Pilot Project That Tackles Homelessness is Saving Money, Too - The Globe and Mail

HEATHER SCOFFIELD

Toronto— The Canadian Press

Published Monday, Dec. 26, 2011

 The federal government’s response to the Attawapiskat housing crisis may well have underscored Stephen Harper’s reputation for his hard line rather than his heart, with his focus on the aboriginal reserve’s financial problems, not its social ones.

From The Melbourne Urbanist ― Do Great Buildings Make Great Cities?

New York has some great buildings because the city is great. Athens has the Parthenon because it was a great city, not the other way around. Bilbao doubtless has many virtues, but I haven’t heard it described too often as one of the world’s great cities just because its got a Guggenheim.

Do great buildings make great cities? « The Melbourne Urbanist

From Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood Network: Vancouver Historic Quartiers blog

Gassy's Town

Prior to the coming of the railway, Gastown was as a one-street commercial district serving the Hastings Mill population, and all who came either along the bridge built over False Creek from New Westminster, or by boat to any of its rickety floats. With the location of the first railway station immediately to the west, and the extant condition of the surrounding land as a timbered wilderness, Gastown became the first beneficiary of the energy and development forces unleashed by the new enterprise.

Read more at SUNN: Vancouver Historic Quartiers

From Gordon Price's Price Tags blog —Rybczynski in Surrey

Ivy-covered walls and green lawns have traditionally been the hallmarks of campus life, so the juxtaposition of study halls and stores comes, at first, as a shock. While universities often talk about coming down from their Ivory Towers, there is usually an arm’s-length relationship between the academy and the world of commerce—even college bookstores are generally relegated to the campus fringe. But why should students be isolated from everyday life? Or vice versa? The longer I walked around Surrey Central City the more convinced I became of the profound correctness of this innovative solution.

Rybczynski in Surrey: “Profound correctness” « Price Tags

ANATOMY OF A SLUM
Why Did Antwerp’s Immigrant Ghetto Get So Bad? - The Globe and Mail
DOUG SAUNDERS

Antwerp, Belgium— 

From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published Saturday, Dec. 17, 2011 8:00AM EST

It is an early Saturday evening on Handelstraat, a busy and somewhat dishevelled boulevard in the north of this historic Belgian port city, its sidewalks lined with outdoor cafés and tea shops, fish restaurants, butchers and bakeries, all of them buzzing with customers. It's a typical European street scene, except that most of the people have olive-coloured skin, many women sport head scarves and the throaty sounds of Arabic and Turkish mix with brusque Flemish.

Read more...

Lisa Rochon in The Globe and Mail

 Gi-Da-Gi-Binez Youth Centre

LISA ROCHON

The Cornerstones of a Better Attawapiskat

LISA ROCHON |

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Dec. 16, 2011 

"The arrogance and gloss of a top-down bureaucracy, ruled by paternalistic machinery, was nowhere to be found. Instead, there was a willingness to sit down, and start with the basics..."

The cornerstones of a better Attawapiskat - The Globe and Mail

From The Pop-Up City blog— IKEA Off-the-Shelf Urbanism

Will the new era of architecture be the era of IKEA urbanism? IKEA has proposed to build a complete neighborhood in East London. The Swedish furniture giant tries to implement its ideas and concepts in new fields of knowledge and urbanism. After its injection of each single family’s interior with cheap design furniture and the introduction of the IKEA standard house by daughter company BoKlok, it seems to be time for a complete IKEA neighborhood, reports the Huffington Post, LandProp — also part of the IKEA group — is planning to build a neighborhood of 1,200 houses, shops, cafés and a 350-room hotel.

Read more: IKEA Urbanism: A New Era In Urban Design? — The Pop-Up City