LocalFocus

17/05/2026

Patrick Condon: How neighborhood input has made and can make housing cheaper.
Bio: Professor UBC School of Landscape and Architecture, author Broken City. Former senior city planner, former UBC James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Liveable Environments
M/C: Thomas Kro

Bio: Professor UBC School of Landscape and Architecture, author Broken City. Former senior city planner, former UBC James Taylor Chair in Landscape and Livea...

12/05/2026

This is to confirm that we will not have a Speaker event this Wednesday.

08/05/2026

Community Planning Matters! Scot Hein - Self-Empowering Your Neighbourhood

Bio: Retired Architect MAIBC/Former COV and UBC Senior Urban Designer and Development Planner/Adjunct Professor Urban Design UBC/SFU Faculty Continuing Stud...

07/05/2026

Live stream coming right up.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

05/05/2026

Community Planning Matters! Elizabeth Murphy - Grandview Woodlands - Vancouver’s New Plan Unpacked: What it means for local Community Plans

Bio: Elizabeth Murphy is a private sector project manager formerly with the City of Vancouver’s housing and properties department, BC Housing and BC Buildin...

30/04/2026

LIVE STREAM.

Kitsilano - Self Empowering Your Neighbourhood w/ Scot Hein

30/04/2026

Scot Hein with M/C Jaxon Slaney at tonight's Community Planning Matters! Speaker Tour event.

30/04/2026

Live stream for tonight's talk. Starts at 7 PM with Scot Hein.

Kitsilano - Self Empowering Your Neighbourhood w/ Scot Hein

24/04/2026

Please help us pay for the hard costs of the Community Planning Matters! Speaker Tour. Every little bit helps!

To make our vision for civic democracy a reality, Local Focus Network Society has been incorporated as a BC Non-Profit organization. However, our journey doesn't end there. We are working on our status as a Charitable organization in Canada to unlock crucial benefits for our donors. Your support wil...

19/09/2023

News Geotagging in Canada

Meta’s news ban in Canada has left millions of people without easy access to local journalism and high-quality reporting online and on social media. The removal of this key distribution point for media also means that news sources are suffering from decreased viewership and an inability to share news with their communities and user bases. It has also left readers with no way to access or be shown news that is relevant and of interest to them, especially in a geographical sense. This is a major issue – both for readers and local media sources.

We are currently working on a Civic News Network: a Canadian alternative to Meta that distributes online news to readers. Our vision is one where readers can visit our site and see their own news feed comprising provincewide and national media, as well as local media near them or that interests them. Distributing the most enriching and important news to each reader requires a geospatial approach – people want to hear stories about their own communities. Likewise, local news sources benefit from a regular and engaged clientele – viewership decreases if readers aren’t provided with geographically relevant content.

But most news media across the country don’t geotag their articles. Geotagging means embedding geographical metadata into a piece of media. It provides the geospatial data you need to distribute your news to nearby readers. We’re asking that your news organization consider geotagging future online articles with as much specificity as possible – by neighbourhood, town, or city. This would go a long way toward restoring Canadians’ access to online news.

19/07/2023

LocalFocus is an initiative dedicated to advancing education in civic governance. Our goal is to increase voter turnout by informing and educating residents and young people about the vital role they play in shaping their communities.

There are three (3) key activities that will support this purpose: (1) a civic think tank; (2) a series of civic explainer videos, and; (3) a civic news network to produce and distribute news at the local level.

This page describes Local Focus' three key activities as a non-profit society.