i don't like to police genre, but it's not dark academia unless somebody gets squished in one of these bad boys

Legalizing more housing is key to municipal fiscal health and sustainability! Whether your priority is affordable housing, climate resilience, or good ol' potholes and community centres, ending exclusionary zoning is how wr build up the capacity to invest in our today and our tomorrow.

Jacob Loo Dawang@jacobdawang.com · yesterday

🧵 NEW POST: Edmonton’s $15M infill property tax dividend Matching permits to assessment data shows that small-scale infill from just 2024-26 will grow the tax base by $1.8B, and revenues by $15M. That's equivalent to a 0.7% property tax rate increase! #yegcc www.jacobdawang.com/blog/2026/pr...

@ardenenglish.bsky.social knocks it out of the park with a video about the impacts of the Broadway Subway on riders, businesses, etc! Should we have just gone with cut-and-cover?

The Consequences of Construction

YouTube video by The Greater Discussions

youtube.com

Can’t get this story out of my head. The delays aren’t unusual, the cost comes out at $100k per unit or ~$400/month rent for those non-market homes. Same issues come up for market housing, developers could keep building at lower rents if munis did not impose those delays and uncertainty.

Ryan Jabs@ryanjabs.bsky.social · 2d ago

Another window into why even non-profit housing is so expensive. Saanich delays led to an extra $9milliom (!!) in costs. No one in Saanich is held accountable so they keep dragging their feet and increasing costs. bcbusiness.ca/real-estate/...

Congrats to NY on this new affordable housing development. And congrats on having a mayor who really gets it. Exceptional framing, positioning the non-market housing announcement sandwiched between two clear pro-housing statements.

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 2d ago

We can't solve a housing crisis without building more housing. Today we broke ground on the Casanova Residence, which will soon be nearly 100 affordable and supportive homes with on-site services for New Yorkers. Every new home is a step toward a City that everyone can afford.

This has been stuck in my head in an oddly positive way; there’s lots we can be doing to improve wildfire outcomes in North America in the short and medium term!

Stephen Jacob Smith@stephenjacobsmith.com · last wk.

These crazy wildfires in Spain and France have only destroyed “hundreds” of homes? LA’s 2025 fires destroyed 18,000. Noncombustible materials and a tight wildland-urban interface are probably a better strategy than clearing vegetation and spacing out houses. www.nytimes.com/live/2026/07...

Really remarkable article, the Anglican Church is going gloves off against multiple cities. $9M and 6 years of delay to build 85 units of below-market seniors housing on their own land

Ryan Jabs@ryanjabs.bsky.social · 2d ago

Another window into why even non-profit housing is so expensive. Saanich delays led to an extra $9milliom (!!) in costs. No one in Saanich is held accountable so they keep dragging their feet and increasing costs. bcbusiness.ca/real-estate/...

Vancouver has stations with appropriate land use too (e.g. downtown) but does any other Canadian city have policy failures anywhere near the scale of Nanaimo or 29th stations, which are an 11 or 12 minute ride from the CBD on a high frequency line and still dominated by SFH 40 years after opening?

Bram Stolk@bramstolk.bsky.social · 3d ago

49th Avenue / Cambie.

In 2023, Ken Sim & ABC cancelled plans for Broadway active transport lanes because of the $10M price tag, saying we need to spend resources in other areas. So why are they now considering spending $20M rebuilding 2 blocks of 10th Ave, a bikeway Sim once called "perfect"? Read more:

ABC’s latest bike lane boondoggle

Or: why spend $10 million building 8km of protected bike lanes on a high street when you can spend $20 million replacing a couple blocks of an existing bike lane that you once called “perfect…

visionzerovancouver.ca

I was waiting for @patrickwyman.bsky.social's take on THE ODYSSEY and I am so relieved to find that he is 100% correct (that is, I agree with him enthusiastically) patrickwyman.substack.com/p/christophe...

"Buy with 0% Interest In the future of mankind" is an amazing line (Cartoon by Christopher Harry for The Guardian: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...)

remember when this happened. thanks Ken Sim

Progressive LA Mayoral Candidate Nithya Raman told Vanity Fair that her main difference with DSA is on housing. www.vanityfair.com/story/nithya...

Something I'll never understand - if I want to make substantial enough changes to my house, it has to go through a neighbourhood consultation process, but someone on my block can buy a vehicle that significantly increases the chances one of my kids gets run over.

David Zipper@davidzipper.bsky.social · 5d ago

Which vehicles most endanger the drivers of other cars? Giant pickup trucks — and the Dodge Charger Source: www.iihs.org/news/detail/...

yes this really happened

two days after Vancouver city council voted down their own Villages Plan, west side residents who opposed the plan en masse are complaining that Dunbar (!!) doesn’t have any wine bars, boutiques or gyms — the kind of amenities that require neighbourhood density to support

Antinous would fit right in some circles in Vancouver

Cutting immigration takes some pressure off the housing market. But it doesn’t change the underlying dysfunctional housing system.

Kevin Wilson@kwilsonhfx.bsky.social · 6d ago

This was something a lot of housing advocates saw coming a mile away when the immigration cuts were announced. The fundamental stance of Canadian cities is that they prefer high prices to building housing. They love high prices. Easing off immigration was never going to change that.

ABC Vancouver told reporters that the Villages plan was “disrespectful”, that city staff went too far, and that they were protecting residents from the sins of bureaucracy. But who told city staff to come up with a transformative plan? Here’s the receipts.

The Vancouver Missing Middle Odyssey (1927-2026)

This city is just this meme on every issue. The only acceptable place for young folks & new neighbours in our city according to NIMBYs is cramming into basement suites or on slow buses from surrey or Langley. We will never solve this country's housing crisis and traffic will just get worse.

Peter Waldkirch 華彼德@pwaldkirch.bsky.social · last wk.

The Vancouver Villages plan was defeated. This is a huge blow to housing policy in the city. This was the easiest part of the Vancouver Plan to implement; Ken Sim directed staff to prioritize it. If we can't pass this, what's the point of any of it? All housing policy work here is in limbo.

This pattern of politicians running against their own bureaucracies as champions of the people was tagged as "the dysfunctional dance of local governance" by Mariana Valverde when she saw it in Toronto in EVERYDAY LAW ON THE STREETS from 2012. Its biggest beneficiary? Rob Ford.

Justin McElroy 🇨🇦@jmcelroy.bsky.social · last wk.

A funny thing about Vancouver's Villages rejection happening so close to the election is Ken Sim's office posting a statement being like "we listen to the wisdom of the people" and ABC Vancouver sending supporters an email being like "we're protecting you from city bureaucrats who are garbage"

So disappointed in everyone but Lucy Maloney. No one is working to make this city better or more productive. They are working to preserve something that is in the past because they are incapable of accepting that change can happen and not be a bad thing. I hate here sometimes

They get to play both sides for the campaign. More to come for those who wanted it, and tireless defenders for those who didn’t.

Peter Waldkirch 華彼德@pwaldkirch.bsky.social · last wk.

WHOOOA Not surprising that ABC killed Maloney's village-pilot program...but seeing Bligh, Fry, and Orr all abstain lets the cat out of the bag. They're not supportive of Villages and probably happy that ABC is killing it.

What if the real gentrification was here all along

Peter Waldkirch 華彼德@pwaldkirch.bsky.social · last wk.

Maloney: "wrt my colleagues saying this is a 'one sized fits all approach', our current zoning is a one sized fits all approach. But it doesn't actually fit all people. It fits people who can afford to buy incredibly expensive homes, and it doesn't fit everyone else."

A funny thing about Vancouver's Villages rejection happening so close to the election is Ken Sim's office posting a statement being like "we listen to the wisdom of the people" and ABC Vancouver sending supporters an email being like "we're protecting you from city bureaucrats who are garbage"

I have nothing to add that hasn't already been said but this is an act of abject cowardice. All the endless hand-wringing about towers and concentrating development on existing rental areas, and when the opportunity comes to do something about it everyone except Lucy votes for the status quo.

Peter Waldkirch 華彼德@pwaldkirch.bsky.social · last wk.

Ok, they severed the SES part, so this is the vote on the main part of it: A-J. And, the Villages Plan is dead. This hurts. ABC, COPE, and the Greens are all unwilling to take even quite modest action on expanding low-rise apartment areas.

For as long as I’ve been a reporter in this city the complaint has been that we build too many giant luxury condos in a few places and not enough medium density housing across neighbourhoods. But this week reaffirmed why that approach is so baked into the DNA and political culture of Vancouver.

Here’s our full Vancouver mayoral debate between Kareem Allam, Rebecca Bligh and Colleen Hardwick. Glad we’re able to provide this level of public service journalism, and hoping we’ll do more of these across Metro Vancouver over the next 12 weeks. m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpdg...

3 Vancouver mayoral candidates debate why they should lead the city

YouTube video by CBC British Columbia

m.youtube.com