Planning Pool

***Update, July 17: The Comox bylaw received first approval from the town council.***

Have you ever wished that your least favourite form of development could be simply banished? In the Vancouver Island town of Comox (pop. 12,000), the town council is considering just that.

Drive-thru A&W in the City of Courtenay, in the Comox Valley. Thanks to Brian Chow for the Creative Commons picture.

A current resolution, meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support sustainable development, would amend Comox’s Zoning Bylaw to prohibit drive-thru services like restaurants and banks throughout the town. Existing uses would remain but no future drive-thrus could be developed.

Howls of protest and approval … Continue Reading

Good and evil. In the media, so many things are reduced to black and white, liberal and conservative, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. In the past week, the Toronto media has seised upon a specific grudgematch, and they decided to take out their biggest wedge. I’m talking about the epic struggle between the “build more roads” crowd and the “tear out roads” crowd. See – isn’t it easy to put them into two boxes? In real life, it’s never that simple.

The City Fix just posted a really interesting video about an advertising campaign in Sweden that hoped to get drivers to take the bus. The campaign started with an installation on the side of a busy highway of bus made out of 50 crushed cars. The installation created such a huge buzz on local media that it became viral, spreading to other media channels and eventually the internet.

Probably the most interesting part of the campaign is the website that the advertising company set up. The site (unfortunately there isn’t an English version but check out this site anyways – it has some really interesting pictures and graphs) has a video of the road where the advertising installation is located. A camera counts the number … Continue Reading

Mobility Network from winning team

A team from MIT just won the 2009 Buckminster Fuller Challenge, a competition that awards a $100,000 prize to support the development and implementation of a strategy that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems.

The team devised a Mobility-on-demand system that works a lot like bike sharing programs that we have covered extensively, but has a greater variety of vehicles. The system has racks of super lightweight and compact electric bikes, scooters, and cars at closely spaced, convenient locations around an urban service area. The vehicles automatically recharge while they are in these racks.

To use, people walk to the nearest rack, swipe a credit card, pick up a vehicle, drive it to a … Continue Reading

Autopia has arrived in India.  Yesterday, Tata Motors introduced the long-awaited Nano, a tiny car with an equally diminutive sticker-price.  At just under $2,300US, the idea is to shift urban Indians from motos to four-wheelers.  The cars, which are already in high-demand, get around 55 mpg and produce less CO2 than the average motorcycle.  Still, many are unhappy about this development, primarily because it further embeds the desire for private vehicles and Indian cities are already plenty congested.  Environmentalists might be a little more enthused if the Nano used something other than petroleum, despite its relative efficiency.  Also, Tata has a less-than-sparkling reputation within India.

While I share the reservations many are feeling toward India’s new automotive independence, the Nano represents  an unfortunately necessary step in the country’s rapid … Continue Reading