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Canadian Urbanism Uncovered

By Erick Villagomez

  • Community Centres…and The Costs We Don’t See

    On a weekday afternoon, a community centre in Vancouver hums in a way that rarely makes it into policy announcements. A seniors’ exercise class wraps up...

  • UCS #93: Value for Money – Vancouver-Style

    See our Launch and Introduction about the launch of the © Urban Cartoon Syndicate and the announcement by CityHallWatch. *** Related Readings...

  • Caste, Cities, and the Hidden Architecture of Inequality

    Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents offers one of the most compelling reframings of inequality in recent public discourse. Rather...

  • Reconciliation as Development Strategy

    In recent years, Indigenous histories, place names, and knowledge systems have moved from the margins of urban development into its foreground. Land...

  • Rethinking Housing Economics

    “The edifice of economic theory constructed over the last two centuries, to an extent in the shadow of physics, has been refuted time and again.” ...

  • The (Ur)banality of Evil

    “The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are...

  • The Language of Uplift

    In 2023, the Vancouver City Council recently adopted a motion titled “Uplifting the Downtown Eastside and Building Inclusive Communities that Work for All...

  • Behind the Curtain: Rethinking the Role of the City Manager

    In the intricate machinery of urban governance, one figure looms large but largely out of sight: the City Manager. Appointed by City Council, not elected...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...