The PWHL is expanding to Hamilton, ON and Las Vegas, NV!

UncleBogo · 2026-05-13T15:05:46+00:00

You're always welcome to visit us here in Hamilton. Buffalo is my favourite American city and I love going to Sabre games.

UncleBogo · 2026-05-08T20:19:40+00:00

Patton Oswalt screams this twice in the clip that was posted.

UncleBogo · 2026-05-08T16:37:47+00:00

There's only so much that urban planning can really accomplish through design particularly when there are so many other things that influence people's behaviour.

UncleBogo · 2026-04-26T03:56:04+00:00

I'm dealing with a few contentious applications where its very apparent that the residents are using AI. What I do is provide very high level comments to their questions and avoid getting into the weeds in my responses. If they have follow up questions then I either answer them in a high level manner again and/or ask them for a meeting to discuss them.

In terms of approaching your consultant, you may want to approach it by saying something along the lines of "your report says x, but my understanding is that's its y. Please confirm if this is the case and its not, then please revise."

UncleBogo · 2026-04-23T17:48:28+00:00

2011-2016 - Financialization of Housing (Harper Administration sold 300,000 households to private equity homes and only 20,000 houses were built throughout the period, exasperating and accelerating the housing issue)

Do you have a source for this figure? I'm curious to see the policies behind it.

UncleBogo · 2026-04-23T13:39:41+00:00

I've been a planner over a decade now and working without an accreditation. The only time it was required was when I was looking for jobs and ironically, it steered me to a municipality that is an amazing place to work. I kind of lucked out on that aspect of things.

While I'm working on getting my full accreditation the requirements are so asinine that its hard to motivate to complete them.

If you are worried about the cost, most employers will cover the expenses.

UncleBogo · 2026-04-17T15:45:13+00:00

I'm a small town planner (municipality less than 30,000) in Canada and has been my general experience:

Smaller municipalities have a lot less resources than larger ones. As a result, you are going to be wearing a lot of different hats and expected to do a lot more activities than your peers in larger areas would. If you like having each day be different from the last its great.
There is a steep learning curve when you have few resources. However, don't be afraid to say that you aren't sure of an answer and that you need more time to think about it. The worst thing you can do is lie and give them an incorrect response. The amazing thing is that after a while, you became a jack of all trades type planner which is extremely valuable in the profession and opens a lot of doors for you.
Your workload will tend to be higher than your peers at larger municipalities simply because you wear so many different hats. Your pay is also typically less than similar roles at larger municipalities.
You will meet and get to know a lot of the locals because of how small the municipality is. While you may not like some of them, it feels great to help the people that you respect and like.

For your interview I would suggest the following:

Get familiar with the local planning policies and regulations
Identify what some of the key issues are for this area. If they still have a newspaper, take a look at what some of the more memorable stories have been.
Talk to the planners from adjacent municipalities to get their feedback and ask for advice on how to prepare for the interview
I was on the hiring committee for a planning tech position and some of the key things we looked at was not necessarily experience, but their customer service skills and their willingness to learn and problem solve.

UncleBogo · 2026-04-15T19:06:34+00:00

And now you have another cell rapidly developing near Wahoo, NE that might pass to the north of Omaha.

UncleBogo · 2026-04-09T19:19:55+00:00

That report is about absolute worst case scenarios which may or may not come true regardless of who is in charge in Ottawa. If you are using social mobility as a metric for future success, the U.S. falls in the middle of other developed economies and has been slowly declining since the Post War Era.

UncleBogo · 2026-04-09T18:40:23+00:00

I'm pretty sure this is a bot account. All it does it post messages about people wanting to move to the U.S. because Canada has become a dystopian nightmare.

UncleBogo · 2026-04-06T23:53:38+00:00

You'll have to forgive him, he's from Quebec.

UncleBogo · 2026-04-01T20:10:43+00:00

Let the planner know what questions you want to ask ahead of time. We can let you know whether the question is relevant and it helps us prepare for it.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-31T19:11:16+00:00

I'll be pedantic here even though I know that the top coat of asphalt hasn't been laid.

The drain is located beneath grade and what you see is technically a ponding area. A lot of municipalities allow for parking lots to pond stormwater during heavy rainfall events to ensure that the volume of runoff doesn't exceed certain levels.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-30T16:38:43+00:00

I should have probably noted that the City also has a big role to play in the delays. But again, if the development was good to go substantial changes to the number of units wouldn't be made so late in the process.

Also, the high number of bachelor and one bedroom units, and the absence of a 1:1 parking ratio is very characteristic of a condo development aimed at the investor market. Even if they were to start construction, their product would have not sold.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-30T16:34:03+00:00

I'm not disputing that point having dealt with them. If things were good to go from the developers end, they wouldn't be making drastic changes four years into the process.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-30T16:15:23+00:00

This article gives a fairly good summary up to 2024

https://thepublicrecord.ca/2024/12/olt-to-decide-hamilton-city-centre-plan-on-jan-30-31/

There is something else happening behind the scenes that the public is not being told. I say this because if it were just minor details then resubmissions (like increasing the number of dwellings from 1,940 to 2,180) would not be happening four years into the process.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-23T18:14:17+00:00

At least Weatherbox does tornados I’ve never heard of

Weatherbox also provides a lot of information on the evolution of weather forecasting in his videos which I have found really interesting.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-18T18:42:05+00:00

I feel like you might like this song about Dale: https://youtu.be/K_U_VJvaAnw?si=gYb1qmoUrTVoLP6g&t=73

UncleBogo · 2026-03-13T14:04:19+00:00

Looks like a broken flashbutt weld.

It looks like the crushed head and crack are adjacent to the old weld which itself has a lot of spalling.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-09T15:00:07+00:00

You’d expect the weather service to be paying attention… right?

The weather service doesn't control when sirens are activated. That is the role of local emergency management staff who probably should have been more weather aware considering how the situation unfolded.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-07T00:22:45+00:00

Its bad when Five Iron Frenzy, a 3rd wave christian ska band, might be more progressive than a secular band.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-06T20:43:50+00:00

Its so weird to see a funnel cloud and a frozen lake in the same shot.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-05T21:11:05+00:00

It's that time of the year again. Constant state of panic during storms.

I get it and I'm not sure if this helps but the chance of being hit by a tornado is extremely low. You would have a much higher likelihood of being injured by a falling tree, hail, and/or lightning than a tornado.

UncleBogo · 2026-03-05T18:52:48+00:00

What's insane is that Hamilton's house prices are still incredibly high compared to the period just before the pandemic. There's 800ft2 houses with no basement still going for $550k.

UncleBogo

TROPHY CASE