John Jensen

Is the hipster zeitgeist shifting from Apple?

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:18:44 -0800

Could it be that the Apple fanboy-ism thing is starting to jump the shark? Does anybody want to bet that a year or so from now the cool hipsters will want Microsoft phones? My sense of the popular zeitgeist is that it is shifting in this way:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204083204577083042599679280.html

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/why-i-dont-want-an-iphone-any-more-50006257

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More statistics on one bedroom apartments in North Vancouver

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 21:17:37 -0700

As I have mentioned before, I have a small tool running that, a few times a day, downloads all the ads for apartments and basement suites in North Vancouver. This has been running, with a few interruptions, since November 2008. I thought I would produce a quick summary of what the market for one bedroom apartments has looked like.

The attached chart has two squiggly lines. The top, red one shows the median monthly rent for all suites listed, averaged on a weekly basis, measured on the left-hand scale. You can see that advertised rents in November 2011 started out at about $1100 per month, and have gyrated around that figure since then.

The blue line at the bottom shows the number of advertisements per week. One can see a spike before the February 2010 Winter Olympics, but that on average, there's between 50-100 advertisements per week.

I have similar data for 2, 3, 4-bedroom apartments; if you're interested drop me a email and I'll post them too.

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Only 7% of jobs in 100 major US cities are accessible by transit within 45 minutes

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 22:17:52 -0700

It may come as a surprise that, according to Brookings, only seven percent of jobs in the nation's largest metropolitan areas can be reached by residents in 45 minutes during the morning peak period (when transit service is the most intense). Among the 29 metropolitan areas with more than 2,000,000 population, the 45 minute job access average was 5.6 percent, ranging from 12.6 percent in Boston to 1.3 percent in Riverside-San Bernardino. The New York's metropolitan area's 45 minute job access figure was 9.8 percent (Figure 1).

I don't have broad experience with transit systems in US cities, but this statistic certainly rings true for me. The main problem seems to be that most transit systems are focused on the downtown core, when only 10% of urban area jobs are there.

I wonder what the similar statistic is for Canada's major urban areas?

http://www.newgeography.com/content/002251-transit-the-4-percent-solution?

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A pocket of North Vancouver in Surrey

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 17:05:18 -0700

http://www.vancouversun.com/Trees+trails+creeks+proving+draw+buyers+Sequoia+townhouse+development+Surrey/4928095/story.html

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Lots of people at the Onni open house tonight

Tue, 17 May 2011 20:04:05 -0700

-- John

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City of Vancouver council expense visualization

Tue, 17 May 2011 00:13:40 -0700

Local Vancouver web guru Luke Closs has put together a great tool that visualizes Vancouver City Council expense data:

From: Luke Closs
Date: Mon, May 16, 2011 at 10:58 PM
Subject: [Vancouver-Data] Simple council expense visualization

Hey gang,

I wanted to learn some new technologies last week, so I built some
simple visualizations of the city council 2010 expense dataset:

You can find it here: http://expense.recollect.net/

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City of North Vancouver opts out of Onni meeting

Fri, 13 May 2011 22:20:33 -0700

Council asks staff, Onni to reduce proposed density on Safeway site

The proposed development for the Safeway site at 13th and Lonsdale came under scrutiny Monday, with several City of North Vancouver councillors taking issue with Onni Group's proposal and their plan to embark on a series of town hall meetings.

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Low Level Road project to be discussed at May 11 planning commission meeting

Tue, 10 May 2011 15:55:00 -0700

2011 05 11.PDF Download this file

Those who are confused and/or concerned about the Port of Metro Vancouver's Low Level Road Improvement Project may be interested to know that the project is on the agenda for the Advisory Planning Commission meeting on Wednesday May 11. I sit on the commission and am looking forward to the presentation, as there has been a lot of discussion in the community about and this is the first time the project has come before us.

Any questions you'd like asked? Let me know via email or a comment below.

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Open House for 13th and Lonsdale (Safeway site) Development

Tue, 10 May 2011 13:59:00 -0700

Onni Development is holding an Open House on Tuesday May 17th regarding a proposed major development on the corner of 13th and Lonsdale.

The proposed development has a total of 500,000 square feet in three towers, nearly double the permitted density in the City's Official Community Plan.

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CNV development map mention in North Shore Outlook

Thu, 05 May 2011 10:56:36 -0700

I had a discussion a few days ago with Sean Kolenko of the North Shore Outlook regarding the Civic Engagement Task Force and the development map I created. It's mentioned in this article in Wednesday's paper.

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How has North Vancouver changed over the last 30 years?

Wed, 04 May 2011 17:16:04 -0700

ESRI, the mapping software company, recently launched an interesting tool that uses historical US satellite data to produce maps showing changes on the earth's surface between 1975 and 2005.

I thought I would try to see what it showed for North Vancouver; the resulting map is below.

Green areas show where vegetation has increased, purple where it has decreased, and white where there has been little change.

One can see that there's been an increase in Lower Lonsdale where Waterfront Park is, along creek beds, and where the old North Vancouver dump along Lynn Creek has been replaced by parkland and playing fields. The dark purple along Lonsdale also shows where new developments have decreased vegetation over the last thirty years.

Check it out yourself to zoom in on different areas.

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Craig Oliver predicts an NDP minority government?

Sun, 01 May 2011 11:58:57 -0700

I can't believe this... Craig Oliver, on CTV's "Question Period", just predicted an NDP minority government, with the Tories in opposition.

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City of Vancouver releases all councillor expense data

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 11:25:13 -0700

From the Vancouver Open data mailing list:

The City has just added Council Expenses to the Open Data web site. These are the expenses that each Council member has incurred while conducting business on behalf of the City. Summary information is available for years 2002 - 2009 and detailed expense transactions are available starting in year 2010. For more information, visit the Council expenses page on Open Data catalogue (http://data.vancouver.ca/datacatalogue/councilExpenses.htm).

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Closing North Shore’s waste loop

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:05:57 -0700

Cost proposals to upgrade the North White's sewage treatment infrastructure range from $400m to $2.8b

http://www.bclocalnews.com/greater_vancouver/northshoreoutlook/news/120393869.html

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North Vancouver a possible site for spurned downtown casino?

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:36:41 -0700

In my twitter feed today...

"jeffnagel: Cities outside Vancouver brace for new casino hunt: Downtown rejection means game may be afoot elsewhere http://t.co/r2Tyb01"

Cities outside #Vancouver brace for new casino hunt: Downtown rejection means game may be afoot elsewhere bclocalnews.com/news/120320224…
— jeffnagel (@jeffnagel) April 20, 2011

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Web map of development projects in the City of North Vancouver

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:31:00 -0700

For the last half of 2010 I helped to create and was a member of the City of North Vancouver's Civic Engagement Task Force, charged with improving civic engagement and, ultimately, voter turnout in the City. We met every few weeks and produced a lengthy report. One of its many recommendations was that the City should produce a simple map on the website showing all the proposed development projects that were working their way through the system.

In early April the City staff presented council with a report that summarized the costs and other implications of the recommendations in our report. While I was pleased to see that staff and council supported nearly all of our suggestions, I was surprised to see that the cost of providing this web map was listed at $40,000, particularly when the raw data necessary for creating it is already available on the City's website.

So I thought I would put one together myself. You can see it at http://map.jjensen.ca.

I've set it to update twice per day, so it will always be up-to-date. Those (few?) of you who follow these things may find it interesting.

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Province thinking of creating District of East North Vancouver

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:07:45 -0700

This is a hilarious April Fool's piece in the North Shore News:

http://www.nsnews.com/Province+mulls+North+Vancouver/4542691/story.html

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Perennial question of how to pay for expanded, equitable transit a top worry

Sat, 05 Mar 2011 11:30:49 -0800

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Perennial+question+expanded+equitable+transit+worry/4389094/story.html

-- John

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Murray Hill-based Bell Labs develops 2-inch cube that could replace unsightly cell towers

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 18:10:00 -0800

via nj.com

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Some information about Dennis Washington's Attessa III yacht

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 14:30:48 -0800

Those who frequently visit Lonsdale Quay will have noticed the Attessa III, a yacht belonging to Dennis Washington, owner of Seaspan (formerly Washington Marine Group). Here's some interesting information about the ship and its interior.

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/429438-monaco-news-views-associated-interests-3.html#post6270575

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