The City of Victoria has finally received a development proposal for the Downtown YMCA property at 851 Broughton Street. Once again, it is a fairly large project with two buildings, one at 26 storeys and one at 11 storeys. Overall, the buildings are pretty stock residential tower, though for whatever reason, I find the 11 storey one more pleasing than the taller one. Still, as longtime readers will know, I am not too concerned with building height, as we generally only interact with a building at the ground level. That said, I do believe that when a developer proposes a tall, high density bui ..read more

When I am walking around pretty much anywhere, I sometimes need to make myself stop and simply enjoy my surroundings. This problem is doubly so if I am in a city. Rather than just enjoying the streets as they are, I am looking and seeing where things could have been made a little bit different, or simply wondering what could have possibly led to the outcome in front of me. For this article, I thought show you how I look at buildings and ground floors in particular. If you have been reading Sidewalking Victoria for a few years, you would know that I strongly believe that the most important asp ..read more

I know it has been a bit since the last article and I had hoped to get this out a couple of weeks ago, but I ran out of time before we went on a winter escape vacation, I will hopefully get caught up over the next few days and have something else for all of you soon. In the meantime here is my article on the Rockslide Gallery, which I have had in progress since before Christmas! For the last few years, I kept being told to make sure to check out the Rockslide Gallery when they had an open house. I would make a mental note and try to remember, but for whatever reason I kept missing the opportu ..read more

I will admit, I was a little surprised by the amount of interest there was in my last article. As I reflected on some of the responses I heard, there were a couple of things I want to add. First, if it isn’t clear from my years of writing a blog about a pedestrian’s perspective on cities, I am a huge lover of public space, I just want it to be good. And second, I really wish we could have conversations about things as mundane, but important as public space, without retreating to determinations of right or wrong. Things are improved through listening and discussion. It would be really good if ..read more

I was totally caught off-guard by the 1-2 punches coming from the City on Thursday. First, we heard what I think has the potential to be exciting news, that the City is looking for opportunities to create new pedestrian spaces by closing roads. I wrote about this idea last May, you can read that post here. Depending on where and how this is done in each instance, it could be really interesting. The second story that dropped was even more shocking and not in a good way. The City announced it was buying two lots along Blanshard Street to create a new park. When I first read it, I assumed I had ..read more

I haven’t been to Venice in the last twenty years, but one of the strongest memories of my time there, was riding on the vaporetti across the city. It was amazing that there was this public transit that for a relatively small amount of money would give you some of the most amazing views of this jewel of Italy. Looking back at Victoria, the one view of the city that I know that will always continue to awe-inspire me is at the front of the Coho just after it has passed the Outer Harbour and it comes around the corner to look down the Inner Harbour towards the Empress. I have had the chance to s ..read more

I have often thought about a post-personal car world or at least one where they are not the predominant way people move around. In that world there would be massive impacts and changes on our society and our infrastructure. One part of this change that I have thought about a lot, especially when I think of downtown Victoria, is what we are going to do with all of those underground parkades? We could end up with millions of square feet of space, that is pretty limited in how we can use it. Certainly, a lot of it could be used as storage space for those that live in the apartments above, and so ..read more

I work in an office and being completely honest, I truly love it. I like having a destination in the morning. I appreciate the delineation of work space and home space. And despite being somewhat of a introvert, I really like the happenstance camaraderie of the office. I came into the office through the entire pandemic, I have worked a couple of days here and there at home, but overall I have not truly tried to work from home. That said, I can understand why some people choose to work from home. It removes some of the social norms that an office has when it comes to dress and casual conversati ..read more

I finally had the opportunity the other day to try out the Blink Bus, Victoria’s mild attempt at rapid transit. Many of you will know that I have pretty low expectations for bus rapid transit (BRT), and this form of BRT in particular. If you want to get into the planning of the system before reading this, and what my issues are with BRT you may want to check out this previous article I wrote. On Friday, I had to go to Uptown Mall. I really didn’t have the time to walk there and I didn’t want to spend the money on a taxi, so I thought, the Blink Bus of course! The Blink Bus started running in t ..read more

Over the last few years we have seen a big change in the way Victorians move about. Just a couple of weeks ago, a new mobility report from the CRD showed that within the City of Victoria, 46.1% of trips are done without a car. While I think we could significantly increase those numbers through improvements to our transit system, it’s a great start. This shift in mobility had already started a conversation over the last few years about creating homes without parking. The first units that were planned without space for cars were up against significant concern from neighbours, mostly because they ..read more