Urban and regional planning news, blogs, and links. How to cities such as San Jose and San Francisco relate to each other? How can two or more cities that are geographically close by handle economic planning, urban development, and...
[more]
Urban and regional planning news, blogs, and links. How to cities such as San Jose and San Francisco relate to each other? How can two or more cities that are geographically close by handle economic planning, urban development, and traffic management?
Walkable cities are interesting, liveable cities, as I’ve been saying for some time now. Here are two more examples: The new team on the borough council of Mile and their colleagues in Cartierville (the two districts where Projet Montréal holds the mayor’s job) announced last week that they would hold off on snow removal—not snow plowing—until a storm drops 15 cm, not the 2.5 cm which has been the point when snow removal contracts kick in) in order to save money. But—and this is very... Read Full Story
Montreal has a smog alert today as it has several times in the last two weeks, which is a little ironic, considering that yesterday Quebec Premier Jean Charest pledged to cut the emissions by 20 per cent compared to 1990 by 2020. On a per capita basis, the province's emissions would drop to eight tonnes, considerably less than Quebec’s previous target of 11 tonnes per capita. In comparison, the European Union targets are nine tonnes per capita, while the Harper government aims to reduce them... Read Full Story
Montreal's bike rental program is winding down for the season, after providing more than 1 million trips around the city. Since the first of November, the numbers of Bixis available has been cut, and November 30, the system will shut down for the winter. A great success, most observers say. Certainly people who might never have ridden a bike to run an errand have begun to do so. Even I, who hate to ride bikes, have begun to think that maybe next year I ought to try it. Last week I ended up... Read Full Story
Public private partnerships (PPPs) to build mega hospitals were foisted on the Quebec by politicians and bureaucrats who made biased calculations, the province's auditor general says . In his report, released yesterday, Renaud Lachance reports that planning and building the two super hospitals (one based on the Université de Montréal medical school and the other, on McGill's) would have been cheaper using methods used to construct major projects in the past. The arguments for PPPs were deeply... Read Full Story
A bit of drollery from Radio Can this morning: Apparently newly re-elected Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay’s spiritual advisors are very happy with his decision to include Richard Bérgeron, leader of one of two opposition parties, on the city’s executive committee. After all the Sermon on the Mount says: "If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,"(Matthew 38) and certainly that’s what Tremblay has done by putting his leftist adversary there. Going to be some... Read Full Story
Straight Goods editor Penney Kome passes on a bit of good news via a recent analysis of where we are in the greenhouse gas emissions fight. Lester R. Brown, of the Earth Policy Institute and who has been on the case for years, says that things are actually much better than they were two years ago. US. carbon emissions have dropped 9 percent since 2007, in part due to the recession, but also from efficiency gains and fuel substitions. Brown writes” As motorists turn to public transit, and... Read Full Story
There was talk this morning on RadioCan of a story in La Presse which recounts the horrors of congestion on the highways around Montreal. But, said traffic reporter Yves Desautels, things have been a bit better since the first of the year, perhaps because the recession has cut down on commuters. That may be one of the rare upsides to downturns. A recent New Yorker Talk of the Town piece argues in the same direction. Writing in the March 30, 2009 issue, David Owen says that the countries most... Read Full Story
Sometimes bad times lead to good things. Yesterday Devimco, the development company which wants to completely rebuilt Montreal’s historic Griffintown district, announced that it is radically down-sizing the project. It says it need only 30 per cent as much land as it originally proposed developing to the tune of $1.3 billion. The thrust will now be on residential development with some shops and offices. Gone—for the foreseeable future, at least—are hotel, entertainment and vast shopping... Read Full Story
Only 30 percent of Quebec elementary school children walk to school, and of those who do, eighty per cent live less that 600 meter (less than half a mile,) a new Quebec study suggests. Paul Lewis, professor of urbanism at the University of Montreal's school of urban studies, led the research group, which interview parents of 1495 children attending 67 schools in central areas and suburbs of Montreal and Trois-Rivières. The difference with the results of a similar study done in 1971 are... Read Full Story
As I’ve mentioned, we’re just a few days from municipal elections where some pretty heavy accusations of corruption have come out. Envelopes with large sums of cash being exchanged, contracts for roads, buildings and water meters awarded to buddies, apparent lack of oversight: it is not a pretty sight. As one comic said this morning on Radio Can, it’s a campaign where “weapons of mass construction” are being used. What an interesting coincidence, too, that the election is being held November... Read Full Story
