Join Visionary Urbanist Michael von Hausen for a broad yet intimate perspective on Vancouver urban design, from the '70s through to the present day.Michael has been laying Vancouver's groundwork since the ’80s, as a key designer in the early development of False Creek. His multi-disciplinary perspective on urban design draws from landscape architecture, planning, design, and development, to forge an urban ‘greenfrastructure’ to feed our bellies as well as our urban souls.Together Mi...

With 10 days counting down to Election Day, Gordon Price pulls in ex-NPA-Council-crony-turned-urban-food-security-activist-and-all-around-mensch Peter Ladner for a frank talk on what is up with this wacky election. With 58 candidates for Vancouver City Council and 10 registered parties in the running, how can we make sense of it all?Among the many chewy topics on the table, Gord and Peter consider: can anyone entice the centre Left to ride to a City Hall majority—and do these labels still hav...

In this very special episode, author Colin Stein unveils an epic portrait of our place and time: Vanbikes: Vancouver's Bicycle People and the Fight for Transportation Change, 1986-2011 (An Oral History). In conversation with Gordon and a room full of fans, he relates how the bicycle people transformed Vancouver, and how Vancouver transformed Colin Stein.Related as a series of discussions and anecdotes and packed with photos and memorabilia, Vanbikes tells of culture change from the insid...

Welcome to a special dispatch from Gordon Price, checking in from Expo 2022 in Dubai. (With our apologies for the sound quality. At a place like Expo, it was the quietest place he could find.)One of the best things about a world’s fair—after you’ve visited the pavilions, tasted the food, listened to the music —is oddly, also one of the worst things: standing in lines. Because it is in those lineups where you’re likely to engage with people from other places in way you never otherw...

Welcome to Episode Three of Viewpoint Vancouver's election podcast feature: Three Quick Questions. Where, in under ten minutes, Gordon puts civic candidates on the spot with three unusual questions designed to reveal who they are and what really makes them tick.This time up, Gord turns the political spotlight on John Coupar, running as the NPA's candidate for Mayor of the City of Vancouver. Listen in on John's long behind-the-scenes family history with the Vancouver Park Board, an...

Listen in for Episode Two of Viewpoint Vancouver's election podcast feature: Three Quick Questions. Where, in under ten minutes, Gordon puts civic candidates on the spot with three unusual questions designed to reveal who they are and what really makes them tick.This time up, Gord puts it to Ken Sim, running for Mayor of City of Vancouver with A Better City. For more about Ken check out kensim.ca.*********************************************The Viewpoint Podcast is a production of Viewp...

The great “BurnaBOOM” started off in the ‘50s, as Willingdon Heights came to model the suburban ideal: a gridded neighborhood of wide streets, tidy flower gardens, and modest single-family bungalows. To some extent, it is still that—but so much more.Lee-Ann Garnett, Burnaby’s Deputy Director of Planning and Building, tells the evolving story of Burnaby housing through the eyes of Albert and Clara—an archetypal blue-collar couple who leave the prairies after the war, to settle in Burnaby and l...

Join Viewpoint Vancouver for a quickie! Introducing our new Election feature: Three Quick Questions, where, in under ten minutes, Gordon puts civic candidates on the spot with three unusual questions designed to reveal who they are and what really makes them tick.First up in the series: Mark Marissen, running for Mayor of City of Vancouver with Progress Vancouver. What has Amsterdam got that Vancouver doesn't, creating a safer and more vibrant downtown? Mark has an idea.For more of Mark...

The City of North Van is no bedroom community. With sexy projects like the Shipyards, the Polygon Art Gallery, and new Lonsdale patios and covered seating, North Van is quickly becoming a destination city. In fact, the City has the lowest percentage of single-family homes of any Greater Vancouver municipality. The buzz now is all about market rentals, and affordable housing. First-term City of North Vancouver Councillor Tony Valente talks to Gordon about housing challenges, rapid buses, ...

Big news for the Region! Translink has just unveiled Transport 2050: its blueprint for the next 30 years of regional mobility. Gordon talks to Translink Manager of Policy Development Eve Hou about the evolution of this important document, and what Translink sees coming down the long-range pipes. Will we have a future of integrated mobility: transit pass, car-share, and share-bike, all in one handy package? Translink calls it “mobility as a service”. The acronym is ACES — automated, conne...

All countries have distinctive urban regions, but Canadian cities especially differ from one another in culture, structure, and history. SFU prof Anthony Perl’s new book Big Moves: Global Agendas, Local Aspirations, and Urban Mobility in Canada (co-authored with Matt Hern and Jeffrey R. Kenworthy) dissects how Canada's three largest urban regions have been shaped by the interplay of globalized imperatives, aspirations, activism, investment, and local development initiatives. In this epi...

An OWG (Old White Guy) enlists the aid of a YBG (Young Brown Guy) in unpacking modern socio-political vocabulary.Can white people be 'racialized'? Is equity of opportunity the same as equity of outcome? What is privilege, really? Who has it now, and where does the balance tip? And, moreover: what does it really take, to be Gord’s perfect gym buddy? Join us for a rambling and entertaining conversation as Mo Amir of popular culture podcast This is VANCOLOUR joins Gordon Price for a trip th...

Throughout her 33-year career, Judy Graves was the public face of City Hall to those living in Vancouver's streets and shelters. She knew who they were, what they needed, and how to get a roof over their heads. She reached out to them, often in the late hours of the night. She knew the ins-and-outs of City Hall, especially the ins, and who did what. She knew how to get the right kind of help to the people who needed it.While her successes were measured by the individuals she helped day to day...

Marc Lee has a sort of duality imbued in him that gives him a unique perspective on the world. Raised by a single mother who put him through private school at the prestigious Upper Canada College, Marc developed a perspective on both sides of the spectrum. His work as Senior Economist at the Canadian Centre For Policy Alternatives has taken him from the trade agreements, Globalization and Neoliberalism of the 90s, to today’s housing crisis, and on to looking at the growing precarity of the gi...

Recently retired from federal politics, Pamela Goldsmith-Jones has had a distinguished career; from grassroots local politics, to helping improve the peace and security of women on a global scale. Gord and Pamela talk about densification, reconciliation, the reason she got into federal politics, being a good neighbour, and more. Read more »

Director of government relations for the Homebuilders Association Vancouver and 4th generation Japanese-Canadian Mark Sakai talks internment, immigration, growing up in Steveston and housing.Housing. What’s important? Mark asks: can you find the housing you want at your stage of life? Single family housing? Spoiler, it still dominates, but you’re probably going to look in Maple Ridge or Abbotsford, or Brandon, Manitoba for that matter, unless your pockets have depth and breadth. Two-thirds of...

While the majority of the 27 million practitioners of Sikhism live in India — most living in the state of Punjab — half a million Sikhs reside in Canada.In fact, 1 in 20 British Columbians is Sikh. And according to Gian Singh Sandhu, founding president of the World Sikh Organization (WSO), so is 1 in 4 Surrey residents.Sikhism is one of the (if not the) fastest-growing religion in Metro Vancouver. As the Vancouver Sun noted a few years ago, “B.C. is the only province in Canada, and one of the...

If you needed more evidence that environmental issues are no longer fringe issues, all you have to do is look at Vancouver Greens’ Adriane Carr.Her 74,000 votes in the 2014 municipal election was the most by a Vancouver council candidate since 1996…and perhaps ever? Had she run for mayor in 2018, she might have won, and by as many as 20,000 votes.Born at VGH and raised in east Van, Carr’s future political life began auspiciously — a Master’s degree in Geography under the tutelage of UBC’s Dav...

Sarah Blyth first started to see the spike in drug overdoses in the Downtown Eastside community in 2016.From her vantage point as manager of the DTES Market, she couldn’t help but see it. People were literally dying in the street.So she decided to do something about it. Rob sums it up: “You saw the need, set up a tent, and tried to save lives”. Yup.Blyth’s role as founder and Executive Director of the Overdose Prevention Society is the latest in a series of contributions to the city by a pers...

It wasn’t that long ago that British Columbians were saying, “What the hell is going on in Maple Ridge?”In 2014, voters elected Nicole Read as mayor of the region’s eastern outpost …and then subjected her to a virulent strain of online harassment which, after two years, resulted in threats that prompted an RCMP investigation, and ultimately her decision to not rerun in the 2018 election.The reason for the harassment? The appearance of a homeless camp in an empty lot at a cul-de-sac on Cliff A...