Features
-
The Costs We Don’t See
Vancouver’s proposed 2026 Budget arrives with a promise that feels, at first glance, like a reprieve: a 0% property tax increase in a year when almost...
By Erick Villagomez -
Treading Lightly on the Mountain: SFU’s New Gibson Art Museum
Located at the east end of the SFU mountaintop campus and sitting beside a mature stand of trees lining its central promenade, visitors can appreciate how...
By Sean Ruthen -
Week of Learning with Bruntletts
It was a cool late afternoon in October when I met up with Melissa and Chris Bruntlett at Trees Café on Granville Street. The rain held off as we settled...
By mollybarkowsky -
When Density Meets Disgust
Walk down a crowded city street and you might marvel at its vibrancy—people brushing past each other, buildings packed like puzzle pieces, the hum of...
By Erick Villagomez -
Four Projections, One Crisis
What happens when four different reports give four different answers to the same housing question? Every few months, a new report is released with a...
By Erick Villagomez -
Who Gets to Lobby?
When most people hear the word lobbyist, they think of expensive suits, closed-door meetings, and backroom deals. In Vancouver, as in most Canadian...
By Erick Villagomez -
The Slow Emergency, Part II: The Emergency Escalates
What began as a procedural memo has become a full-blown shift in how decisions are made. The City of Vancouver’s September 2025 rezoning...
By Erick Villagomez -
The Coriolis Effect, Part IV: When Viability Becomes Destiny
In my earlier Coriolis Effect series (Part I, Part II, and Part III), I argued that city planning has been quietly absorbed into the logic of the...
By Erick Villagomez -
Defining “Viability”…and Who Decides What Counts?
There’s a word that shows up a lot in housing debates—one that tends to end conversations rather than deepen them: viability. I hear this word constantly...
By Erick Villagomez -
The Singapore Chronicles: Divergent Models
The city, we’re often told, is a model—something to be learned from, exported, improved. But what happens when models conflict? What if the city itself...
By Erick Villagomez -
The Singapore Chronicles: Conclusion
Singapore leaves an impression not just of a place, but of a proposition. A city built with such clarity of purpose and orchestration that it appears less...
By Erick Villagomez -
UCS #65: King David contemplates the future of BC
See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch. *** Related Readings: BC...
By Urban Cartoon Syndicate