My comment to “Welcome to Underachiever Island”

July 5, 2008

Welcome to Underachiever Island is the name of an article by Carolyn Heiman, in today’s local paper.  Although I swore I’d abstain from the paper’s “sound off” functionality, I couldn’t resist leaving a comment after looking up the backstory behind Heiman’s piece.  I’m especially intrigued by Michael Ross, who sparked Roy Weston’s letter, and wonder […]

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Midsummer night fantasy for Victoria BC’s Janion Building

July 1, 2008

Scanning through my RSS feeds this afternoon, I came across Regine Debatty’s 6/30/08 blog post, Interactivos? workshop: Augment(o)scope, which included a photo of Madrid’s CaixaForum, as redone by Herzog & de Meuron. I had come across the image months ago, but today it clicked with the problem of the Janion Hotel (or Janion Building), an […]

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Web discipline: instructed skid marks

June 30, 2008

It’s a day shy of July, and I had hoped that by now there would be a “finish” to some still-open “action items.”  But things are not quite yet falling into place.  It’s not entirely my “fault,” but I confess that I’m skidding into inefficiency myself. At the same time, I’m reluctant to beat myself […]

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Diigo Bookmarks 06/28/2008 (p.m.)

June 28, 2008

Rate Your City Councillor : Rating Toronto and Vancouver City Councillors & Alderman More like this, please: I so WANT this for Victoria: an online feedback tool to rate your city’s councilors. So far available only for Toronto and Vancouver, but, one hopes, soon to expand to other Canadian cities. PS: of course you can […]

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Dear Bill: not the same old John anymore

June 22, 2008

This week will continue in “blogging lite” mode as kids race to finish certain commitments that involve some help from me in the transportation department, while I take a stab at housekeeping on a couple of real and virtual fronts. My brain is on fire with a wild idea, sparked by last week’s UDI luncheon […]

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First (and second) prize? Philadelphia (car) freedom

June 21, 2008

Inga Saffron’s Philadelphia Inquirer column about a recent speech by Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter includes this great sound bite from the mayor: “We are a walkable city, increasingly home to bicycles,” Nutter declared. “We want to preserve our urban form. We do not want the automobile and its design requirements to dominate the landscape.” [emphasis […]

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Still here, take two

June 19, 2008

Edit/update (see end of post) It’s called “take two” because I started an earlier post with the “Still here” title. Somehow, that never made it past the “draft” phase… This is just a quickie to let whoever still reads here know that I haven’t spontaneously combusted or anything. It’s busy around me, which is a […]

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Diigo Bookmarks 06/03/2008 (p.m.)

June 3, 2008

Nature’s Photonic Crystal, by Kristina Grifantini (MIT Technology Review) – Annotated File this under “I HEART biomimicry!” Amazing piece about scientists discovering that a lowly Brazilian beetle manufactures –chemically! — scales that essentially function as a photonic crystal structure for visible light. Now the scientists are not only making molds or copies of the beetles […]

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Hugeasscity has me thinking about Victoria’s Centennial Square (again)

June 1, 2008

(Note: might add some links/ photos later, but no time now — written on the fly…) Dan Bertolet of Hugeasscity hits all the right points in his discussion of what makes a good urban plaza.  He includes a “wow!” photo of Seattle’s Garden of Remembrance, which, with its relatively steep grade, allows for steps oriented […]

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Another thought on “localism,” via CEOS for Cities post “Gas Prices Force Rethink of the Model”

May 30, 2008

Richard Florida has repeatedly asked “us” (society, policy makers, planners, ordinary citizens) to think of a way to make service industry jobs valuable on the same level as trade union jobs were valuable in the earlier twentieth century. Florida doesn’t put it quite like this, but I’m extrapolating that it means that in days gone […]

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