Geoff
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geofflister.ca
Geoff
@geofflister.ca
Strategic image and motion.

Skiing, mountain biking, cycling, disc golf, gaming. I'll try anything once.
Step 1: Win OneCity nomination for @wazaroff.bsky.social.
Step 2: Use victory to justify buying a gravel bike I definitely don’t need but emotionally require.

I am stuck on Step 1. Please send help (votes). Sign up before Monday to be eligible!
January 10, 2026 at 5:55 PM
Reposted by Geoff
OneCity is holding a contested mayoral nomination, and their two candidates, William Azaroff and Amanda Burrows, were on the Cambie Report. Link to the full episode below.

Here's what they had to say about housing (see follow up posts for alt text):
January 10, 2026 at 4:47 AM
Evo is doing unlimited 15 minute trips on weekdays between 10-3pm until the end of the month.

I imagine the cars aren’t well used during that time and it’s an attempt to either shift behaviour, or shift cars, which cluster during the rush hour.
January 6, 2026 at 11:07 PM
I got to meet a great man this weekend. Mike Harcourt is a legend in BC Politics, and his support is incredibly appreciated.
January 6, 2026 at 8:55 PM
We are just getting started.
Kate Hammer: who is the politician to watch for 2026?

Richard Zussman: So, I think it's going to be William Azaroff. So, this is a guy who a lot of people may not be familiar with right now, but he may be the mayor of Vancouver in a year from now.

Check out the full clip below!
December 30, 2025 at 2:27 AM
Reposted by Geoff
We need to build homes, everywhere, for all kinds of people. That's how you solve a housing crisis.
Most of Vancouver is de facto a gated community for rich people. It’s been said many times, but can’t be said often enough.

Luckily, this is going to change!
Your regular reminder that it takes a ginormous amount of privilege to claim that our low-density neighbourhoods are "working".
(Old data, but story did not change.)
December 12, 2025 at 10:25 PM
It's not complicated.
My simple test for city housing policy:
1) Do you support turning a parking lot and grocery store next to skytrain into lots of homes, and
2) do you support making it easier to build more non-market housing throughout the city?

Votes are in and only One City of Vancouver party supports both 1 & 2.
Mike Klassen just went full NIMBY in council just now, citing "principles of liveability" (a deeply NIMBY coded phrase) to apparently set the stage to justify his vote against legalizing more affordable social housing.

And sure enough, ABC voted against the Social Housing Initiative. Rank NIMBYism.
December 10, 2025 at 5:32 PM
An interesting theory of political backlash to change. Last sentence is important.
This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥
December 2, 2025 at 3:04 AM
Vancouver downzoned most of the city under TEAM in the 70’s.
Downzoning was used by cities around the world to preserve neighborhood aesthetics & protect property values.

New evidence from Chicago in @findingspress.org ⏬ shows downzoning's effects over several decades:
—Massive drop in housing construction
—Higher home prices
—Increased racial segregation
Downzoning Chicago: How Local Land Use Policy Has Reduced Housing Construction and Reinforced Segregation | Published in Findings
By Yonah Freemark, George Kisiel. Downzonings were used by US cities in the postwar period to preserve neighborhood character. These land-use policies were associated with lower housing supply, higher...
findingspress.org
December 1, 2025 at 3:59 PM
Always gold.
Excited to share a new video I produced with Urbanarium on their Decoding Timber Towers competition, which challenged teams to design 8–20+ storey buildings out of wood!

Check it out here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ42...
Did these designs crack the code to wood towers?
YouTube video by About Here
www.youtube.com
November 30, 2025 at 9:20 PM
It’s wild to watch a group of councillors with a majority fail to govern for three years on the platform they were elected on and then try and hammer it all out in a budget doc without doing any of the real work that would be required to achieve their goals.
November 25, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Latest project, and I'm pretty stoked to be supporting this kind of talent to become the next mayor of Vancouver. This is the kind of leadership we need.
November 17, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Things I'd do if I was rich: I'd go to Norway (a place that builds with lots of wood) and find some well spoken, burly firefighter and pay them to do a tour of North America's firehalls, explaining why single stair egress is fine.

Coalition building is hard, but we gotta do it.
November 3, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Our neighbourhood would go bonkers for a block party. We have 500-600 children at our door every year. The neighbourhood has relatively narrow sidewalks, and a little more breathing space would be so welcome.
Honestly gobsmacked by ABC's referral of my road safety motion to staff.

Halloween is the most dangerous night of the year for CHILDREN.

This was an attempt to use an existing process to keep CHILDREN safe, and ABC punted it to staff w/o offering an alternative.

Really, guys?
October 29, 2025 at 7:02 PM
If we want prices to decline, cities need to make that assumption in the economic analysis they use to set form of development and set fees for development.

Vancouver's most recent referral report that re-aligns residential zoning used existing prices as a baseline in their modelling by Coriolis.
October 28, 2025 at 5:07 PM
A wonderful vision of what the future could bring in Vancouver.
Here's a consolidated thread with some of our more recent #SingleStair explorations.

We've been doing these with the aim to influence vancouver zoning and building code deliberations, and because we want to understand what the potential is.

First up: 33x122 lots, 4 and 5 storey, fronting a park
October 23, 2025 at 11:00 PM
It's exceedingly obvious when amateur, or even semi-skilled, communicators use ChatGPT as their voice.

It devalues your brand. Stop it.
October 9, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Question: Do you assume uncredited art is made by AI, now? I'm starting to do so.
October 8, 2025 at 5:51 PM
"The planning process treats housing, which at least in the abstract is a source of opportunity, as a source of trouble instead. New housing is not considered a benefit in itself, but a burden for which existing residents deserve compensation and developers must make amends."
October 7, 2025 at 4:24 PM
In a healthy housing market, pre-sales would sell for less than existing stock.

More policy should think about how to achieve that.
October 6, 2025 at 12:43 AM
Vancouver’s developers have made a sharp turn into purpose built development. I don’t think influencers like @mikepmoffatt.bsky.social really have a grasp on the change and its effects.
October 2, 2025 at 3:13 PM
Canada Post is finally doing the right thing and ending door-to-door mail for rich urbanites.

3/4 of Canadians already use a community mailbox—every person living in a townhouse, an apartment, a condo, or a rural community is deeply subsidizing home delivery for wealthy SFH owners in cities.
September 25, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Lowest population growth in Q2 since we started keeping record just after WWII. One of the largest swings in our history.
Canada’s population growth has stalled for two quarters now, after massive increases in the post-Covid years
September 24, 2025 at 8:57 PM
A must read for any and all commentators and journalists on housing. @michaelwiebe.bsky.social is an economist has specialized in replication: basically he’s a scientist who fact checks other scientists.
New post: I read Patrick Condon's book, so you don't have to.

1/
September 2, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Strawberry vending machine on the bike route to Antwerp, just across the Dutch border. Wild.
September 2, 2025 at 2:40 AM