Do the Conservatives really hate cities?

November 4, 2007

Another Toronto Star article on Toronto specifically, but Canadian cities generally, written by Royson James: Conservatives have written Toronto off Annotated James’s article relates to one from the previous day by Jim Coyle, If Tories not for cities now, when? (also Toronto Sun), which I blogged about here. Echoing Coyle’s theme (and also Christopher Hume’s […]

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“My medium is motion control”

November 3, 2007

Watch this: Cool Hunting: Bruce Shapiro It’s a terrific video produced by Ami Kealoha, on the artist Bruce Shapiro.  He grabs my attention immediately by introducing himself thus: "My medium is motion control."  That’s the first time I’ve heard motion control described as an artistic medium.  After seeing Shapiro’s work in the video, though, I […]

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The continuing saga of how Canadian cities fund infrastructure

November 2, 2007

If the “continuing saga” were a question, the answer might be “badly.” Or: “poorly,” literally. The Toronto Star‘s Jim Coyle has a great column, which asks this question: If Tories not for cities now, when? He leads us into the problem with Rabbi Hillel’s three questions, as used by Bob Rae, a Liberal politician at […]

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Bona-fide “made in Canada” idiocy

November 1, 2007

Update, see below… This has to be the stupidest thing I’ve read all year: Arts groups want government to regulate the web A coalition of Canadian artists is demanding that the government control the internet for Canadian content, lest we get swallowed up by the Americans. They claim that since the CRTC ensures that there’s […]

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Reading ease redux

October 31, 2007

Exactly one week ago I posted an entry called Writing for magazines: what level of difficulty? It was about achieving that supposedly magical “grade nine” level of writing (*). Well, I’m a recidivist, I guess …back- (or is that “up-“?) sliding to a more-comfortable-for-me number. I finished my December article for FOCUS Magazine, and here’s […]

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Toronto gets it — will Victoria?

October 30, 2007

Take a look at this article from CEOs for Cities: Artscape Helps Broker Triple-Win Deal in Queen West Triangle for the low-down on a fascinating & essential new project in Toronto. What Toronto will do is provide space for artists — precisely the kind of people who provide the “infrastructure” that innovative, creative cities need, […]

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Innovation

October 25, 2007

Via CEOs for Cities, a pointer to an interesting article in Business Week about innovation — Five Common Mistakes in Innovation — that included the paragraph below, which really caught my attention. Anyone who has ever participated in community initiatives, non-profit work, government or school-governance type stuff, knows the drill of endless “brainstorming” and “pilot […]

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Urban Land Institute’s Las Vegas conference webcast live

October 24, 2007

Not all of the Urban Land Institute‘s annual conference presentations are being webcast, but several key ones are, and furthermore they’re supposed to be archived for later viewing, too. Surf over to this site and follow the links: ULI – the Urban Land Institute | 2007 ULI Fall Meeting I listened to a fantastic presentation […]

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Writing for a magazine: what level of difficulty?

October 24, 2007

(see update, bottom of this entry) I’m in the middle of returning to an article for the December issue of FOCUS Magazine, the Victoria monthly for which I’m a regular contributor. My column is called “City Smarts,” and I’m usually limited to 800 words — which is really tough for someone as loquacious as I […]

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Using YouTube to recruit for jobs

October 24, 2007

Here’s another way that new platforms — in this case YouTube — are affecting more traditional businesses (in this case personnel search firms) and the venues for information they relied on in the past: YouTube – Seeking Project Architect (Midwestern U.S.) It’s a relatively boring, straightforward read of a job description for an architect, the […]

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