Yule Heibel's Library tagged victoria →  View Popular, Search in Google

I love this presentation by Garth Lenz - and (sorry, but it has to be said) I hate Canada very much for condoning the tarsands. Canada gets away with pretending to be better than the US, but the tarsands show otherwise.
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A visual journey through the Alberta Tar Sands and a discussion of the the local regional and global impacts and how we can respond.

For almost twenty years, Garth's photography of threatened wilderness regions, devastation, and the impacts on indigenous peoples, has appeared in the world's leading publications. His recent images from the boreal region of Canada have helped lead to significant victories and large new protected areas in the Northwest Territories, Quebec, and Ontario. Garth's major touring exhibit on the Tar Sands premiered on Los Angeles in 2011 and recently appeared in New York. Garth is a Fellow of the International League Of Conservation Photographers

Filmed at TEDxVictoria on November 19 2011
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tarsands oil_sands boreal_forests canada garth_lenz tedx victoria video environment

Nice shout-out to Victoria BC architect Franc D'Ambrosio's Atrium building:
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A transparent ground floor, housing cafes and restaurants, invites people to approach, look in and stay a while. Rain gardens edge the site, a first for a private development in Victoria, catching and cleaning polluted street run-off, and softening the cityscape. The building is organised around the seven-storey wood-clad interior atrium, which introduces daylight into the heart of the structure. The wood, visible from the street night and day through a full-height glass wall at the atrium's south end, distinguishes the building and invites the public to animate this urban room.
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victoria franc_dambrosio architecture atrium urbanism

JPEG of Victoria BC earthquake map.

victoria earthquake maps jpeg reference

Self-explanatory. Brilliant photos.

victoria johnson_street_bridge photography flickr flickriver

Another article about Dockside Green (by Ken Pirie), but this one is really quite good: it covers Victoria's history, how the city turned to tourism, the problems of dealing with brownfields/ polluted lands, and how Dockside Green fits into this picture as an example of "unsprawling."

terrain.org ken_pirie dockside_green victoria architecture green_buildings

Washington State Department of Transportation page about the benefits of roundabouts. Thinking about this with regard to the so-called "octopus" of roads in downtown Victoria, just before traffic gets on to the Johnson Street Bridge. A roundabout might be the better solution...?
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Contrary to many peoples' perceptions, roundabouts actually move traffic through an intersection more quickly, and with less congestion on approaching roads. Roundabouts promote a continuous flow of traffic. Unlike intersections with traffic signals, drivers don’t have to wait for a green light at a roundabout to get through the intersection. Traffic is not required to stop – only yield – so the intersection can handle more traffic in the same amount of time.
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Also consider space constraints: roundabouts need less space:
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A roundabout may need more property within the actual intersection, but often take up less space on the streets approaching the roundabout. Because roundabouts can handle greater volumes of traffic more efficiently than signals, where drivers may need to line up to wait for a green light, roundabouts usually require fewer lanes approaching the intersection.
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johnson_street_bridge victoria roundabouts wsdot

Great article in the New York Times Real Estate section on Victoria BC's Dockside Green Development.
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“So it’s all integrated: the economic, the environmental, the social,” he added.

The holistic design is the hallmark of Dockside Green, which will eventually encompass 1.3 million square feet, including 26 buildings and 2,500 residents. The project’s first neighborhood, Dockside Wharf, was completed last year and has 266 market-rate apartments, 253 of which have sold; 26 “affordable” units; 32,600 square feet of office space; and 5,881 square feet of retail. Prices range from 411,900 Canadian dollars (about $390,000) for a one-bedroom to 529,900 for two bedrooms and up to 1,233,900 for penthouses.

The development also includes an 8 million Canadian dollar heating plant that converts locally sourced wood waste into a clean-burning gas that produces all the community’s heat and hot water. The system, which eliminates the need to use fossil fuels as a heat source, illustrates Dockside’s neighborhood-based approach to environmentally friendly design, said Robert Drew, a project architect and an associate principal with Busby Perkins & Will.
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housing victoria dockside_green nyt

An essay written by Adam Bahlke, posted to my WetPaint wiki, Victoria City Style Council. Adam was 14 when he wrote this.
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This essay was written in the summer of 2005. How I came to write an essay on the history of the Upper Harbour was partly because of all the buzz generated around the then recently proposed Dockside Green project, and also because my interest in the Upper Harbour's history had been sparked after several walks along Harbour Road and the Railyards development. Happily, this essay also managed to fulfill a school requirement, so I therefore felt justified to spend several afternoons going through old books and records at the Maritime Museum and looking through the online Royal BC Museum archives. However, since this essay is nearing a year old, whenever the words "current" and so forth are used, it has to be remembered that the events are a) no longer "current" and b) the companies/people involved might no longer exist in Victoria, BC.
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adam_bahlke victoria history harbors economic_development

Metropolis Magazine does a write-up of the City of Victoria's pissoir, designed by Vancouver-based firm Matthew Soules Architect. Key feature? "...the humble steel pipe used to support stop signs, parking notices, and the like."

metropolis_magazine mason_currey pissoir victoria

Surprised to see that Victoria's Johnson Street Bridge made it into the "Journal of Commerce - Western Canada's Construction Newspaper" (Jan.25/10) ...for its heritage value (not its potential as a mega-replacement construction project)! Right on. (Would love to know the story behind JSB's entry into the the Journal of Commerce...)

From the article:

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"The main opening span is 148 feet in length and when in the open position is balanced over a 45-foot fixed span. The Strauss Bascule Company Ltd. prepared the design for the bascule spans and the operating machinery.

The superstructure of the bridge was fabricated in Walkerville, Ontario and contains 100 tons of steel. "

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johnson_street_bridge victoria journal_of_commerce heritage preservation

Nice article about Yale's Kroon Hall and Victoria BC's Dockside Green as true carbon-neutral projects (with Dockside Green a model for building entire neighborhoods as green/ carbon neutral).
"Across the continent, at the southern tip of the mountainous and densely forested Vancouver Island, Dockside Green will soon become carbon neutral. A mix of town houses, mid-rise apartments, and commercial buildings being built on a brownfield at the edge of downtown Victoria, British Columbia, the large, multiphase urban development takes a comprehensive approach to carbon reduction, showing how much is possible at the neighborhood scale. "

green_strategies green_buildings dockside_green victoria metropolis_magazine yale kroon_hall

Added a comment to Monday Magazine's article on Victoria's Johnson Street Bridge debacle.

johnson_street_bridge victoria blue_bridge infrastructure municipal_funding municipal_politics comments

City of Victoria has a couple of parks master plan workshops coming up this month, January 09 (tomorrow & on 1/24) to figure out how to manage continuation and replacement of current "urban forest." (See city website for "Urban Forest Master Plan".)

[Note that the statistics given in this article apply to the City of Victoria (which is downtown core and core neighbourhoods, ~80K pop.), NOT the Greater Victoria area nor the CRD (Capital Regional District), which is 13 municipalities. CRD/ Greater Victoria municipal politics is screwy - we badly need amalgamation of the core municipalities (Victoria, Oak Bay, Saanich, Esquimalt, View Royal).]

urban_forest victoria parks

Podcast of the panel/symposium hosted by University of Victoria on 11/18/08 re. "Financial 9-1-1: Implications of the Economic Crisis - The UVic President's Panel on the Economy"
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How might the current economic crisis affect your house, your job, your future? Gain insight and a fresh perspective on the global financial crisis from this panel discussion featuring business, economic, and financial experts from UVic and the community.

Speakers: Graham Voss, UVic, Associate Professor, Department of Economics
Basma Majerbi, UVic, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Business
Tom Siemens, RBC, Vice President Commercial Banking
Robert Jawl, Jawl Properties, Principal
Tony Gage, Head, JEA Pension System Solutions
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Local perspective.

uvic economy financial_crisis podcast daily_splice victoria

Tell me again why Victoria is not yet hooked into this? Vancouver transit did it - why not BC Transit in Victoria?

google transit victoria

These are questions put together by UUs in James Bay, the first part directed at municipal candidates. They're excellent and to the point, and give a concrete point-of-reference for how even municipal politicians might address the global climate issue without resorting to pie-in-the-sky or motherhood statements.

victoria municipal_elections questions candidates

This is a very cool implementation of Google maps, built by Joseph Boutilier (at 18 the youngest candidate in the current Victoria municipal election). He took a map of Victoria and added geo-links to connect specific sites with specific issues (and his proposed policies/ approaches). Very nice work.

maps victoria politics apps municipal_elections

Earthquake hazards mapping for Greater Victoria, including amplification, liquifaction, and other risks, relative to one another for the region.

Basically, if I can just make sure I'm at home (in Rockland -- *rock* land, see?) when the big one strikes, I could be alright. Small comfort, though...

earthquake seismic_data victoria

one-page PDF, "Waste not; Making the most of our sewage"

sewage_treatment sewage_uses victoria reference pdf

bc_civicinfo crd victoria