Within its region, the Town of Comox on Vancouver Island is equivalent to New Westminster in Metro Vancouver or Oak Bay in Greater Victoria. Comox is hemmed in by a bigger urban neighbour (Courtenay) and prevented from sprawling; it is forced to focus on how to densify its neighbourhoods, especially its downtown, building on its history and waterfront location, and boosted by regular non-stop commercial flights between Comox Airport and Calgary, Canada’s oil and gas capital. Continue reading
Monthly Archives: August 2012
Port Coquitlam — working the plan
Measured by its regional media profile, Port Coquitlam is a city that most people ignore. There’s not really a port here, as I mentioned in an earlier post; there are railyards, trucking companies, a jail, and a recent proliferation of big box stores on the eastern fringe.
Up close, though, the local government has done a decent job of delivering on its 1998 plan [no longer available online] to build an urban village around the downtown core. The plan is more detailed than most of its counterparts around the region, and more focused on the value of village residential development. Continue reading
Fraseropolis 