cityplanner.ca

It was a good drive south from Waskesiu today, and I ended up with a solid hour to explore Saskatoon before heading to the airport to catch my flight home. While driving into and around the city, I noticed several signs for "Tourism Radio 91.7 FM" posted along main roads near the airport and in the downtown, and decided to tune in...

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Case in point. In my last entry, I suggested that planners who are giving conference presentations may be able to capture key points they missed in an article, video, or website entry.

Today, I gave a presentation at the APCPS Saskatchewan Planners’ conference at Waskesiu Lake in Northern Saskatchewan about “A City Planner’s Guide to Creating Positive Change,” and although I had some time toward the end of my presentation about Ebenezer Howard’s garden city story, and how he might never have gotten into the history books had he not been given the initial $50 to get his book published, there were some extra related points on mentorship and the role of the planner that I wanted to make...

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Inevitably, if you give a lot of presentations or write a lot of response letters, there will be times when you forget to say something or include a detail. They may be small details, or big details, but sometimes even the small details matter and need to be said...

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I just came across the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org), which contains a searchable library of "essentially free" books, including several key planning books, conference proceedings and periodicals. Each country has its own copyright laws, and in the case of these books, it appears that their copyrights have expired, and the books have been returned to the public domain. Several libraries have worked with companies like Microsoft to scan and post the material...

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What if there was a means of helping people in your own neighbourhood, helping the less fortunate, promoting local food options, and collecting preserves for your cellar all at the same time? There is, and it's called Operation Fruit Rescue.

The Edmonton Sun covered a story in yesterday's paper about the initiative, which works like this...

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Our first priority is to the public interest. But sometimes, when we have compassion for members of the public who find themselves in a rough situation, it doesn’t seem that all planners are on the same page.

I was driving home today after running some errands, and while heading south along a busy four lane road, I saw a boy, perhaps 10 years of age, pounding both his fists against the sign and button at a crosswalk, and shaking his head in frustration...

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I still occasionally order tourism brochures in the mail, and one just arrived for Madison, Wisconsin.

One of the fact sheets in the package includes the following statement: “The Wisconsin State Capitol is the city’s signature landmark. No building within a mile of it may rise higher than the 284-foot white granite dome of the Capitol, which is modeled after our nation’s Capitol...”

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A friend asked me today, how would I build a completely sustainable city?

We had a great, in-depth talk about this, and it would make a great presentation topic for a conference or symposium. For the purposes of a shorter article, though, here are some of the highlights...

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It sure is, but where did it come from? Every once in a while, you might notice a sign which is unlike any other. Special circumstances in particular neighbourhoods may create the need for uncommon signage, but this was a new one for me…

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Earlier in the week, while walking home, I saw a crew of three young women painting a colourful new mural on the side of an otherwise bland concrete building. I pass this building often enough, and others like it, so the change grabbed my attention right away.



It is evidence that others are trying too; a reminder that we are each far from alone in our desire to make our city a better place…

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