Vintage houses, Clarke Street, downtown Port Moody

It’s more than two years since we launched this blog site, dedicated to reporting on the obvious features of local government and urban life in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland. The two subject counties, Fraser Valley and Metro Vancouver, are about half the size of Belgium when you put them together, with 2.65 million residents bunched up either in the valley itself or around the Burrard Inlet.

The pressures of paid work have reduced the rate of activity here, and the number of visits has dropped off as a result, but only slightly. I’ll provide a list of which posts have been visited most over the past year, as I did in November 2012. Only one of them, the live-work item, is a repeat.

Port Moody plans transformation to greet Evergreen Line. This piece describes perhaps the most ambitious urban densification plan in the region, to take place within a relatively small municipality.

Knocking down the Lions Gate Bridge. Nobody is knocking the iconic bridge down in the near future, but I was actually hired to help plan its demolition and replacement in the 1990s.

Live-work spaces: why so few? Also in the top five for 2012. I feel guilty that I haven’t followed up on this topic, which seems to interest visitors from all over the world.

Downtown New West goes for the big time. Another ambitious densification scheme in British Columbia’s oldest urban community.

Holding the line in Central Lonsdale. Residents in the long-established neighbourhoods of the City of North Vancouver are split on how to respond to development pressures.

The most-viewed individual post over the entire two years, and number 6 in the past year, is The Evergreen Line and the future of Skytrain.

Thanks for checking in.