Vancouver
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Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon chew the fat on their 100-mile diet
Two years ago, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon set out to see if it was still possible, in these hyper-globalized times, to live off food grown in your own ‘hood. The pair made a pact to dine on dishes culled from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver, B.C., home for an entire year. Their […]
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Vancouver family does it up right.
Six kids, to be exact.
The Vancouver Courier profiles the Spino family -- 2 parents and 6 kids who live in a 3-bedroom condo in downtown Vancouver. It's an interesting read, as well as a good reminder that, for some families, downtown living makes a lot of sense. Says the pater familias:
"I don't see the need for having rooms in houses that you don't use. I don't see why you have two spare bedrooms for visitors that you just use to store boxes. I don't think that's efficient. I don't think that's a responsible way to live...You don't need that space. You don't need skis in the garage or a snowmobile somewhere and stuff in the attic-all that consumerism collecting. I don't think we're occupying a lot of space here. This high-density living is good for the city. It's good for the environment. It's good for the children-it's a fantastic way to live."
Good stuff.
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Check ’em out.
Last year, I tried to keep up with Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon and their campaign to follow a 100-mile diet. I failed, by only blogging about parts one through five. Since then, parts six through eleven have been published, which can now all be found on the 100-mile diet website:
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How the Olympics are becoming a sustainable business
This month, as the Olympic flame makes its torch-uous journey to Turin, Italy, most people’s eyes are fixed on the upcoming games. But our eyes are focused a little farther down the track. In our role as sustainability consultants, we’ve joined the field of those helping the London 2012 Olympics committee work out how to […]
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Meet the world’s first hybrid-cab driver
Like any self-respecting cabbie, Andrew Grant has a talent for small talk. But when the conversation turns to his prized 2004 Toyota Prius, things get a bit more animated. Andrew Grant. “Gave Cameron Diaz a lift once,” he says matter-of-factly, leading me toward the Vancouver curb where the curvaceous car is parked. “Oh, yeah? What […]
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Vancouver city politicians take risky moves to fight climate change.
If you want an example of what sets greater Vancouver, B.C., apart from cities south of the U.S.-Canadian border, look no farther than this Vancouver Sun headline:
Council votes to turn two of six lanes on Burrard Bridge into dedicated bike lanes.
Just for context -- the Burrard Bridge is one of just a few main access points into downtown Vancouver, and carries a significant amount of car traffic into downtown from some of the western neighborhoods. Vancouver tried a similar experiment in the mid-1990s, but it ended after just a week or so because of a public outcry over congestion. The same thing may well happen again.
So politically, this is a risky move. Which makes it all the more impressive: Vancouver city leaders are actually willing to take concrete and potentially unpopular steps to reduce the city's global warming emissions and promote biking and walking -- steps that seem completely outside the realm of political possibility in, say, Seattle or Portland. Even Seattle mayor Greg Nickels, who has won national recognition for organizing hundreds of the nation's mayors to speak up on global warming, has dedicated considerable political capital to rebuilding the Alaskan Way Viaduct -- a massively expensive project that will, in all likelihood, increase Seattle's global warming emissions.
But there's no such mismatch between rhetoric and reality in Vancouver city politics. According to city councillor Fred Bass:
"I became a city councillor because of global warming," Bass said after the vote. "And it seems to me that what we have here is a very feasible way of testing out whether we can mobilize people to walk and cycle and for people to leave their cars behind."
Definitely an experiment worth keeping an eye on.
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Can a Brit survive in North America without a driver’s license?
In the rich mosaic of North American society, I stand rather forlornly on my own as a member of an oft-forgotten minority group: I am an adult male who can’t drive. I have a wheelie bad feeling about this. Photo: Andrew White. Catapulted into the overcrowded car culture of Vancouver, British Columbia, from the U.K. […]
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Hmm.
Two and a half centuries ago, early economists in France postulated that all wealth springs from the earth: farming, timber harvest, mining, and fishing were the sole sources of value, value that then circulated throughout the rest of the economy. It was not a coincidence that the ruling landed gentry who controlled the dominant resource, agricultural land, supported this theory. In England, at about the same time, a different theory dominated: All wealth results from exports that bring in the outside income that circulates through the economy. It was not a coincidence that the rising commercial trading class strongly supported that theory.
Economics as we know it, starting with Adam Smith, developed as a critical attack on such self-serving narrow conceptions of the "origins of the wealth of nations." But two and a half centuries later we still have self-interested parties flogging these theories rather than treating them as long discredited and abandoned historical curiosities. The Urban Futures, Inc. consulting group's "Regions and Resources: The Foundations of British Columbia's Economic Base" is the latest example. It argues that the BC economy continues to be almost exclusively dependent on natural resource industries operating in the rural areas of British Columbia. The greater-Vancouver metropolitan economy is simply an avaricious parasite living off the wealth being generated by the hardworking folks in the hinterland.
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Good job them.
Via Worldchanging, where they are quite enamored of Vancouver, I see the city's 21 Places for the 21st Century contest.
Participants are encouraged to choose a favourite public place or site, and then propose a change or improvement to it. Changes can be abstract or concrete; permanent, temporary, or seasonal. Your chosen public space may be large or small, as may your change. Ideas for activities or programmes to be offered in a public place are also welcome. You're only limited by your imagination.
Dreamy.What if every city in North America held a similar contest?