https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/burnaby-lake-overpass-highway-1-pedestrian-cyclist-bridge Of course Burnaby would have such a fine bridge before backwards Vancouver would.
Showing posts sorted by date for query Burnaby. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by date for query Burnaby. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Sunday, April 5, 2026
40 years after Expo 86
https://bcanuntoldhistory.knowledge.ca/1980/expo-86
Unlike Brisbane, Vancouver doubled down on its various restrictions. Ideally, any tall building in Vancouver had to be shorter than what Brisbane allows. The bridges kepet narrow and unduplicated than what Brisbane allows. The trains are to be shorter than what Brisbane and most cities allow.
It was almost as if since Vancouver couldn't build a wall around the city to keep people out, a strong level of symbolism was imposed instead. This urban symbolism was all about keeping things small & backwards whenever possible.
Burnaby, Coquitlam and Surrey have all started the process to allow for taller buildings than what Vancouver permits. That's because they are bound by the same restrictions that Vancouver imposes.
Thursday, March 19, 2026
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
Surrey should have more night-bus routes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Translink/comments/1rop925/thoughts_on_yvr_movenments_idea_of_making_surrey
Alberta has two cities with over a million people each, those being Calgary and Edmonton.
Vancouver has never had 1 million residents, but the Metro_Vancouver_Regional_District has well over 3 million people.
Victoria,_British_Columbia has yet to reach 100K, but the Capital_Regional_District is getting close to half a million.
Surrey has almost 3 quarters of a million people and is expected to be the first city in BC to eventually have a million residents.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrey,_British_Columbia#Current_transportation_network
Surrey like Burnaby, will eventually have some of the tallest buildings in BC, that's because they aren't under the extreme height restrictions that Vancouver has.
https://www.surrey.ca/about-surrey
https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?cityID=2&status=15 Surrey
https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?stateID=1&status=15 BC
https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?countryID=1&status=15 Canada
Friday, February 20, 2026
Aerial view of downtown Vancouver in 1969
https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/1r960mq/tbt_aerial_view_vancouver_downtown_coal_harbour_c This was still a time when Vancouver didn't allow any office tower to have a 30th floor. As of 2026, no office building in Vancouver has been permitted to have a 40th floor. However, Burnaby & Surrey are planning to have their first office building over 40 stories. That's because they aren't under the extreme height restrictions that Vancouver imposes.
Seattle had its first 50 story office tower in 1969. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safeco_Plaza
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Square The first 50 story office tower in Australia (1967) was possible because they don't have anything like the height restrictions in Vancouver.
Toronto had its first 50+ story office tower in 1967. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto-Dominion_Centre#Late_20th_century
SF had its first office buiding over 50 stories open in 1969. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/555_California_Street 52 stories, but the equivalent of 60 when counting all of the mechanical plant floors.
Saturday, February 7, 2026
Vancouver, Burnaby and NW
Why People Hate Living in Vancouver (and want to move away) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzyITR89-3s
Vancouver, Burnaby and NW is the city, although they are 3 separate municipalities.
Burnaby, BC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqB1UXuXclc&t=265s
Saturday, January 31, 2026
Why Greater Toronto Has Several Skylines
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI9WJa9Q8dA
Of course many large urban areas around the world have more than 1 or 2 skylines or tower clusters.
For the longest time, no building in Vancouver or BC, was allowed to be as tall as the 1930s CIBC tower, which is now a stump.
https://www.blogto.com/city/2017/05/toronto-lost-observation-deck-commerce-court-north/
https://www.torontojourney416.com/canadian-bank-of-commerce-building/
https://www.25king.ca/the-history
It wasn't until the early 1970s when stumpy, Vancouver allowed a building to be taller than the L.A. City Hall, or the Smith Tower in Seattle.
The 1930s CIBC tower, the L.A. City Hall and the Smith Tower, would still be prominent towers in Vancouver, but stumps in their own cities.
Despite Vancouver being divided by an inlet and a river, the city wasn't able to build a huge wall along Boundary Road. Thus, the KEEP THEM OUT agenda was a little thwarted. The various White city councils tried to do the next best thing. That was to symbolically impose various restrictions as a reluctance to think, plan and build on a BIG city scale. The time especially from 1960 to 2000 had predominantly White City Hall and its councils continually impose several overlapping restrictions.
Since Vancouver can't control immigration or the movements of non-white people, keeping things small and backwards, means that less people will move there than to Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Edmonton. However, with a mild winter climate, more and more people want to move to backwards BC, especially small-minded Vancouver and provincial Victoria.
In spite of immigration and Multiculturalism, Vancouver was to perpetually promote its small scale agenda.
While the first Skytrain line can finally run 5 car trains, the stations weren't designed to become long enough to eventually accomodate 9 car trains like the big city Montreal Metro has.
The 2nd and 3rd Skytrain lines are still only running 2 car joke trains. Running 8-10 car trains is what a proper big city would do, but not backwards Vancouver.
Narrow bridges provides strong symbolism of the cities narrow-mindedness. When bridges are too narrow, its difficult to have a proper express or rapid bus system. The reluctance to build parallel bus and HOV bridges helps to maintain the congestive planning approach that is vancouver and the Greater Region.
Vancouver's refusal to build parallel bike bridges has meant that 2 lanes were removed from the Burrard Bridge, 1 lane from the Cambie Bridge and 2 lanes from the Granville Bridge.
Keeping buildings symbolically short when compared to what scenic Sydney, Auckland, SF and Seattle allow, also helps to maintain Vancouver's reluctance to enter the big and tall urban scale. In fact, the scenic setting that Vancouver is in has been used as the main excuse to continually scale the city down. Yet, several scenic cities around the world are either able to have wider bridges, wider roads, longer trains or taller buildings.
The world is mostly composed of non-white people. Canada has less than 1% of the world's population and stubborn Vancouver symbolically remains as a small provincial backwater on the Pacific Rim.
https://centralparktower.com.au Unlike Perth, Vancouver forbids 50 story office towers and Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne size residential towers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/108_St_Georges_Terrace In fact, no office building in Vancouver has been permitted to have a 40th floor. However, since Burnaby and Surrey aren't under the restrictive controls of Vancouver, they will eventually allow office towers over 40 stories.
Despite Australia having less people than Canada, Perth is allowed to have taller buildings, wider bridges and longer trains than Vancouver. Taller buildings, wider bridges and longer trains are even less likely in Halifax than whats in Brisbane or Queensland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q1_(building) To see buildings on a similar scale of what Brisbane allows, one has to get to Greater Toronto. Brisbane is allowed to have some buildings that would even be impressive in Melbourne and Sydney.
While Montreal is allowed to have taller buildings than Vancouver, Montreal isn't allowed to have Sydney size towers. Especially not on the scale of what Melbourne and Toronto permit.
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
New pedestrian and cyclist bridge above railway proposed for Brentwood in Burnaby
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/burnaby-brentwood-pedestrian-cyclist-overpass-proposal Not just in backwards Vancouver, but throughout the Greater Vancouver Region, is a lacking of bike and foot bridges. Of course there also needs to be a regional network of bus and HOV bridges. So many of the existing bridges are too damn narrow.
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
UBC students hold a fake party for 18-year unfulfilled promise of SkyTrain
https://www.ams.ubc.ca/news/ubc-students-celebrate-18-years-of-skytrain-delays
The UBC-Broadway+Corridor should have been built to the Tri-Cities_(British_Columbia) in 1 or 2 phases. Unfortunatly, the days of a line from Coquitlam to UBC are still so far away.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/the-14-billion-transit-plan-the-b-c-liberals-conveniently-forgot
The Millennium_Line was built in the middle first, when it should have started with UBC, Vancouver and Burnaby. Instead, it started from East Vancouver, through Burnaby, then to Port_Moody and ending at Lafarge_Lake-Douglas_station in Coquitlam. At least there+will+likely+be+a+UBC+Station+before+the+next+millennium.
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=UBC-Broadway+Corridor
SkyTrain's Canada Line service disruption
(service disruption ends after 14 hours) https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/skytrain-canada-line-service-disruptions-january-14-2026
For a rapid transit line that opened in 2009, on the surface, it sure wasn't designed to be an efficient high capacity line for the future. It's still just a 2 car joke of a train. Fortunately, most real cities around the world planned for not only 6 car trains, but even 8-10 car trains.
Unfortunatly, Vancouver has been hit very hard with a multigenerational agenda of continually imposed small scale infrastructure. Vancouver has water on 3 sides, as its on a peninsula. Since the powers that be couldn't build a Boundary+Road moat or trench, the next best thing was to symbolically show the reluctance to build proper big city size infrastructure. This stunted approach to things is about symbolically holding the scale of the city back for as long as possible.
Despite backwards Vancouver not being able to apply a castle-moat-and-drawbridge control system, the next best thing was to symbolically keep things smaller than what normal or proper big cities allow.
Here are some of the best examples of holding the size of things back. The 3 lane joke that is the Lions+Gate+Bridge has never had a rapid transit rail tunnel and no express bus tunnel next to it. Especially, no 6 lane highway tunnel. It's a classic BC bottleneck-chokepoint, by design.
From a 3 lane joke of a bridge to a two car Canada+Line joke of a train. It met the symbolic requirement to be shorter than the LRT in Edmonton, the C Train in Calgary and the trains in Seattle and Portland.
The+Post+building+complex could have been Vancouver's first 50 story office tower, it's not even 25 floors. It would be impressive if it were in Victoria, Kelowna, Kamloops or Prince George. That's the unfortunate thing about Vancouver, so much is done to only be impressive to small cities or towns.
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=The+small+Westin+Bayshore+Hotel+in+Vancouver
Things have been kept so small in Vancouver throughout its history, that any big city stuff might seem overwhelming. There has been an unofficial KEEP THEM OUT mentality, but since the city cant have checkpoints, building things small symbolically demonstrates the perpetual reluctance to not allow a big city in backwater BC.
Since Vancouver can't control Burnaby and can't stop Surrey from eventually becoming the biggest city in BC, they are able to build things on a larger scale than Vancouver.
Saturday, November 22, 2025
World’s Tallest Towers Comparison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09pmnf8npA8
There was a time when no structure in BC was allowed to be as tall as Blackpool Tower. Then there was a time when no building in Vancouver was allowed to be as tall as the Seattle Space needle or the Calgary Tower. Even in late 2025, only one Vancouver building has been allowed to be taller than the Calgary Tower.
Burnaby, Coquitlam and especially Surrey, don't have such imposed height restrictions as stumpy Vancouver. Thus, Burnaby, Coquitlam and Surrey will all be having taller buildings than Vancouver.
If Montreal can ever have its equivalent of La_Defense or Canary_Wharf, then it might be able to have some tall buildings that would be impressive by Melbourne and Toronto standards. Perhaps even Chicago or NYC standards.
Sunday, November 16, 2025
Burnaby apologizes for decades of discrimination against people of Chinese descent
https://globalnews.ca/news/11528001/burnaby-apology-discrimination-against-chinese-community
Asia is the most populated part of the world and until recently, China had the biggest population. Thus, people from China or people who are of Chinese descent, live all over the world. There was a strong, KEEP CANADA WHITE agenda, right into the mid 20th century. Of course this mentality wasn't just directed towards Asians, but towards anyone who was nonwhite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_head_tax
It took until the 1970s for Multiculturalism to challenge the, KEEP CANADA AS A WHITE MAN'S PARADISE.
https://pier21.ca/research/immigration-history/canadian-multiculturalism-policy-1971
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/multiculturalism
While Canada hardly has that much of a Pacific Coast, when compared to the US and Australia, the BC part of Canada should have had at least one major city on the scale of Montreal or Seattle, Brisbane or SF. Unfortunatly, Vancouver has retained several of its overlapping restrictions, which prevent it from being on a scale similar to that of Montreal, Seattle, Calgary, Brisbane & SF...
Despite Burnaby & Grater Vancouver being multicultural for several decades, so much of the restrictive BC mentality remains like an old disruptive computer program that hasn't been deleted. Unfortunatly, after the WW2 era, Greater Vancouver and BC continued with a backwater mentality. Just look at how much bigger things are allowed to be in Australia's 4 largest cities. Look at the scale of Seattle & Calgary & see how much of Greater Vancouver is still held back. Look at how big Edmonton as a capital is, while Victoria remains as a small provincial backwater.
Unlike Melbourne, SF and Toronto, backwards Vancouver made sure that it was one of the first cities to get rid if its streetcar and tram-train (interurban) network before the 1960s. To make matters worse, the Greater Vancouver Region had and still does, have a system of mostly narrow bridges.
There was such a push to have a tracks to tires agenda, no one seemed to realize that all the bridges should be wide enough to accomodate 2 bus lanes, or at least build a bus bridge or tunnel next to an existing bridge.
Just because Multiculturalism in Canada started to officially get going in the 1970s, the city & municipal councils and planning departments were still predominantly managed by people of European descent. For most of the Colonial and postcolonial history of BC, the main municipalities were Vancouver, Burnaby, NW & Victoria. It was that way right into the 1970s.
Since the predominantly White civic structure was firmly in place well into the 1980s, there was plenty of time to implement and maintain a social engineering agenda. An unofficial (White) Urban Livability Plan was cleverly devised by scaling almost everything down. Since BC can't control non-white immigration, "Livability" had to be symbolically quite visible. Livability was an ingenious way to impose various overlapping restrictions throughout the decades. How does the Livability agenda work? Suppose that there was a mostly subconscious mentality to refuse building up proper big city infrastructure for non-white people. Thus, by symbolically constructing inadequate transportation infrastructure, it becomes a way demonstrating that you are not properly building for the future, despite most of the world being non-white. Now, Burnaby & the Greater Vancouver region are so far behind now, its difficult to catch up to other proper metropolitan areas around the world.
Despite Canada being the 2nd largest country in overall size, it has such a small area on the Pacific_Rim and Asia is the most populated part of the world. By keeping most of the bridges narrow and the trains short compared to most cities, that fits right in with the symbolism of antigrowth towards a predominantly non-white world. Canada is nowhere near close to having 1% of the worlds population, but most of the world is non-white. Its been that way since the beginning.
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Burnaby+apologizes
Saturday, November 15, 2025
City of Burnaby makes formal apology for decades of discrimination against people of Chinese descent
Since BC started out as a British Colonial outpost, people of European descent were at the orchestrated top of the human hierarchy. Chinese and Asians & nonwhites in general were a concern to the White majority of early BC.
https://www.veterans.gc.ca/en/remembrance/people-and-stories/chinese-canadians
South Asians were also a concern to the colonial power structure.
https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/komagata-maru
https://www.canada.ca/en/parks-canada/news/2016/08/the-komagata-maru-incident-of-1914.html
Of course Indigenous and Black People were part of being categorized as a lesser class of human.
It took a very long time for the British_Empire to respect the people of a multicultural world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territorial_evolution_of_the_British_Empire
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_the_British_Empire#Decline_and_decolonization
Multicultural Canada has less than 1% of the world's population. Yet, so many smaller countries are able to have a higher density and larger population than Canada.
Burnaby in Greater Vancouver is part of Canada's largest urban area on the Pacific_Rim. There are still many people who would like to thwart the scale of growth in Greater_Vancouver. They don't want the region to become as big and dynamic as Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Seattle, SFBA, Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane.
A big & dynamic urban region means more Asians and more nonwhite people in general. Unfortunatly, some people are still too uncomfortable with that notion.
https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=Burnaby+apologizes
Monday, November 10, 2025
Over half of all Metro Vancouver homes projected to be condos by 2051
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/metro-vancouver-housing-growth-forecast-condos
For several decades, trains, bridges and buildings had to be half the size of what real cities allow. Vancouver and especially the Greater Vancouver Region couldn't build a huge wall, so the next best thing was to heavily impose a symbolic resistance to build big. Thus, by watering the scale of almost everything down by imposing a series of overlapping restrictions, Vancouver & BC remained stunted.
Then, things started to slowly change going into the 21st century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Wall_Centre Opened in 2001.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Tower 2004
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Georgia_(Vancouver) 2012
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Vancouver
While restrictive Vancouver started to allow some taller buildings, its still behind what many other cities permit. Especially that of what's in Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinnacle_One_Yonge Toronto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainier_Square_Tower Seattle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stantec_Tower Edmonton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telus_Sky Calgary
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_sur_le_Parc Montreal
Since Burnaby, Coquitlam & Surrey aren't under Vancouvers imposed restrictions, they can build taller. Eventually, Vancouver will have to allow taller residential buildings, but its as if there is a strong mind virus determined to hold the scale of everything back.
Lions+Gate+Bridge Still, a 3 lane crossing with no plans for a bus, train & truck tunnel. Australia has no problem building tunnels near bridges.
YVR-Canada-Line Still, a 2 car train of a joke, when several cities will have 6, 8 or 10 car trains.
Sunday, November 9, 2025
A fully built steel overpass was hoisted into its new position above Highway 1 in Burnaby on Saturday night
A wider version of this bridge strategically placed throughout the region would improve mobility in Greater Vancouver. Ideally, a pedestrian, bike+and+bus+bridge provides 3 great modes of transportation. However, an efficient street, road and highway system are also essential. During crappy, cold weather, people just aren't as inclined to bike or walk around.
New pedestrian bridge above Highway 1 next to Burnaby Lake lifted into place
This isn't a bike+and+bus+bridge, because only a bike and pedestrian crossing was necessary there.
https://www.burnaby.ca/our-city/projects/burnaby-lake-overpass
https://yourvoice.burnaby.ca/pedestrian-cyclist-overpass-over-highway-1
Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Bike and foot bridges
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humber_Bay_Arch_Bridge Toronto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodwill_Bridge Adelaide
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/Adelaide_skyline%2C_December_2022_b.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Adelaide_Oval_Exterior_April_2024.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Adelaide_Oval_Footbridge.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provencher_Bridge#The_pedestrian_bridge A very nice sidewalk and unlike Vancouver, no lanes had to be removed from the bridge.
Of course Vancouver should have had several of these bridges across the Fraser River. Even Burnaby & NW should have had a few, but this is backwards BC.
Monday, October 20, 2025
City of Burnaby cuts permitted size of new multiplex homes due to public outcry
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/burnaby-small-scale-multi-unit-housing-policy-amendments
While a 2 floor house might be cosy, a four-floor house simply provides more living space.
Back in the day, an owner could build as big as they wanted to, within reason. Would the no 4th floor crowd like to remove all of the historical evidence and history of Burnaby houses with 4 levels?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/burnaby-multiplex-housing-changes-9.6944251
This might be more evidence of the the backwards BC mentality. Ignorant people don't seem to realize that over a century ago, many houses had 4 floors or levels.
So now there is a LETS GO BACKWARDS push to a time before the 4 floor houses.
https://search.heritageburnaby.ca/link/landmark495 "Constructed in 1909, this house was built for Angus MacDonald (1857-1943) and his wife, Margaret Isabella Thompson MacDonald (1862-1939)."
So far, the anti 4th floor crowd hasn't been able to remove the historical evidence that a lot of older homes had 4 levels.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnaby_Art_Gallery , https://www.burnaby.ca/services-and-payments/venue-rentals/burnaby-art-gallery
Given today's land costs, a 3 floor house has less living area than a 4 floor house. You used to get more house for the money. There are plenty of 2 story jokes in Burnaby & the Greater Vancouver Region.
https://burnabybeacon.com/p/uncovering-burnaby-hart-house-restaurant Counting the attic and basement level, this house easily has 4 floors.
https://evelazarus.com/overlynn-burnabys-most-haunted-mansion Another nice, big 4 story house that todays NIMBYs might not allow, if built today.
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=2355 , https://search.heritageburnaby.ca/link/landmark858
https://search.heritageburnaby.ca/link/archivedescription38429
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=3799
https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/image-image.aspx?id=3799#i3
https://www.facebook.com/groups/6522750987837395/posts/9414677511978047 BIG and wide, something that todays NIMBYs don't want.
https://do604.com/venues/overlynn-manor , https://moviemaps.org/locations/10w
https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/im-being-watched-paranormal-investigator-notes-presence-in-haunted-burnaby-mansion Unfortunatly, it's the NIMBYs that are watching to make sure that things are scaled back.
https://theprovince.com/life/the-stories-behind-10-magnificent-mansions-of-metro-vancouver
Sunday, October 19, 2025
Public backlash to 'gigantic' multiplex homes in Burnaby, B.C., has council scaling back
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/public-backlash-gigantic-multiplex-homes-120000935.html
A four-floor next to a two floor joke. People don't seem to realize that over a century ago, Burnaby had several houses with four levels. You got a lot more house for the money back then. So now the NIMBYs want to push things back before the era of the 4 floor houses.
There is nothing wrong with a two floor house, its just that there is a lot more living space in a 4 floor house.
Friday, October 17, 2025
The Telus building in Burnaby
https://www.facebook.com/groups/5469899289701886/posts/32594624393469342
This could have been the first 40 story office tower in Burnaby, as well as for backwater BC. It's not even 30. Vancouver and BC in general, still have no 40 story office towers. However, Burnaby or Surrey will likely have the first office tower over 40 stories, eventually.
Since Calgary and Seattle aren't affected by the BC mind virus & don't have anything like Vancouver's strict height restrictions, they can build taller structures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bow_(skyscraper) 58 stories, but 60 floors in total above ground.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bow_(skyscraper)#Building_details
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Center 76 stories, but 79 floors in total. Standing on the roof would be 80 floors up.
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