Your reception is just fine…

December 19, 2007

…the fiddling is happening at my end. I’m exploring different themes — bored as I am with being confined to my house (and even my bed) because of this pesky pneumonia. I’ve settled on what I think is a very nice, functional theme, which (unlike the previous ones) gives me some options in changing the […]

Read the full article →

More thoughts on economic development, land use, zoning, quality of life…

December 16, 2007

…courtesy of further reading in Robert L. Bish’s Local Government Organization in the Capital Region (and continuing somewhat from yesterday‘s entry). Bish is concerned with explaining the need for and importance of economic development in the region, which is a necessity for Victoria since it relies for over half of its property tax revenue on […]

Read the full article →

“Show, don’t tell”: what municipal government can learn from good fiction

December 15, 2007

Local Government Organization in the Capital Region is the name of a very useful 35-page report written in 1999 by Dr. Robert L. Bish, Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria. Bish effectively argues against amalgamation (what other places call the unicity concept, municipal reform, or consolidation movements), and show that generally, the process doesn’t […]

Read the full article →

Cities do it (land use) better

December 12, 2007

Here’s a “must read” piece by Edward Glaeser, just republished in the CEO for Cities blog, The Greenness of Cities, and first published in the New York Sun on January 30/07. It explains why, from an environmentalism perspective, it’s far better to build highrises (and use land efficiently) than to oppose development (and force development […]

Read the full article →

Auto de Feo: the Beat goes on

December 10, 2007

I would be very interested in seeing this exhibition, if I were in Brooklyn or nearby enough: Michael de Feo curating a group of street artists in Behind the Seen (starting on Dec.13, through January 15/08). Admittedly, change in age and circumstance has led me to lose my natural taste for much beyond-the-pale kind of […]

Read the full article →

Varieties of density

December 7, 2007

It’s great to read that places like San Jose are densifying — see Real Transit-Oriented Development by CEOs for Cities for more on how they’re doing it (hint: the office park is a-changing): …radical transformation taking place in that city at the insistence of San Jose’s innovative economy CEOs. The city’s suburban-style single-use office parks […]

Read the full article →

“Victoria’s choice”: my foray into critiquing municipal infrastructure funding

December 3, 2007

It’s up — my second article is up on the Vibrant Victoria website. It’s called Victoria’s Choice: to be or not to be …is not the question. While it’s about the problem of municipal infrastructure funding in Canada generally, I try to address specifically the situation in Victoria. That is, Victoria’s choice not “to be […]

Read the full article →

Using google docs for presentations

November 25, 2007

Here’s a technical question that I need answered by …oh, early tomorrow. Lunchtime at the latest.  On Monday morning I’m supposed to do a technical dry-run for a talk I’m presenting on Wednesday. There are some logistics involved, in terms of equipment. I don’t have a projector, and the organizer of the venue is kind […]

Read the full article →

Testing YouTube “embed” function

November 25, 2007

Gordon Price is having trouble embedding YouTube videos on his blog. I have never been able to embed them on this blog — only link to. But I thought I’d give it another try… Here’s an architecture-related video: Jean Nouvels Torre Agbar in Barcelona Wanna bet it’ll show up as just code? … Pish. It […]

Read the full article →

Wikitecture?

November 19, 2007

Another intriguing link from Digital Urban: Collaborative Virtual Architecture – Wikitecture …Well, “wikitecture,” who would have predicted that 10 years ago? I admit, this is something yours truly needs to explore before she can really comment. But it’s serendipidous at the very least, to run across this nugget now, as I’m thinking about social apps […]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →