History
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City Primer — Part 4: Why Cities Are Always Short of Money
Many residents assume cities operate financially in roughly the same way as provincial or federal governments. They don’t. Municipal governments are...
By Erick Villagomez -
City Primer — Part 3: Why Housing Dominates Municipal Politics
It’s possible to attend a Vancouver City Council meeting and come away with the impression that municipal government exists almost entirely to debate...
By Erick Villagomez -
City Primer — Part 1 – What Is Municipal Government?
EDITOR’S NOTE: Vancouver is in the midst of profound urban change. Housing costs, population growth, transportation investments, climate adaptation...
By Erick Villagomez -
New Over Old, but not Forgotten in Mexico City
In July 2026, I had the opportunity to visit Mexico City for the first time. The metro area of nearly 25 million people has a fascinating history that...
By Andrew Cuthbert -
Book Review – Black Public Joy: No Permit or Permission Required
Author: Jay Pitter (Penguin Random House, 2026) What is public space for? Most planners would answer with some combination of safety, accessibility...
By Erick Villagomez -
The City in Tenses
The past feels like a caricature of itself, compressed, simplified, stripped of everything that made it complicated. The future feels like a caricature of...
By Yuval Fogelson -
Book Review – Planning the Future of Abu Dhabi: A Canadian-Emirati Collaboration for Sustainable Urbanism
Edited by Larry Beasley and Michael White (UBC Press/On Point Press, 2026) There is a version of city-building that planners often imagine, if not quietly...
By Erick Villagomez -
UCS: The First 100 (Video)
The Urban Cartoon Syndicate launched in May 2024 and reached the hundredth cartoon last week. We mark this milestone by packing them all into a one-minute...
By Urban Cartoon Syndicate -
I’m Voting for Neighbourhoods. Are You?
I believe that Vancouver is, first and foremost, a “City of Distinguished Neighbourhoods”, and that Vancouver neighbourhoods are poised to...
By scothein -
Time and the City
The city was there before you were born. It will be there after you die. And it is always changing, adapting, absorbing, and transforming, whether we plan...
By Yuval Fogelson -
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...
By Erick Villagomez -
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.” ...
By Erick Villagomez