Changes at Commercial & Adanac

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One of the items on Vancouver City Council’s agenda next Tuesday 16th November is the design approval for the redevelopment of the southwest corner of Commercial & Adanac.

This will soon enough become this:

The zoning went through a while ago, so this is really just for information at this point. However, it is right next door to the Alma Blackwell housing project, the managers of which are also pushing for a similar height through redevelopment.

This looks like it is becoming a standard, not a one-off.

TransEurasian Language Family Origins

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The origin of languages is a key part of how we became the species that we are today. And knowledge of the history of each language group allows us to track the migration patterns of humans millenia ago.

I have written before about ur-symbols, the origins of Indo-European, and other linguistic ideas. Now, we have exciting new research on the origin and dispersal of TransEurasian languages such as Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, and Turkish.

“This language family’s beginnings were traced to Neolithic millet farmers in the Liao River valley, an area encompassing parts of the Chinese provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the region of Inner Mongolia. As these farmers moved across north-eastern Asia over thousands of years, the descendant languages spread north and west into Siberia and the steppes and east into the Korean peninsula and over the sea to the Japanese archipelago … The findings illustrate how humankind’s embrace of agriculture after the ice age powered the dispersal of some of the world’s major language families. Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle.”

Renters and the Broadway Plan

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The Broadway Plan — otherwise known as the gold-plated pension plan for developers and city staff — is deep in the midst of its “consultative phase” and this month it is the renters (the majority) who get the treatment. We are offered a free 90-minute Round Table which:

“will focus on rental housing in relation to the Broadway Plan. This session will consider the entire Broadway Plan area and will include topics like the creation of new rental housing, protecting existing secure rental housing, renter protections, and mitigating displacement impacts.”

You can register to join at https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/broadway-plan-refined-directions-renter-round-table-tickets-204670774797.

I would strongly urge everyone to read the excellent analysis of the rental implications put together by CityHallWatch. One of their important takeaways:

“Staff purportedly seek the “careful renewal of the aging rental stock” in the apartment zones (RM and FM) between 1st and 16th Avenue and Vine Street and Clark Drive. This is perhaps another way of saying that the City is looking to enable the replacement of affordable rental stock with expensive new rentals. Current renters in those areas should sit up, take notice, and get involved in the consultations.”

Image: Barrels