Planning Pool

Planning Pool authors, Daniella F. and Dylan M. are at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Charlotte, NC, for the next few days. We’re going to be liveblogging the more interesting conference proceedings. You can follow us on twitter @planningpool or with the hashtag #np4sg2011

San Luis Obispo County in California is a politically conservative area that was challenged in drafting and implementing a climate change adaptation plan. Faced with resource cuts and shortages and climate change disbelievers, the County struggled to create an effective adaptation plan.
The speakers, Kate Meis and Supervisor Jim Patterson outlined a number of factors that contributed to the strategy’s success:

• Utilizing current opportunities- general plan updates and community plan, state and … Continue Reading
  

In Vancouver, as in many cities in North America and Europe, June is officially Bike Month. To celebrate, the Planning Institute of British Columbia’s South Coast Chapter presented a summer bicycle tour on June 19 for local planners and cycling enthusiasts.

The theme was “Health and the Built Environment”, so the morning began with a chat about the implications of walkable and bikeable environments for public health. Next, the cyclists took to the streets and bike lanes to tour Vancouver’s cycling infrastructure, lead by a dream team of local transportation planners and cycling advocates.

My twelve favourite pictures from the morning are in the slideshow below…

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From May 30th to June 2nd, Toronto hosts the 45th annual Canadian Transportation Research Forum, with the theme ‘transportation and logistics trends and policies: successes and failures’. The spectrum of papers being presented this year ranges from container shipping trends and implications, to the benefits of roundabouts for pedestrian safety; needless to say there is no shortage of critical ideas! This series of posts will include brief summaries with critiques and links in hopes to evoke critical discussion and questioning on some of the issues.

The two stage sessions that I attended on Monday were on the topic of Active Transportation. The first set … Continue Reading

January 14 brought good news – at least for now –  for residents of the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, Canada, and more broadly for supporters of harm reduction policies. That’s when the British Columbia Court of Appeal upheld a decision made by the British Columbia Supreme Court back in 2008 which ruled that the closure of InSite would violate the Charter right of the facility’s users to “security of the person”.

Vancouver’s only supervised injection site, InSite has provided intravenous drug users with a safe place to inject drugs and access care services, including addiction counselling and treatment, since 2003. Working under the harm reduction model, InSite’s … Continue Reading

Daniel Fontaine is a co-editor of CityCaucus.com and an active political commentator with a background in political science, writing and strategy. His great post about Vancouver’s proposed legislation legalizing urban chickens was published last October, but not much has changed on the policy front since then; Vancouver City Council still has yet to approve changes to the bylaws currently prohibiting backyard hens in the city. This post was originally published on CityCaucus.com, a blog that explores the ideas, the politics, and the people behind making Canadian cities. These days, the site is devoted to following Olympic activity around Vancouver.

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The sights and smells of street food can be one of the great experiential pleasures of a city, and every city is different. Carts sell roasted chestnuts on London’s street corners in the wintertime, while New York’s streets bristle with hot dog carts.

Portland, Oregon, shown above, is known for its array of food carts. They seem to sell every kind of food, and some even offer folding chairs to accommodate a leisurely meal.

Meanwhile, the City of Montreal, Quebec, has banned conventional street food carts for decades. While the waffle vendor shown here does technically sell street food, since it is both purchased and consumed on the sidewalk, the food is cooked inside a building and served through a window. Locally, the lack of street food is … Continue Reading

***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.

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