Preservation is inherently sustainable

March 16, 2010

Barbara Campagna, chief architect at the National Trust, is a sustainability expert. She was in Victoria last week to talk about preservation as sustainability. But will Campagna’s message reach Victoria on the issue of the Johnson Street Bridge?

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Mark Holland to speak in Victoria BC

March 15, 2010

Victoria continues to work on developing a new Official Community Plan, and has enlisted noted planner Mark Holland. My thoughts on the process here.

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Amateur food porn for Pi Day

March 14, 2010

Today is Pi Day (3-14-etc.), and I made pizza pie. Here’s the documentation/ how-to. Easy as pie, try it!

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The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

March 14, 2010

How To Love Government 2.0 and Be A Contrarian at the Same Time Terrific post by Andrea DiMaio (of the Gartner Blog Network) that’s a must-read for governments starting on public engagement strategies etc. In particular, final paragraphs are spot-on, given the propensity to use walled gardens (Facebook) or stand-alone portals for “engagement.” QUOTE As […]

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Inner gremlin bites hand that feeds it

March 13, 2010

A late-night tweet, a disturbing dream, and a response to the tweets resolves the meaning of the dream. But will it change my feeding habits?

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Theater of the absurd for 2010

March 13, 2010

It’s theater month for me, with the Belfry Theatre‘s SPARK Festival leading the way. Tonight I saw Tiny Apocalypse (video excerpt here), a powerful one-woman play by Camille Gingras, in which an office drone named Rita Downenlower (“down and lower”) slowly comes undone.  The play is pitch-perfect: nothing over-the-top or campy or horribly lugubrious, just […]

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Vancouver Day-trip

March 12, 2010

A day trip to Vancouver included visiting the Woodward’s complex on Abbott at W. Hastings to see the exhibit Vancouverism.ca. Most impressive was the atrium, Stan Douglas’s photo-mural, and the new condo builing by Gregory Henriquez.

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What is Victoria saying?

March 10, 2010

The City of Victoria is trying to gauge public attitudes as part of its efforts to come up with a renewed Official Community Plan (OCP). There’s a website dedicated just to this endeavor, Shape Your Future Victoria. There are surveys to fill out, questionnaires to answer, …and opportunities to be a jackass on camera. I […]

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That magical west coast light…

March 9, 2010

Overnight, our weather turned. After weeks of very mild temperatures and early blooms, we woke on Monday to a cold spell. The upside? Predicted rain didn’t materialize – instead we got cold, but bright, sunshine. Also on offer: a particular acuity through the late afternoon slanting light, a fullness in the colors, and some spectacularly […]

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Inbetween places

March 8, 2010

Strip malls are the inbetween places produced through car-centric (mis-)planning, and will be the hardest places to bring to adaptive re-use. So ugly they can’t be directly looked at, we avoid seeing them lest we turn to stone.

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