City of Ottawa

I’ll apologise if I put too much local content in this
column, I’ll try harder in the future.  But I thought this could prove interesting to outsiders too.  With the release of the new Official Plan this week, the City of Ottawa has set an excellent example for other large North American cities.  The plan actually contains some pretty radical ideas: freezing the urban growth boundary for 20 years; increasing population density by 15%;
making small-scale retail a part of any new residential developments to make communities livelier; discouraging Big Box Malls.  It has a few missing pieces, notably a lack of emphasis on transit, but in general, it’s a pretty sound plan for making a denser, less car-dependent, greener and more European-style city.  Contrast this with the previous regional plan, which was a suburbanite’s wet dream of endless vinyl siding cul-de-sacs, 100,000 square foot shops, and minivans by the highwayful.  Of course a plan is just a plan, and doesn’t carry a huge amount of legal weight, but if future administations stick to it, this could turn Ottawa into a model city.

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The Common Cold

South Korea

Even if they got booted out of the medal rounds at the World Cup this week, South Koreans have a lot to be happy about.  A country that had never even won one match at the World Cup qualified for the quarter-finals on home turf.  Always nice to see the underdog win; it was enough to warm even the cold dark cavity where my heart is supposed to be.  Not only that, but the last quarter-century has seen South Korea transform itself from a third-world quasi-dictatorship to a major democratic hi-tech and industrial power.  And all without crippling themselves with debt or absorbing massive amounts of aid.  Word to the mutha.

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The Anti-Globalisation Movement