cities

Homemade pandemic mask patterns for the Covid-19 outbreak, & useful links

March 31, 2020

There has been too much confusion around whether we should be wearing masks while in public during the pandemic. I’m in the “Yes” camp, and I’ve noticed that all the doctors I’ve talked to are in the Yes camp too, no matter what politicians and public officials have been saying.

Categories: British Columbia, Canadian design, cities, design, DIY, fashion, urban planning, Vancouver

We’re going to have to organize. Tips for constructive behaviour in a group

January 26, 2017

Photo: Ken Cedeno/Greenpeace, via Guardian

We are going to have to organize ourselves in our communities, in the U.S. and beyond. In the face of the rapid rise of right-wing xenophobic populism, orchestrated by Big Money which intends to mop up, we need to respond immediately with defiant solidarity across differences.

Categories: cities, politics, textiles, Uncategorised

Jane Fonda flying to oppose tar sands isn’t hypocrisy; that’s a “tu quoque” logical fallacy

January 13, 2017

@JaneSeymourFonda in the Alberta tar sands: with @barbarawilliam_, @UBCIC Grand Chief Stewart Phillip and ACFN (Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation) Chief Allan Adam on January 11, 2017 (UBCIC Instagram)

This post is about a logical fallacy that for a decade has been popping up all over social media and comment streams on news stories.

Categories: Canadian design, cities, design, film & TV, green, politics, Uncategorised

Bjarke Ingels’ Vancouver pirate ship

November 1, 2016

Oh really

I can’t remember if I’ve already talked about this Dubai-style luxury twisted tower that Vancouver is getting; apologies if I have. The tower, designed by architect Bjarke Ingels, is now rising in Vancouver but the reason I’m writing about it now is that I just read a critique in Artforum of this year’s Venice Biennale for Architecture which contained a chilling portrait of Ingels.

Do not work for Mommie Dearest (Craigslist ad)

October 11, 2016

I’m expecting that this Craigslist Vancouver ad (text at bottom of this post) will get so much abuse it’ll be taken down soon, so I’m cutting and pasting it here.

“Simpsons” actor Harry Shearer speaking against AirBnB & other short term rentals

September 6, 2016

A brilliant speech to a New Orleans City Council hearing on AirBnB and short term rentals in general. As Best of New Orleans reported:

Comedian and actor Harry Shearer was among the opponents speaking against short-term rentals, calling its proponents and rental owners speaking in the first half of the meeting “a parade of happy scofflaws.”

“What other business can I start in the privacy of my home?” he joked.

Categories: cities, politics, Uncategorised, urban planning, Vancouver

Dad’s foolproof parallel parking method (take note, atrocious drivers in fancy cars)

August 18, 2016

OK. Having witnessed perhaps the most staggeringly incompetent parallel park of all time by the driver of the $500K US Lamborghini Aventador above—something like a 17 point turn that took about 4 minutes, all at a roaring 90-100 decibels—I feel it’s time to share my father’s foolproof method of parallel parking.

Categories: cities, cringe list, design, politics, Uncategorised, Vancouver

Requiem for the American Dream

July 4, 2016

Someone has uploaded a copy of the film Requiem for the American Dream. In it Noam Chomsky explains the process by which wealth inequality destroys democracy, how fantastic riches are not just intense concentration of wealth but of power, which then further speeds up the cycle of returning ever greater wealth to the rich through the deregulation of the economy that the rich demand.

Categories: cities, film & TV, graphics and signage, politics, Uncategorised

Condo as colonialism redux – again

April 11, 2016

Here’s yet another condo development framed as a modern repeat of Canada’s 19th C colonial pioneer era. It’s called “Venue” and it’s in Whalley, a small town centre within Surrey, a large, racially mixed Vancouver suburb mostly known for farming.

Categories: British Columbia, Canadian design, cities, politics, Uncategorised

Have we learned nothing from the 60s UK demolitions?

November 20, 2015

The urban planning disasters of the 1960s in Britain. We think we have learned from them, but have we?

Start watching the video at 14:00 if you don’t want to watch the whole documentary, which is a sort of myth-busting look at the 60s in England.

Categories: cities, film & TV, politics, Uncategorised, video

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This blog is a long, somewhat messy photo essay on the history and politics of design. Design's socio-historical context—that is, the constraints and influences on the way we make objects, dwellings and cities—seems too often ignored. We no longer know where our styles, tastes or objects really come from, and this damages our creativity and sense of meaning. Historical knowledge is so fugitive in the New World, with everything so decontextualized in the rapid flow of commodities and images. Don't even get me started on tumblr and pinterest. As Fran Lebowitz said, "Designers now, they all have these things called mood boards. I suppose they think a sense of discovery equals invention. It would be as if every writer had a board with paragraphs of other writers—'Oh, I'll take a little bit of this, and that, he was really good.' Yes, he was really good! And that is not a mood board, it is a stealing board." As for the sort of design I'm personally interested in, full disclaimer.....read more ____________________________________

To read about my book project on Vancouver's UN-Habitat Forum event of 1976 concerning just and sustainable urban settlements, click here. Few know that Buckminster Fuller, Margaret Mead, Mother Teresa, Paolo Soleri and Maggie & Pierre Trudeau, along with many thousands of others, came to Vancouver in 1976 to talk about better, safer, fairer and greener cities worldwide. In fact it was the founding conference of UN Habitat, an agency built around a foundational document called The Vancouver Declaration. My book is about what happened that year and is a snapshot not just of Vancouver but of how people around the world began to view cities and themselves differently in the wake of, among other things, the first oil crisis. ____________________________________

cities

Homemade pandemic mask patterns for the Covid-19 outbreak, & useful links

We’re going to have to organize. Tips for constructive behaviour in a group

Jane Fonda flying to oppose tar sands isn’t hypocrisy; that’s a “tu quoque” logical fallacy

Bjarke Ingels’ Vancouver pirate ship

Do not work for Mommie Dearest (Craigslist ad)

“Simpsons” actor Harry Shearer speaking against AirBnB & other short term rentals

Dad’s foolproof parallel parking method (take note, atrocious drivers in fancy cars)

Requiem for the American Dream

Condo as colonialism redux – again

Have we learned nothing from the 60s UK demolitions?

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