On Site Report

2025 Update: Theodore Is Running for City Council

Voting day is April 5th; advance voting is March 26th & April 1st

https://vancouver.ca/your-government/2025-by-election.aspx

Learn more about TEAM & Theodore here: voteteam.ca

PAUSE THE PLAN! w/ Michael Fergusson

“Pause the Plan!” This is the call to action declared by thousands of residents across the City of Vancouver. In this special episode of On Site Report we take a moment to review the Broadway Plan and its growing opposition.

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Follow Michael: linkedin.com/in/fergusson

Is There No Alternative? w/ Ward Stirrat

False Creek South is an area of Vancouver that exists adjacent to one of North America’s most up-scale neighbourhoods. In stark juxtaposition to the affluent and largely unaffordable district of Yaletown, False Creek South represents a model of livability that has been widely celebrated amongst urban planners and academics since its inception. Episode #4 of On Site Report marks our second dedication to exploring the area of False Creek South, and in this episode we highlight how this unique enclave provides us with an important alternative to thinking about how our cities should be built. Are unaffordable high rises and market-rate condominiums the only way forward? To answer this question I sat down with long-time area resident and social commentator Ward Stirrat. We hope you enjoy!

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Further reading:

• Andy Yan on Building The Kind of Housing We Actually Need: https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/1en8wl2/our_tax_dollars_funded_a_developer_to_create/?share_id=ifNtiw6t9MhAyAzl_Dtfp&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=3

• City Hall Watch: https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/

• There is No Alternative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative

• Hugh Segal: https://www.ubcpress.ca/bootstraps-need-boots

• Cameron Murray: https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=P5s-_d0AAAAJ&hl=en

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats w/ Colleen Hardwick

As we continue to map the city of Vancouver, the neighbourhood of False Creek South comes into view. Heralded for its progressive approach to urban design, False Creek South demonstrates the core principles of the city livable movement. In the early 1970’s The Electors Action Movement (TEAM) championed a turn towards human-scale urbanism that prioritized aesthetics and livability. But fifty years later Vancouver has transitioned from being a beacon of livability to a city that commentators have recently referred to as “impossibly unaffordable”. In the midst of Vancouver’s embrace of bad urbanism, the False Creek South neighbourhood has come under threat. In episode three we sit down with Colleen Hardwick to discuss this and more. 

 

More Colleen/TEAM:

https://www.voteteam.ca/

https://www.instagram.com/voteforteam/

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Follow us on Instagram: @onsitereportpod

Further reading:

Patrick Condon, Tyee: https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/10/18/City-False-Promises-False-Creek-South/

City Hall Watch: https://cityhallwatch.wordpress.com/2021/08/07/palmquist-false-promises-false-creek/

David Ley: Liberal Ideology and the Postindustrial City: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2562952

Similar Yet Different: The Story of Vancouver’s False, False Creek w/ Henry Tsang

In our second episode we discuss an area of Vancouver that is the epicenter of the city’s newly acquired and carefully polished identity. In False Creek North almost everything is made of glass and tinted with green, and the mid-rise towers are podiumed  with town homes, some of which exit onto manicured park space, while others overlook the Sea Wall. Emanating from this place is the spirit of Vancouverism, a form of urban planning that has evolved as a contemporary response to the outdated precepts of last century’s Manhattanism. That said, how is it that False Creek North has come to be recreated in the Arabian desert? In this episode On Site Report I sit down with artist and educator Henry Tsang to better understand this peculiar pastiche and discuss some of the issues facing Vancouver and other cities like it. 

Learn more about the Maraya Project and check out Henry's work here: https://henrytsang.ca/maraya-sisyphean-cart/

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Photo credit: Maraya Project (Glen Lowry, M. Simon Levin, Henry Tsang), 2011

If You Build It They Will Come

Expo86 marked a new era in Vancouver’s urban development. Now a city that shines on the international stage, Vancouver is a place that is grappling with the side effects of globalization. In this inaugural episode we explore the realities of a city caught in transition while paying close attention to one of the most enigmatic features of Vancouver’s cityscape.