November 12, 2015
Sociologist Harvey Molotch
“A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite.”
Harvey Molotch‘s seminal 1976 article “The City as Growth Machine”—which is equally applicable today—just happened to be published the same year of the UN Habitat Conference on Settlements that took place in Vancouver (and is the subject of my upcoming book).
October 20, 2015
“This is why we love the Tudor period so much, because it’s the age of discovery, and there’s a sense that anything was possible.”
“Discovery”?
October 6, 2015
Short animation by the Guardian on solar power, as part of their “Keep it in the ground” campaign against fossil fuels. The price of solar panels has come down by 75% since 2009, and other interesting facts.
October 5, 2015
Donald Sutherland, while attending the Toronto International Film Festival, was asked about the Canadian federal election on Oct 19, 2015. Thanks to the Conservative government’s changes to the Elections Act, Sutherland as a resident of the US has been rendered unable to vote and he has been very vocal about it in the media, especially given his feelings about the current Stephen Harper government.
May 7, 2015
Briarpatch Magazine, one of Canada’s oldest lefty political mags, has published an abridged version of my earlier essay on heritage hipsters and colonialism redux.
If you want to read the original and longer post (with a far drier title) it is here: Settler & pioneer “heritage hipster” styles in the age of Idle No More, Chinatown gentrification, &c.
March 2, 2015
The TD Bank building and Eaton’s building by Cesar Pelli, photo © Michael de Courcy, mid-1970s
This is not a true post-mortem, since Cesar Pelli‘s 1973 Eaton’s building has not actually been demolished—and how rare it is to be able to say that in Vancouver, now one of North America’s capitals of demolition.
January 22, 2015
This example of blobitecture is being proposed for Vancouver, apparently to be squeezed between two older buildings on the waterfront in the historic neighbourhood known as Gastown. There has been no public hearing regarding the building, so the public have taken to social media to express what seems to be more displeasure than pleasure.
December 20, 2014
In a direct line from my earlier post on the heritage hipster style as a settler colonial aesthetic, here is another exhibit in the colonial museum of fashion: Ralph Lauren using genocide-era vintage photographs of native men in western dress as part of its recent marketing campaign.
October 14, 2014
Men in British Columbia, 1859, one in a newly discovered collection of early photographs of white settlers and First Nations in B.C. Via Vancouver Sun © Royal British Columbia Museum, reprinted with permission
An abridged version of this essay has been published in the May/June 2015 issue of Briarpatch Magazine
I am probably as bored of casual hipster-slagging as you are.
April 14, 2014
Photo of Reykjavik by Gunnar Steinn / Made by Iceland
Jón Gnarr, mayor of Reykjavik and member of The Sugarcubes, shared Made by Iceland‘s photo on Facebook and wrote this:
My dream
(It’s pretty naive but I just have to get it off my chest)
I think Iceland offers a unique opportunity for the world.
