Posts from — February 2011

Does the Georgia Viaduct deserve consideration for heritage protection? That’s the provocative idea raised by The Province in its report on Heritage Vancouver’s call for nominations to pick Vancouver’s 125 most defining features. (It’s a 125th Vancouver birthday project.)

You can decide for yourself on the Tour of Nothing: The Freeway that Never Was. This walking tour leaves Main and Union tomorrow, Sunday Feb. 27, at 10 a.m. under the expert direction of John Atkin. It’s all part of the Spirit Rising Festival 2011 organized by Vancouver Moving Theatre. (Donation $10.)

The federal government’s proposed reductions in the family reunification program, which allows established immigrant families to bring parents and grandparents here to join them, is raising grave concern in immigrant communities right across Canada.

If Vancouver City Council passes the motion I have proposed for our next meeting, it will be the first in Canada, as far as I know, to urge the government to change direction and ensure everyone who was promised this opportunity can realize the dream of reuniting their family in this country, often after a wait of many, many years.

In this column, scheduled for publication in Philippine News Today, I set out the case for restoring the number of visas to last year’s level: [Read more →]

As Vancouver considers the future of the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts, a remnant of a long-ago rejected freeway system, it’s useful to recall the experience of other cities that have undertaken much larger changes with spectacular results.

Cheonggyecheong before removal of the freeway . . . . . . and a section today, after freeway removal.

In 2005, Seoul, Korea, celebrated the daylighting of Cheonggyecheon, a sacred stream that ran through the heart of the city. This waterway  was covered by roads and then an elevated freeway in the years after the Second World War, but remained flowing beneath the street. The freeway was finished in 1976, but just 27 years later the city administration undertook the costly business of removing it.

The result: a dramatic transformation of the city’s downtown core with minimal traffic disruption. On the positive side: an improved business district, better air quality and many other benefits.

In April, Dr. Kee Yeon Hwang, president of the Korean Transportation Institute, will visit Vancouver as a guest of Simon Fraser’s Urban Sustainable Development department. His main public address March 29 is sponsored, interestingly enough, by the Real Estate Foundation and the Fraser Valley Real Estate Board. It will be a glimpse of the transformation that could be Vancouver’s if the will is found to move ahead.

. . . and a section of the area today, after freeway removal.

The beleaguered Cohen Commission into the decline of the Fraser River sockeye may have solved the riddle of salmon depletion just days after securing a one-year extension to continue its costly inquiry.

Contrary to long-standing fisheries department dogma, the massive “overescapements” of fish to the spawning grounds, far above the numbers required to sustain the runs, are actually depressing returns, not increasing them.

But this startling news has not reached the mainstream media or even the blogosphere because coverage of inquiry’s work, which is proceeding in a quiet courtroom on the eighth floor of 701 West Georgia, is virtually non-existent. (The Globe and Mail‘s Mark Hume is an exception and was present Feb. 22.)

During key testimony Feb. 9 and 10, eminent fisheries biologist Carl Walters revised his long-held view that “overescapement” of salmon to the spawning beds had no impact on future runs’ productivity.

Inspired by Walters and others, fisheries managers shut down salmon fisheries completely, driving up escapement of strong runs, to protect “weak stocks” that have never been big contributors to the harvest. Despite the huge escapements, run strength continued to decline until last summer’s completely unexpected bonanza. (That exception may prove the rule. For various reasons, modest escapements in 2007 seem to have generated a once-in-100-years payoff.)

Now Walters’ view is closer to this recent paper from Alaska, which found that long-term yields decreased when escapement goals were exceeded.  In the world of salmon biology, this reversal is akin to Kevin Falcon suddenly endorsing the NDP.

“So what?” you may ask. “Why is this in a civic affairs blog?” [Read more →]