UrbanWorkbench

From the category archives:

Canada

Walking from the large brick building that used to house the airport terminal operations, but now was given new life as a fruit farming centre, Janie scanned the snow line on the mountains surrounding the valley.  The flat land around what was once known as the West Kootenay Regional Airport was once a living farm. In fact, [...]

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A Focus on Food

by Mike Thomas on March 11, 2010

in Business, Castlegar, Rural, Sustainability, Urban Farming

While Castlegar City Council makes an impassioned plea for residents to understand the tough times the City is facing, it seems that all the good work, energy and momentum that was generated during the Integrated Community Sustainability Planning (ICSP) sessions seems to have fallen to the wayside.
Council still has a focus on attracting new businesses to the [...]

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I’m a twitterer. I’m bored of the monologue style of media that still dominates the old school thinking. Telling people what you want them to hear with no easy opportunity for dialog is so 90’s.   That’s why I think it is essential for municipalities to embrace social media and build participation in the demographics that are [...]

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Basket Willows

by Mike Thomas on March 7, 2010

in Environmental, Kootenays, Sustainability, Urban Farming

In the quest for useful plants to grow in our urban farm, we are looking at basket willow as a resource that has multiple uses:

Fedges – A cross between a fence and a hedge.
Living Structures
Basket-weaving
Coppicing for sustainable timber harvesting, and
Carbon sequestration

I’d like to give a plug to a local Kootenay Boundary grower of a variety [...]

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Castlegar Springs

by Mike Thomas on February 25, 2010

in Castlegar, Community, Regulation

The Grade-A services we enjoy in Castlegar from the library, water, sewer, streets and sidewalks, right through to the snow clearing operation comes with a hefty price tag. There is an indication out there that we are about to find this out, either through reduced services or increased taxes, as council balances a shift of taxes away from the industrial tax base, predominantly funded by the Celgar pulp mill.

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The video on the front page of ShapeVancouver.com suggests that by increasing the City’s density there would be significant environmental benefits. However, a recent article on Planetizen from Dr. Tony Recsei suggests that these claimed facts may not have empirical support…

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The Street View is only available on the Highways throughout the West Kootenays, but in larger centres such as Kelowna, Spokane, WA and Cranbrook, (as well as all the big cities), all streets have been photographed and input into the software.

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It’s all in the numbers. On reading about the Green Municipal Funding for the Cogeneration System at the Regional District of Nanaimo Wastewater Treatment Facility, you’d imagine that the system was making a huge dent in the electricity required to power Vancouver Island.
Cogeneration at [Wastewater Treatment Facility] will significantly offset electricity demands on Vancouver Island, [...]

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