Building taller buildings: in wood, not reinforced concrete

May 13, 2008

An article in today’s local media reports that British Columbia’s Premier Gordon Campbell is proposing changes to the province’s building code to allow wood-frame construction for buildings taller than 4 floors. Going higher … using wood Canwest News Service Published: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 A plan by the province to raise the minimum height for […]

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Diigo Bookmarks 05/14/2008 (a.m.)

May 13, 2008

Do tourists miss ‘Toronto the Good’? – Posted Toronto – Annotated While some people say that “gritty” = “edgy” (and therefore “cool”), there’s an undeniable line that gets crossed at some point, and then gritty isn’t edgy anymore, it’s just shabby & run-down & dirty. It seems that too many North American cities are on […]

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Diigo Bookmarks 05/13/2008 (p.m.)

May 13, 2008

MIT students show power of open cell phone systems (MIT Technology Review) Fascinating report on MIT class project to design software programs for Android (Google) mobile operating system. Upshot? Location, location, location. All but one of the projects involved location-based applications. tags: mit_techreview, mit, android, cell_phones, mobile_technology, locative_media

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Diigo Bookmarks 05/13/2008 (a.m.)

May 12, 2008

Victoria Earthquake Maps Earthquake hazards mapping for Greater Victoria, including amplification, liquifaction, and other risks, relative to one another for the region. Basically, if I can just make sure I’m at home (in Rockland — *rock* land, see?) when the big one strikes, I could be alright. Small comfort, though… tags: earthquake, seismic_data, victoria

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Diigo Bookmarks 05/12/2008 (p.m.)

May 12, 2008

The painful cost of booming growth | Seattle Times Newspaper (Local News) – Annotated “Puget Sound is a funnel. Anything that we do at the top end of the funnel comes out at the bottom end.” Sometimes painful reading, this article looks at the effect of bad wastewater runoff management and its deleterious effect on […]

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Diigo Bookmarks 05/11/2008 (a.m.)

May 10, 2008

Gas Prices Send Surge of Riders to Mass Transit – New York Times Something to think about “out west,” where existing public transit might be spotty, or where the only public transit is buses. Rail definitely makes sense for many people here. “Some cities with long-established public transit systems, like New York and Boston, have […]

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Diigo Bookmarks 05/09/2008 (a.m.)

May 8, 2008

“On Jane Jacobs” by Richard Florida (Creative Class Exchange) Nice synthesis by Richard Florida (written for his Globe & Mail column) of Jane Jacobs’s approach to thinking about economies. Let’s hope it makes more people read her 2000 book, The Nature of Economies. tags: jjacobs, economic_development

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Diigo Bookmarks 05/07/2008 (a.m.): 4 from Christopher Hume

May 6, 2008

In praise of the lost art of strolling, by Christopher Hume (Toronto Star) – Annotated Last (so far) in what almost amounts to a series of articles on the importance to a true urban fabric of sidewalks and pedestrians. Hume adds some interesting speculation around Modernism’s aversion to mingling/ chance encounters. tags: thestar, christopher_hume, pedestrians, […]

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Diigo Bookmarks 05/04/2008 (a.m.)

May 3, 2008

Escapable Logic » Blog Archive » “Oh, if only government went in for an open source make-over…” – Annotated Britt Blaser coins the compelling term “collaboration mall.” I left a long comment on April 28, but it appears stuck in moderation or has been deleted. Here’s what I wrote: QUOTE Thank-you for using my comment […]

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Persecuting smokers …and leaving everyone else to their own devices

May 3, 2008

There’s an editorial in today’s Times-Colonist, Persecuting smokers, which includes a reference to BC Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall that has me scratching my head. The editorial is about the Lower Mainland municipality of White Rock’s plan to ban smoking in all outdoor public places by 2010.  This would include streets, parks, beaches: everywhere.  […]

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