Human housing
A few surrealist cartoons of heads and faces as buildings.
planning
Money: It’s Value & Nature In A Time Of Collapse
Larning more about the nature and history of money, we eventually realize that money is simply a promissary note, valuable only because we agree it is valuable, a useful social…
Another Council Facepalm Moment
In a story on CollingwoodToday, this week council again discussed their job-growth-and revenue-killing interim control bylaw (ICBL) that has stopped the town from issuing new home building permits for the…
Can Collingwood Pass the Strong Towns’ Test?
Back in 2014, the USA-based Strong Towns group posted a test to “measure a successful Strong Town.” The ten questions or conditions posed include: Take a photo of your main…
Fixing Collingwood’s Streets
While our council has been obsessed with the Saunderson Vindictive Judicial Inquiry (aka the SVJI) and lavishing all our tax dollars and their time promoting its often redundant or irrelevant…
Collingwood and cannabis stores
Credit where credit is due: Collingwood council this week voted unanimously to allow a cannabis store to open here. That came as somewhat of a surprise given earlier negative comments…
My answers to AOC
The following questions came from the local chapter of the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO). They were sent to all mayoral and deputy-mayoral candidates, but I am unsure whether council…
Madigan’s motion jeopardizes town
On January 15, Councillor Bob Madigan made a motion (seconded, of course, by his puppetmaster, Deputy Mayor Saunderson) to limit the progress of the Indigo/Eden-Oak/McNabb development at the south end…
Taking credit for the work of others
A short while ago, I received an unsolicited email from the interim (and soon to be departing) CAO, John Brown, with the subject, “Ideas. Observations. Musings . Opinions . Facts ?”…
Another imaginary roadblock for the hospital
In the April 24 addendum to the agenda there is a report by the interim CAO about the hospital redevelopment you should read. It seems another council hissy fit is…
The Block torpedoes the hospital, again
When their sole-sourced consultant’s report failed to give The Block the high ground to oppose the Collingwood General & Marine Hospital’s redevelopment plan, the weasels on council and in the…
Incremental Design to Address Housing Inequality
Basically every nation has basic housing problems that need to be addressed. Chilean architect Alejandro Aravena won this year’s Pritzker Architecture Prize because of his work on community housing. It…
The Swimmer
The swimmer stood on the dock, contemplating the lazy current in the river. The warm spring, followed by the sunny days of early summer, had warmed the water enough to…
The Airport Mystery
What’s happening at Collingwood Airport? Or better yet: what’s NOT happening? And why isn’t it? Once touted as the role model for regional cooperation, and having the best potential for…
The high cost of affordability
Affordable housing is crucial to the economic and social vitality of every municipality. Without it, people cannot afford to live here, which means they will look for jobs in places…
Fortuna: Why Plans Fail
Niccolo Machiavelli used two words in his book, The Prince, to describe the factors that influenced events. In English these are virtue or character (virtu), fortune or chance (fortuna). Only…
What Next! What Best Laid Plans Fall Through
Sometimes, even the best laid plans fall apart. And life feels very, very unfair. Every caregiver has a story about a high school reunion or an anniversary dinner that had…
Rethinking Parking
Parking in Collingwood – especially downtown – has been a contentious issue since at least the mid-1980s. Numerous studies have been done advocating a variety of answers, none of them…
Gated Communities
I’m not a big fan of gated communities, but even if I don’t personally want to live in one myself, I understand the reason for them, and sympathize with homeowners…