catastrophe management
The wacky and weird of living in an Olympic host city
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010Having the Olympic Games in your city at first sounds exciting, exotic and somewhat cool. As the Vancouver Olympic Games approach there have been — and are sure to be many more– elements of that. For example, I went skating on the Olympic Speed Skating oval with my four year old son — what a […]
What the Olympics teach us about urban health
Monday, August 25th, 2008During the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, incidents of hospitalization for asthma declined by 41% according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The air quality in Beijing over the past two weeks has apparently been better than it has in decades. One day had an index reading of 12, down from an […]
Two lessons from a massive CBD power outage
Monday, July 21st, 2008Last week in downtown Vancouver a main electrical cable underground caught fire. At approximately 10 AM, Monday morning, half of the CBD lost power including the building where I work. BC Hydro could not fully restore the power for several days, although some buildings were back on the grid within about 6 hours.
In perspective, this […]
Stackable, affordable, fast — and green — housing
Monday, February 25th, 2008The first challenge in building higher density housing these days — or any housing, for that matter — it that it take so long to construct. If a city has a critical shortage of homes, faster solutions are needed.
A second challenge is that it’s becoming ever more expensive to build townhomes and condominiums. Concrete, […]
5 noteworthy happenings of 2007 for cities
Sunday, January 6th, 2008In no particular order…
1. The bridge collapse in Minneapolis. This tragedy illustrates the crisis in urban infrastructure funding around North America, driven by the fact that higher levels of government control funding to maintain and upgrade the major highways and bridges on which city life depends. The bursting of levies in […]
September 11 - Remembering cities attacked
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007The firestorm [was] incredible, there [were] calls for help and screams from somewhere but all around [was] one single inferno… suddenly, I saw people again, right in front of me. They scream[ed] and gesticulate[d] with their hands, and then — to my utter horror and amazement — I [saw] how one after the other they […]
The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Sign of anachronistic times?
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007Cities in North America and around the world face decaying infrastructure that is often controlled by other levels of government. The costs of repairing, upgrading and expanding a highway network are high, and beyond the typical budgets — not to mention political mandates — of most metropolitan governments.
If the mayor and council are unsuccessful in […]
Urban vulnerability reminder
Friday, November 17th, 2006A series of fierce storms dumped record amounts of rain on the Vancouver area over the past two weeks and especially in the past two days. This resulted in strong creek and river run offs into the drinking water reservoirs, churning up silt and mud — what the scientists call turbidity. The water coming out […]
Dresden Germany on Sept 11, 2001 - Urban Memory
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006The site of the former World Trade Centre towers in New York remains a hole in the ground. Controversy abounds over what to do with the space — how to remember the past and honour the dead, as well as how to move the city and nation forward.
Today, I thought back to where I was […]
September 11th Anniversary & cities
Sunday, September 10th, 2006In the months following September 11, 2001, I recall reading about many New Yorkers who moved themselves and their families out of the city. Other families abandoned other world cities, worried that they lived to close to a “bulls eye.” However, in the years that have passed, such moves for safety reasons have become almost […]