Cyca
13 days ago
"The panic now visible in British Columbia is not evidence that reconciliation has gone too far. It is evidence that reconciliation has begun to have material consequences."
@khelsilem.bsky.social
in
@macleans.bsky.social
:
macleans.ca/politics/can...
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Canadaās Reconciliation Panic - Macleans.ca
Indigenous peoples are gaining territory and political and economic clout. Not everyone is ready for what that will mean.
https://macleans.ca/politics/canadas-reconciliation-panic/
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Vancouver Open Data updated their tree dataset and now also include (some) trees in parks. And I added UBC trees, lots of cherries in bloom up there right now. Live version:
mountainmath.ca/vantrees
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13 days ago
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Jo Wood
13 days ago
I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Grant Sanderson (
@3blue1brown.com
) is one of the most skilled visual communicators. His explanations are pedagogic masterpieces and a joy to experience. He's outdone himself with his latest on M.C. Escher's Prentententoonstelling.
youtu.be/ldxFjLJ3rVY
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This picture broke my brain
YouTube video by 3Blue1Brown
https://youtu.be/ldxFjLJ3rVY?si=B2DJyzvoa3VzBzY8
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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li
13 days ago
the left nimby program in a nutshell 1: "decommodify housing" 2: sadly, no new housing is built 3: i inherit my parents' house
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Nice empirical data how upzoning works to reduce prices. By reducing the cost of the land component of housing. Also a good explanation of why one canāt take the observations from upzoning a single parcel and think they work the same for broad upzoning (a fallacy also known as Condonomics).
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15 days ago
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Stained glass window depicting early Canadian settlers converting First Nations people to Christianity right above the confession box is an interesting choice.
16 days ago
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Matt Darling
17 days ago
"Ironically, as the empirical case for YIMBYism grows ever stronger, it is the anti-āEcon 101ā crowd that is now falling back on airy theorizing and simple models. It turns out that their problem with non-empirical economics wasnāt the lack of rigorous real-world investigation after all..."
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Updated quarterly population estimates out today. BC internal net migration held mostly steady with a slight net-positive internal migration. Adding in international migration pulls this deep into the negative as NPR population is dropping fast. Plus Q4 is generally a low quarter for immigration.
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17 days ago
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Westside Backyard
18 days ago
Ah yes, the well renowned neighbourhood for affordable housing - West Point Grey
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Dr Lindsay Tedds
19 days ago
@gillianpetit.bsky.social
and I have built something we're proud of. INCLUSIECON is our research home ā rigorous work on tax and transfer policy, designed from the start to be used. Take a look š
inclusiecon.ca
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Simple truths
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19 days ago
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Can confirm
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20 days ago
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Vision Zero Vancouver
22 days ago
Many people have been using our interactive crash map, which plots all crashes leading to serious injuries or fatalities since 2023. We just did a huge revamp of it, and introduced the ability to filter by location, demographic, mode share, and more. Check it out!
visionzerovancouver.ca/crash-map/
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Crash Map
Interactive Traffic Violence Tracking Map Our interactive crash map plots independently recovered vehicle crashes resulting in serious injury or death from January 2023 onwards. It gives informatioā¦
https://visionzerovancouver.ca/crash-map/
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Replication is (mostly) thankless work, big kudos to
@michaelwiebe.bsky.social
for doing these. Great to in this case see the replication (with lots of corrections of issues in the original paper) getting published.
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22 days ago
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Nathan Lauster
23 days ago
Morning hail has not greatly disturbed the plum blossoms, here gathered round the view of SenĢÔḵw against Vancouver's skyline (not to mention today's drama queen sky) How do I know they're plum blossoms? I cheated and checked against
@jensvb.bsky.social
handy map:
mountainmath.ca/vantrees
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When you give someone the power to deny people housing, in shockingly many cases they will use that power to deny people housing.
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23 days ago
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A very Vancouver story. The Vancouver planning system essentially requires land speculation. Thatās considered so normal by now that the school board argues the land it leases should be valued on the speculative value. But ultimately judge disagrees that speculation is part of āimmediateā value.
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24 days ago
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February data just came in and now we can see how durable these declines are. February 2025 is when we saw the first big drops in travel patterns, did this persist year over year or are we reverting back? The data shows a (small) further decline in Canadians travelling to the US. So far.
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25 days ago
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Robson Fletcher
26 days ago
Hello I would like to share with you my new-and-improved website that compiles 46 years' worth of baby-names data in Alberta:
albertababynames.com
It now includes the latest data (for 2025) and a similar-names function to easily browse through various spellings in naming trends.
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Alberta Baby Names Explorer
Explore 46 years of Alberta baby name data (1980ā2025). Search any name, browse trends, and see what was popular each year.
https://www.albertababynames.com/
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Took the bus today, which means I had some time to waste on the ride home and added colouring for flower trees. (And some overdue styling updates.)
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26 days ago
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Evan Roberts
26 days ago
Carefully designed paper finds that St Paul's rent control ordinance 1) led to significant declines in home values for Saint Paul home owners, 2) gave greater benefits to higher cf. lower income renters, 3) harmed small landlords as much as large ones
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
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The redistribution of housing wealth caused by rent control
This paper studies the effects of rent control on the housing wealth of renters, landlords, and homeowners. Following the passage of rent control in Sā¦
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094119026000161
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Jens von Bergmann
Mike Sowden
11 months ago
OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/
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Cherry blossom season is upon us in Vancouver. Want to find the best spots for viewing? Interested in specific species of cherry trees? My treemap has you covered.
mountainmath.ca/vantrees
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26 days ago
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And in addition to younger people who did form households owning at lower rates than their peers across time and space, younger people are forming households (of any tenure) at lower rates.
@lausterna.bsky.social
and I decomposed this into a dual measure of housing frustration.
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28 days ago
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My precioussss⦠One Zone to preserve them all, One Zone to guard their character, One Zone to hoard for kith and kin, and in nepotism bind them.
29 days ago
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Thatās a crazily clean break. Iāll have to dig into the microdata to better understand how living arrangements of adults in family households changed.
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29 days ago
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And now the third crane is almost deconstructed, phase 1 of SenĢÔḵw is nearing completion.
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about 1 month ago
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Am going to use this to place bets on the trains I book being late as a hedge to ensure I am happy no matter if I arrive on time or way late. Also, a good way to quantify the hidden costs of unreliable rail service.
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about 1 month ago
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Stephen Jacob Smith
about 1 month ago
Single-stair gets the New York Times treatment.
@holz-bau.bsky.social
reminds us why they call the last line the kicker:
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/b...
(gift link)
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Where a bunch of Vancouver-based housing talking heads advocate for bringing back the quota system of the residential floorspace cartel where Metro Vancouver organizes the member municipalities to keep housing artificially scarce... š¬š¬š¬
housingreset.ca/2026/02/25/c...
about 1 month ago
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Became a citizen earlier today. Itās a remarkable experience, really quite special. Did not anticipate the layers of emotions that come with this.
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about 1 month ago
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Jens von Bergmann
Zak Vescera
about 1 month ago
Last month Surrey news site published a scoop about a Vancouver politician's shock resignation. Except that never happened. Our investigation found the website, Surrey Speak, is powered completely by AI. And it has links to a tech company backed by SFU
#vanpoli
theijf.org/article/insi...
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Inside a Surrey ālocal newsā site run by AI
Surrey Speak published fake news about a politician and an AI-generated picture of a real murder victim
https://theijf.org/article/inside-surrey-speak-ai
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A storey in four acts as captured by local news media: 18 storeys is too high, weād 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 ...
about 1 month ago
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Damien Moule
about 1 month ago
No real surprises about where rental deserts (by this definition) are located in Toronto. Though of course the city itself is much more mixed than any of the surrounding suburban municipalities.
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On the surface there are the kindergarten level games played by the government south of the border, but deeper down the details on the government ask that shine through are truly frightening. And happy to now be officially barred from doing business with the Department of War. (Not that it matters)
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about 1 month ago
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Fun paper on renal deserts in the US. Quick and dirty interactive map for Canada following the definitions in the paper.
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about 1 month ago
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Jens von Bergmann
Data Science Renee
about 1 month ago
Anthropic: "Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War"
www.anthropic.com/news/stateme...
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Statement from Dario Amodei on our discussions with the Department of War
A statement from our CEO on national security uses of AI
https://www.anthropic.com/news/statement-department-of-war
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So what is the current state of the data sharing agreement between CRS and IRS? Pretty sure this violates Canadian law too and I donāt see how we can keep sharing personal financial and demographic information of Canadian residents with foreign organizations that fail to adequately protect it.
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about 1 month ago
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1973: "The West End is an abomination and we are using the force of the law to ensure something like this can't get rebuilt". * except via a highly discretionary process where we change the law one building at a time and make it a public spectacle
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about 1 month ago
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