Oh boy, to think there’s going to be another four weeks of this. The latest offerings from reporters here and there on our apparently tragic city.

The Guardian, written by local freelancer Lucy Hyslop

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/03/vancouver-winter-olympics-homeless-row

The New York Times, with reporter Greg Bishop, who profiled former mayor Sam Sullivan very sympathetically last week and now quotes him extensively again

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/sports/olympics/05eastside.html

Anyone from the design/architecture field want to be quoted in a Globe story with their thoughts on the architectural excellence (or not) of the Canada Pavilion and/or other pavilions at the Games? (All others welcome to post their thoughts here.)

Get in touch with me ASAP: [email protected]

Well THIS is an interesting development, reported by Jeff Nagel.

The big cycling news reported this week was the creation of a protected bike lane on the Dunsmuir Viaduct. But the more interesting story, I thought, was really the future plans to create protected bike lanes through the downtown and potentially elsewhere (Point Grey Road? Maybe).

My story in the Globe today looks at where the city’s thinking of going and why. I can’t help but agree that they’re not going to get new cyclists until they get more protected routes downtown.

I’d describe myself as being in the “confident and enthusiastic” category, after having cycled through Europe twice in my youth and being generally not the fearful type. But after one ride up Burrard on that skinny little bike lane where you’re in between a bus lane and a car lane, I said “no thanks, never again.” One wobble and you’re dead.

It should be interesting, though, to see how discussions go in the public consultations post-Olympics on where exactly those lanes should go.

I discovered this morning, after my story on the housing ministry’s risk-management plan for the Olympics appeared in the Globe, that Sean Holman of publiceyeonline.com was actually the original source of the documents that wound their way to me. So credit should go to Sean for doing the freedom-of-information request on this one.

On to the story, the five-page list of potential housing/homelessness issues that could be a problem during the Games seems fairly predictable: worries that there will not be enough shelter space, worries that there will be evictions of welfare clients and no places for them to go, and so on. The two issues that the risk planners were worried would generate negative publicity were the tent cities and the line-ups.

Interestingly, one thing that they didn’t seem to be concerned about was a headline saying “BC government fails to meet housing commitment promised in bid book.” Instead, it’s the physical scenes — not the likelihood that some German or French reporter will go digging through old documents — that generate all the concern. But given the way advocates are hammering the housing issue, I wouldn’t be surprised if that point starts to come up.

With the concrete-barrier-protected bike lane on the Burrard Bridge having proven to be a success (or at least not a media disaster), the city has been looking at other places to install separated lanes. I heard about some interesting possibilities, which I won’t list here for fear of needlessly inciting riots. But apparently city engineers have decided on tamer options, as per this news release that came out from the tireless news-release-writer at city hall, who apparently never gets a day off.  Especially not with the Olympics approaching, when lots of new initiatives and stories about Vancouver’s achievements on various fronts need to be dangled in front of hungry media. 

Mayor to support separated bike lanes on Dunsmuir Viaduct and downtown core

A report coming to council on Thursday supports building on the success of the Burrard Bridge bike lane trial by putting a protected bike lane on the Dunsmuir Viaduct, a move Mayor Gregor Robertson says will help make it safer for cyclists entering downtown.

[Read more →]

It’s hard to see your own city, in the way that it’s hard to see your own marriage or your own family. You’re so immersed in it and it’s so all-enveloping that you don’t notice any more what’s weird or wonderful or different. Plus, that’s where you spend most of your time so you don’t have many comparisons.

I’ve often wished I could see my city with a stranger’s eyes, form a new impression of it by driving around for a day and coming to a conclusion the way I might do in Barcelona or Podunk, Montana. I only get brief flashes every so often of my city as a tourist might. Home after a long trip, when Vancouver’s difference from wherever I’ve come from washes over me for 10 minutes or so. Back from London, it seems so green and park-like. Back from a three-week camping trip and it feels dense and urban, a veritable Tokyo. Back from Paris and it looks so suburban … and ramshackle, all those plug-ugly New Vancouver Specials made of pressed plywood ready to fall down in a minute. Back from Kabul and it’s so rich and shiny.

One gift the Olympics are giving us are the myriad portraits that others are painting, the pictures of us that strangers see. They’re beginning to flood the zone these days. The New York Times has already given us Woodward’s (a noble social experiment) and, on this weekend’s sports front, Sam Sullivan, ( the humble ex-mayor, whose enduring legacy is the image of him twirling with the flag in Turin.) I hear that green Vancouver and its green mayor, Gregor Robertson, are next up.

The LA Times did Vancouverism, and in Conde Nast Traveler, our Chinese food has been declared the best in the world.

In The Walrus, Gary Ross (author of the book that inspired Owning Mahoney and my editor at Vancouver magazine) paints a big, multi-dimensional portrait of Vancouver, with a series of photos by Grant Harder. Though Gary lives here now, he still brings an outsider’s eye to seeing Vancouver. And from far away, the Guardian brings us this bleak picture of our coming Games.

Then there are those FROM Vancouver who are supplying a certain kind of image of our city to the outside world. Currently at the top of the list would be the time-lapse video of Vancouver, accompanied by new-agey music, that has become an internet hit. 

 And I’m sure this is only the beginning of the list.

It’s strange and fascinating to see others tell our stories.

Sometimes they’re annoying, those from-away reporters who catch nothing more than the spin-doctored version of a story or the tired old stereotypes.

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In case any of you missed this 60 comments down on an earlier thread, Vancouver planning director Brent Toderian has weighed in on some of the issues.

Hi Frances, and readers. This past Tuesday was the climax of two very complex exercises, the Vancouver View Corridors Review, and the Historic Area Height Review. The recommendations of staff and the decisions by Council are nuanced, so I thought I would try to summarize the process, recommendations and results. I’ll focus on the View Corridors first in this comment, and try to provide another comment on the Historica Area heights over the weekend.

Because of the overlap and inter-relationships, Staff presented both items in a joint presentation last Tuesday, and there were many very interesting and complex questions from Council (I would encourage anyone interested in these subjects to watch the presentation and Council questions, accessible on the City’s website, as the discussion covered a lot of very interesting ground). Then last Friday, Council heard from the many dozens of speakers throughout the day, mostly on the Historic Areas Heights item, and finishing around 9:30 Friday night. Council then reconvened the items this Tuesday for many more questions of staff, Council debate, and their decisions. A long and thoughtful process!

Staff’s presentation emphasized that both these exercises had very strong connections to our City’s values – the value of our roots, in the form of our heritage district, and the value of our views, and their powerful impact on our connection to nature and setting, and our “sense-of-place”. In both case, our primary recommendation (Recommendation A in both reports) was to reinforce these important values, and the policies that protect them, and to err on the side of preserving them in any changes chosen.

In the case of the Views, we recommended the addition of three new view corridors (including one from our new Olympic Plaza at the Athletes Village), as well as various techniques to strengthen existing views. These recommendations haven’t been reported on much, but they represented critical ways to expand and enhance the power of the public views. Council approved these.

We also put a question to Council that had come out of the public discussion – whether to continue to treat the view corridor policy as a “hard line”, which some thought resulted in a ‘flat-top skyline”, or to begin using more careful and strategic discretion for slight height adjustments in the right places and for the right reasons, that could help create a slightly more “varied skyline”. Staff put the two options to Council neutrally, and after considerable discussion, Council chose the former, erring I think on the side of a predictable result, and the prevention of view erosion over time through a series of “exceptions”.

The last recommendation was the most controversial, the issue of 4 taller buildings (3 on Georgia, one on Burrard). Initially in launching this process, Council had asked us to consider adjustments to the view corridors that could allow additional development capacity to achieve public benefits, and this was our most difficult consideration. This because we believe strongly that the view corridors policy has been one of the most important and successful city-shaping policies we’ve ever created as a city.

Having said that, we undertook an exercise through the public engagement, and with some special help from consultants (a group of 4 of the most respected urbanists on the continent, Ken Greenberg from Toronto, Kairos Shen from Boston, and Norm Hotson and Joe Hruda from Vancouver) to conceive a strategy option that might strike a balance between various objectives. Considering the public’s slight willingness to consider new limited taller buildings in our wider panoramic views (we heard this in Phase 1 of the consultation), we looked at where taller buildings might be located within the wider views, that might also create special moments in our skyline, and terminate views from all the key entrances to the downtown. Such visible place-markers and punctuation points within the skyline are thought to help create and read the “mental map” of our city and downtown, a long-standing concept in city-design.

These 4 sites were tested with the public in the second round of public consultation and surveying, and we found that approximately half of the surveyed respondents supported this idea – a number that we found surprising given how overwhelming the feeling of public support for view corridors had been in the first round. Many told us that they felt we had listened carefully in round one, and perhaps that why the ideas shown in round 2 were reasonably well received as being reflective of what we’d heard. We thought the approach, although it would impact the wider views, was careful and strategic, maximizing opportunity and minimizing impact on the views. Given this, and the reasonable level of support, we decided to put it forward for Council consideration, albeit still with cautious and trepidation. Support from around half, still can be interpreted many ways,and we still believed these insertions in the views didnt NEED to happen.

Thus although we put the 4 new tower idea forward to Council, I strongly reinforced in the presentation that our primary message is to err on the side of preservation – thus if Council felt a strong need to add more capacity, this is the MOST they should consider doing (and no more than 4, as had been suggested by some during the process). But we felt Council didn’t NEED to make such a change, and if they chose not to add any new buildings, it would certainly be in keeping with staff’s general perspective and the input from the public. We reinforced this many times, something Allan Garr picked up in his article on the subject, but several other media didn’t.

Ultimately Council chose to approve all of the view expansion and strengthening recommendations, and not support the 4 new towers. They asked us to continue to investigate opportunities for taller buildings that met current policy. And even though they didn’t support the 4 towers, they picked up the wording we had suggested for a much higher standard for architectural beauty and green design in the taller buildings, and applied it to ALL buildings within the current taller building policy – a very strong move for how taller buildings outside the view corridors will be designed. In general, they erred significantly on the side of the importance of public views. I think this is a wise decision, reflecting the values we had heard in our engagement with the public. This has been characterized as “vetoing” staffs suggestion, but I see it as in keeping with the tone and emphasis of our presentation to Council, and staff is very pleased with the outcome.

This decision provides significant clarity after years of pressure to randomly erode the view corridors with “special exceptions”. We now have an expanded, strengthened, preserved and confirmed view corridor policy for future generations, and that’s a very good thing.

Regards,
Brent Toderian

This will be of huge interest to all of you in the architecture community who were around Arthur in his last few years. Here’s the Province story.

Please remember that I am legally responsible for comments on this blog, so don’t go overboard. Offline information most welcome at [email protected]

Well, isn’t this news release, hot off the electrons at city hall, interesting? I had a story a couple of weeks ago saying the mayor was asking staff to look for solutions. The issue hasn’t been going away. If you do a Twitter search under the mayor’s name, one of the most common posts, much retweeted, is linked to the Georgia Straight’s item on a British advocate urging the mayor to save the conservatory. (21st-century journalism, yikes.) And I note that the Friends of the Bloedel fundraiser on Jan. 30 has sold out.

I note that this news release doesn’t have any details, though. I’ll be waiting to see those, as I’ve had a couple of news releases from this administration that advertise solutions that don’t work out quite as perfectly as they say they’re going to. (At Tab 1: the Little Mountain agreement to allow some residents to stay.)

Here’s the release, verbatim

City moving closer to Bloedel Conservatory solution, says Mayor

Mayor Robertson today committed to finding collaborative solutions that will allow the Bloedel Conservatory to remain open, saying the City and Park Board are moving closer to identifying a way to keep it open.

“I’m committed to working with the Park Board, the community, interested parties and investors to find a long-term solution to ensure the Conservatory remains open,” said Mayor Robertson. “I believe we’ll find a way to make it a success.”

The City’s and Park Board’s efforts to save the Bloedel Conservatory are moving closer to a resolution that would allow it to stay open, but a financial gap still remains, said the Mayor.

A Park Board Request for Expression of Interest inviting interested parties to submit a business plan to operate the Conservatory will be released shortly. The City has been contacted by a number of groups interested in creating a successful business plan for the Conservatory.

“City and Park Board staff have worked very hard on a number of options that would allow Bloedel to remain open, while removing the financial burden from city taxpayers,” said Mayor Robertson. “I’m confident that by continuing to partner with community groups, non-profits, and private donors, we can find a way to save it. We know that the capital investment is one of the key components which needs to be addressed and this is something the Park Board and the City are discussing with interested parties.”

The City faced a $61 million budget shortfall for 2010, and the Conservatory, which is subsidized by the Park Board, requires extensive capital repairs and investment.

“We know that the Bloedel Conservatory is treasured by many people across our city,” said Park Board Chair Aaron Jasper. “We’re looking at all options and I’m hopeful that innovative and creative proposals will come forward and allow the Bloedel Conservatory to remain open.  We will find a solution.”