Sometimes it’s the small changes that make the biggest differences in how people enjoy their cities – the food cart can provide as much pleasure as the expensive new art gallery. Vancouver isn’t immune to the experimental trends popping up in this 21st-century urban age. Here are some of the latest:
As urban agriculture takes off, community gardens are proliferating in Vancouver parks, with waiting lists for more. And the city has an aggressive plan to plant more trees with edible produce in future years. But Vancouver also has small farms operating on top of downtown parking acreages, in empty lots in the Downtown Eastside, on rooftops. And, most recently, the city announced North America’s largest urban orchard – at a former gas station. The social enterprise Sole Food Street Farms will have apples, pears, plums and persimmons in its orchard, planted in moveable boxes at Main and Terminal.
Playing, napping, eating on the street
Street pavement is a valuable resource that can be used for more than just cars, as many cities are discovering. Vancouver has shut down Robson Street between the art gallery and the courthouse two summers in a row. Last summer, it was filled with giant beanbag-like chairs. This summer, it’s wooden tables and benches set out on the road, which has been covered with planking to create a “corduroy road” – the way streets were built in the muddy Pacific Northwest 100 years ago. Streets are doing double-duty elsewhere as well: residents are encouraged to shut them down for block parties; laneways occasionally turn into markets; and the city is creating “parklets” (little decks built over a couple of street parking spaces) here and there. In Surrey, one road in the city centre is shut down regularly to provide space for markets and concerts.
Inventive new places to drink
Vancouver was notorious in its earlier years for its grim drinking destinations: large, dimly lit, barn-like establishments filled with terry cloth-covered tables, the better to soak up the gallons of spilled beer. The prevailing ethos implied that drinkers were animals best kept penned up. Very slowly, the city edged toward allowing alcohol on sidewalk terraces (although insisting they must be railed off in a way that mystifies people from other cities). Earlier this month, council approved zoning changes that will allow the city’s proliferating micro-breweries to serve their products in small bars and tasting lounges attached to their operations. Again, not just a Vancouver thing. Surrey will not only allow Central City Brewing, its biggest micro-brewery, to open a tasting lounge at a new facility near the Pattullo Bridge, it actually built the facility and leased it to Central City long-term.
Parties, parties, parties
European cities know that to keep the citizens happy, there must be circuses, not just bread. Go into any city with any pretensions to urbanity during the summer months and you’ll find a steady diet of free music performances in the parks and churches, along with festivals in the public squares. Surrey, under Mayor Dianne Watts’s ambitious plan to turn it from a suburb into a city, puts on massive free concerts in public parks. The annual Fusion Festival July 20 and 21 features the typical eclectic mix of artists in this wildly multicultural suburb: Delhi to Dublin, Hawksley Workman, Los Lobos and much, much more. In Vancouver, streets are shut down for the annual VIVA program and Granville Street – ground zero for hockey riots and beer-drinking – is being slowly transformed into the main location for festivals, markets, dance parties, and street hockey. Now there’s something you’ll never see at a Paris summer festival.
As I say in this story in the Globe and Mail, which comes in at the tail end of a debate that Frank Ducote introduced us to a little over a month ago, many observers in the community thought that the city was going to do things differently when it adopted a go-slow approach to developing community plans.
Although those plans have lots of good things in them (and represent hundreds of hours of hard work by planners who I know have been spending their nights at community meetings, on walks, at public gatherings), they’ve been skewered by the addition of a few elements that attract public anger and help feed the elaborate theories about what council is up to.
A shame. But, planning manager Brian Jackson says, these are just the first drafts. The proof will be in the final versions.
Okay, this is Friday fluff, but whatever. I feel I must contribute to the ongoing deep investigations into Mayor Gregor Robertson’s change of abode by reporting that his Douglas Park-area house has apparently sold, for the asking price of whatever it was, $1.95 million or something.
I realize that where the mayor lives is significant. I did at least one story, if not more, on Mayor Philip Owen’s momentous move from his Shaughnessy house to Marinaside. That was seen symbolically as a boost for the new north False Creek area, just as the move of Art Phillips and Carole Taylor to south False Creek a couple of decades earlier was also viewed as a stamp of approval. (For some reason, when I was told back at the beginning of June that the mayor was downsizing and house-hunting, it never occurred to me that it was a Story of Momentous Proportions and therefore I didn’t report anything on it.)
However, no one seems to see Robertson’s move, from a single-family house near Emily Carr elementary in central Vancouver to a smaller place in Kits near the beach, as symbolic of the prototypical Vancouver downsizing. Instead, it seems to have turned into massive theory-building about how it has something to do with the Point Grey bike lane. Or his federal-election ambitions. Or something.
No one seems to be speculating that it’s because he wants to further his paddle-boarding skills. Weird.
Whenever I go to Europe (if that doesn’t sound obnoxious), I’m always struck by the way the mythological view of it doesn’t match the reality.
In conversations among urbanists, amateur and professional, here, European cities are always treated as though they have achieved the highest level of excellent city operation. They are walkable. They encourage bikes. They have great transit. People live in compact housing near shops, which creates a great mix of residential and lively commercial. Blah blah blah.
Some of that is true in some cities or parts of some cities. But when you drive around Europe, as I generally do, and don’t just take the train from one charming city centre to another, you see the other Europe. Gigantic highways filled with trucks, RVs, and general traffic. Seriously awful suburbs filled with slab apartment buildings that are disconnected from any charming shops. Big-box stores lining the highway. (The French giant Carrefour chain make Wal-Mart look like the neighbourhood grocery store.) Shopping malls built on the edges of small towns that are killing the butchers, florists, shoe stores, vegetable sellers and others in the centre.
Europe is not exempt from most of the trends in North America. They just started with a much stronger critical mass of people and businesses in their historic cities. Some cities are building on that and expanding it. Others aren’t. Even the most admired cities have, yes, walkable cores. But they have also established gigantic, convenient car streets. Anyone who thinks Paris is the most walkable city should try a stroll down busy Boulevard Sebastopol or a crossing of the huge, chaotic Place de la Republique.
One of the trends we particularly hear so much about is cycling in European cities. The Boris bikes in London. Amsterdam having so many bicycles that bike parking is becoming an issue. The Velib system in Paris. The Copenhagen miracle.
I know that provincial election seems like it was years ago, but the lessons it taught are worth contemplating. I got to hang out extensively in Vancouver-Fraserview to see the ground war in action, which I wrote about here.
Something for the NDP to ponder while they are reviewing what went wrong.
Another brave soul has submitted a guest blog. I am back now, but thought this deserved an airing.
It all started with a Trojan horse: The 2010 Olympic games. Granville and Robson have been closed to all traffic. Granville had been closed before due to the Canada line construction, and bus were using dedicated lane on the couplet Howe/Seymour.
We all liked the pedestrian atmosphere and gathered at Robson#Granville (thought city hall, have planed Robson square as the centre for celebration)….but it is not because you have enjoyed your last family reunion, that you must organize your living room as if it was happening every day.
The Olympic games gone, the buses got back their historic routes…short respite…
A war on bus was brewing:
Pedestrian only Granville was considered good, so buses are now routinely demanded to go back on Howe/Seymour which have lost their bus lanes in the interim!
When Hornby received its cycle track, The city ostensibly relocated its curb side parking along Howe: The city made a point to not build a cycle track at the expense of parking: the bus lanes are the sacrificed goats
Granville buses surrendered; stoned by a blitzkrieg attack; the real battlefield is obviously Robson square.
It is a war, and going to war require an army: The purpose of Viva Vancouver:is to occupy the battlefield, which can’t sustain itself, without artificial activation, as has been demonstrated last fall (an attempt to force definitive closure without consultation?),.
Because it is a war, there is no mercy for the adversary: In despite of seasonal closure for more than 3 years. Not a single improvement has been brought to the Robson bus on its circuitous detour: The unnecessary hook via Smythe, to turn left turn on Burrard, from Robson, could have been easily fixed by now… whether City hall, was less contemptuous of the bus riders…
At best, bus riders are not considered differently from car drivers by both city Hall and, unfortunately the VPSN, an advocacy group for aggressive pedestrianization of Robson square.
(both 2012 City hall public consultation, which in fact has been organized by the VPSN, and the 2011 VPSN “petitions”, made sure it was not possible to differentiate buses of general traffic)
Obviously, on the margin of the main battlefields, skirmishes happen routinely, often under the disguise of good intentions:
A 30km/h speed limit on Hasting fine!… but without appropriate street design, it is widely ignored…but bus driver dutifully slow down…
A cycle track on Union, Great!…nearby business has been promised that parking space will be relocated on Main…in the way of the buses…
Since it is summer, many readers, like the host of this blog, will be visiting Europe. They will eventually witness there that transit usually receives consideration and that an aggressive pedestrianism agenda, is a 70’s concept, which is outmoded by shared spaces, where sustainable transportation mode, including transit, mingle with pedestrians, and naturally activate the place they serve.
They will also discover that it is not by erecting a blockade, as nice and attractive it can be, on a bus route that one will reduce car dependency…and still, it is exactly what Vancouver city hall is currently doing…
I’m still awaiting the scintillating guest blog posts I’ve been promised, but, in the meantime, here is the open forum that I always set up when I’m on vacation and therefore only blogging erratically.
Your burning thoughts on any Vancouver issues welcome here.
And here is my account of nine days in Paris, using Velib for various trips around town (though not all).
Completely anecdotal, with no statistics except my own experience.
So, I love bike-share systems. They make it so much easier to hop on a bike and get around than the usual procedure of tracking down a bike-rental store, usually far from wherever it is you are, and having to pay a full-day rate when all you want to do is maybe get from Point A to Point B.
In terms of access, Velib is great. Within two blocks of our apartment near Republique, there were three Velib stations with about 20 bikes apiece. There were always plenty there whenever I wanted to ride.
But what about riding around the actual streets? That’s another question. I never did manage to get a map that showed cycling routes or Velib stations in my time there. One Google source told me I could get such information at bike stores. The bike stores didn’t have them and told me to go to the local city hall. (Each arrondissement has its own city hall, so 20 of them.) I went and all they had were the Velib cards that you could load up for access. They said I should contact Velib itself, which seemed convoluted for a one-week stay.
That meant that I ended up riding the way most tourists and newcomers do — based on whatever signs, painted lanes and other clues I could find on the street. (As I’ve discovered in other bike-share cities, those street signs, painted messages on the road, green arrows, and cyclist symbols are invaluable as you’re making your way ad hoc through the city.) In spite of all that, my rides were, if I may say so, hairy. And I’m someone who is relatively adventurous on the street, so I can’t imagine what it might be like for the more timid.
For those who haven’t guessed already, I am away from the city right now and will be away until the first week of July, as part of my annual ritual of city observation elsewhere. (Known to others as “a vacation.”) I’ll be posting some stuff of my own — been riding a lot of bike-share bikes in Paris and have some tales to tell — but I am also opening up the blog to some guest posts.
The first is from Frank Ducote on what’s been happening with city planning over on Commercial Drive. I am happy to publish other guest posts on any vaguely city-related topics that have not been beaten to death already on this blog or where you have a take on a familiar issue that really hasn’t been addressed anywhere. Those with a burning desire to propose ideas should email me (firstnamelastname AT gmail.com) and I’ll put up anything that fits the criteria. You don’t need to use your real name.
In the meantime, here is Frank’s post, where your comments are invited. For those who don’t know, Frank is a former city planner, planning consultant for other cities, and, I believe, much-praised artist.
Looking at this map, it is very difficult to fully grasp the implications of such a far-reaching proposal for transformation of an existing community. As a former City of Vancouver planner who worked in the Broadway/Commercial community prior to and during the Millennium Line implementation, this vision truly boggles my mind. Circa 2000 or so some then-councillors considered this area, with its abundance of transportation investment, to be ripe for densification, up to and including towers. However, It would have suicidal to try and impose those kinds of pro -development ideas then, completely against community values.
What has happened since to so embolden staff and, presumably, the public consultation process, to bring forward such a fundamentally transformative set of ideas and policy directions now? So many questions that one has a difficult time knowing where and how to begin a rational critique and conversation.
Please look closely at this map, especially at the area immediately around Commercial Drive and Broadway. This is Transportation Oriented Development (TOD) writ very large indeed. Is this a community-based vision or one being imposed from above? A TransLink wet dream?
Your comments, please. It would be particularly interesting to hear from residents and other participants directly involved in this planning process.
Let it not be said that a stone has been unturned in the City of Vancouver’s quest to find patches of ground on which to build housing.
The latest suggestion has been housing on top of a fire hall that has to be rebuilt.
The idea of building on top of city property isn’t new. It’s been done with schools and libraries. But a fire hall. I haven’t heard of this before. Has anyone?
