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Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦

@thesidewalkballet.bsky.social

1.6K followers 3.8K following 590 posts

#Cities ⚪The economy of cities ⚪The short block street grid ⚪3mph urban design... #architecture #urbandesign #books #LFC https://nanaimocommons.blogspot.com/ "Three cheers for the dogged persistence and mysterious vitality of diversity.” #JaneJacobs

nanaimocommons.blogspot.com

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Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · Dec 18

#Nanaimo South Downtown Waterfront Lands #SketchUp #ycd

Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 13h

Thread reader threadreaderapp.com/thread/15825...

Thread by @NanaimoCommons on Thread Reader App

@NanaimoCommons: William H. Whyte: The Under-Appreciated Urban Patriarch governing.com/assessments/wi… "Every great advance has come about, and always will, because someone was frustrated by the statu...

threadreaderapp.com

Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 13h

Recommended : American Urbanist / How William H. Whyte's Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life by Richard K. Rein. Island Press. islandpress.org/books/americ...

American Urbanist

islandpress.org

Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 13h

The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. 1980, William H. Whyte. HT @adamtooze.bsky.social

youtu.be/5QkJkT3M-Us?...

Social Life of Small Urban Spaces 1980 William H

YouTube video by Urban Future Flow

youtu.be

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Barack Obama @barackobama.bsky.social · 21h

Congratulations to new Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado for her courageous struggle to bring democracy to Venezuela.

Live Updates: María Corina Machado of Venezuela Is Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

www.nytimes.com

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 1d

Maria Machado is a superb choice for the peace prize, having risked her life to resist one of the world’s most disruptive democratic crises, and created Venezuela’s legitimate elected party. And sends a clear message about who won’t be eligible for the prize

www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...

Maria Corina Machado wins 2025 Nobel Peace Prize

Venezuelan opposition leader recognized for promoting a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy

www.theglobeandmail.com

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Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 1d

Roz Chast.

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Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 1d

www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/... @fabulavancouver.bsky.social @theglobeandmail.com

Vancouver realtors ask: If allowed, would foreign buyers come back?

Limitations on foreign buyers are unusually popular with voters, even though offshore investors have been found to be a small part of the market

www.theglobeandmail.com

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Katja Diehl @katjadiehl.bsky.social · Sep 2

We need child-safe traffic – not traffic-safe children.

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Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 2d

Illustrations : @coldwarsteve.bsky.social

Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 2d

"Many I spoke with are centrist liberals. I asked them what if anything might force the industry to confront its dim longer-term prospects. Midterm election? Economic collapse? One Silicon Valley figure suggested “It could be as simple as 10 Republican senators discovering they have backbones.”"

Steven Levy @stevenlevy.bsky.social · 19d

When @wired asked me to look at Silicon Valley in the age of Trump, I saw the crash of the idealism that originally drew founders--and me--to the tech revolution. Selling out the dream will not serve those moguls (or us) well. www.wired.com/story/silico...

I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong

Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact.

www.wired.com

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Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 2d

www.canadianarchitect.com/report-arthu... @canadianarchitect.bsky.social

Report: Arthur Erickson Centennial Symposium

A day-long symposium caps a year of celebrating what would have been Arthur Erickson's 100th birthday.

www.canadianarchitect.com

Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 3d

Top Links 883 Has most of the world passed peak social media? A planet healthy diet & will China forever remain an engineering state? @adamtooze.bsky.social

cc @ppsplacemaking.bsky.social @sociallifeproject.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/adamtooz...

Top Links 883 Has most of the world passed peak social media? A planet healthy diet & will China forever remain an engineering state?

Great links, images, and reading from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze

open.substack.com

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Maclean’s Magazine @macleans.bsky.social · 3d

Ice huts, those brightly-coloured shacks and ice villages out on frozen lakes, captured the imagination of photographer Richard Johnson. A new book showcases his 30-year pursuit of Canada’s iconic wintertime structures. https://macleans.ca/culture/richard-johnson-resilience-ice-huts/

Canada’s Quirky Fishing Shacks - Macleans.ca

Richard Johnson photographed more than a thousand ice huts across all 10 provinces

macleans.ca

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New York Magazine @nymag.com · 18d

Downtown Brooklyn has become a showcase of millennial architectural mediocrity, architecture critic Justin Davidson writes.

The Disappointment of Downtown Brooklyn

Twenty years after it was upzoned, it’s become a showcase of millennial architectural mediocrity.

www.curbed.com

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Doug Saunders @dougsaunders.bsky.social · 5d

One of the most serious consequences of Canada's low population density is the effect on our climate impact. Not only the extreme inefficiency of low-density homes, but the far greater number of private-automobile trips needed per person, etc. Underpopulation is climate catastrophe

Jason Thorne @jasonthorne.bsky.social · 5d

The Venn diagram of urban density and average household GHG emissions is pretty much a circle. Interesting study on “Mapping household GHG emissions in the Greater Golden Horseshoe” from the University of Toronto School of Cities schoolofcities.utoronto.ca/mapping-hous...

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Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 5d

#SketchUp rendering based on the Royal Hotel, Picton ON. Niagara Peninsula wine country. An elegant adaptive reuse of an exquisite old-economy building. Architects Giannone Petricone.

Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 5d

"The public space in front of the gallery is Vancouver’s only real piazza. It is perverse to hollow this place out and take the energy of its visitors and activity somewhere else."

@alexbozikovic.bsky.social @theglobeandmail.com
www.theglobeandmail.com/culture/art-...

New Vancouver Art Gallery to be smaller, more Canadian than ambitious original plan

The gallery will move six blocks from its original site, tapping Formline and KPMB for a design rooted in Indigenous tradition

www.theglobeandmail.com

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Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 6d

New documentary gives E.J. Hughes, painter of lyrical Canadian landscapes, his due - The Art Newspaper - International art news and events share.google/AofNnOhYsdmG...

New documentary gives E.J. Hughes, painter of lyrical Canadian landscapes, his due

“The Painted Life of E.J. Hughes” is premiering in Vancouver as interest in Hughes’s life and work grows among Canadian collectors and institutions

share.google

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Bryn Davidson - Lanefab @lanefab.com · 6d

4 Storey version.
8 to 16 homes on a 50x122 lot.
So, this could soon be allowed anywhere in @victoria.ca ?
@jeremycaradonnayyj.bsky.social

I guess it will depend on the actual rules adopted (FSR, lot coverage, min parking etc)

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Unofficial Guardian (UK) Bot @guardian-uk-rss.bsky.social · 8d

On Friendship by Andrew O’Hagan review – ties that bind

The novelist on the relationships that shaped his life, from schoolmates to the Rolling Stones and Edna O’Brien

www.theguardian.com

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Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 7d

Algorithm Nation.

Fights about digital filtering tools have turned more and more bitter. That’s because of their extraordinary power to shape both political opinion and mass culture.

@jacobweisberg.bsky.social @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Algorithm Nation | Jacob Weisberg

Fights about digital filtering tools have turned more and more bitter. That's because of their extraordinary power to shape both political opinion and mass culture.

www.nybooks.com

Frank Murphy 🇺🇦 🇮🇪 🇨🇦 @thesidewalkballet.bsky.social · 7d

"Each reaction by authorities portrayed by Kremlin propagandists as militaristic, belligerent, attack on rights of Russian-speaking people... despite Putin suggesting in 2022 it wld be justifiable to “take back” Narva for Russia."
#DanielBoffey @theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

‘A big chance for the populists’: Estonian city alert to the threat of Moscow in its mayoral election

Positioned on the border and with a 98% Russian-speaking population, Narva faces a test of its unity and resilience

www.theguardian.com

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Mike @mikeofthewest.bsky.social · 8d

Wow. @dougsaunders.bsky.social bluntly saying what needs to be said here. Gift link www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/5a1c29c...

United States may split into warring federal entities. Let’s side with the better one

Recent developments contain the seeds of a United States divided into two competing federalisms – and even a potential civil war

www.theglobeandmail.com

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Stefan Novakovic @novakovicto.bsky.social · 7d

Like many cities, Madrid comfortably integrates restaurants/cafes into public space. Why not in North America? I could be wrong but 2 ideas. 1) good public spaces are scarce so we treat them kind of religiously. 2) how would duty of care and liability be divided between the city and the restaurant?

Public plaza in Madrid featuring cafe and restaurant seating alongside public benches

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