43 responses so far ↓

• 1 gmgw // Apr 11, 2012 at 12:39 am

  I don’t care if his tower is made out of gold encrusted with rubies and dances a jig every day at high noon. It’s still way too bloody tall for that site (and of course every major proposal in that area from now on will have to be even taller, following the usual pattern of developer penis envy). And I say this as one who’s going to have to look at it every single day.
  gmgw

• 2 Frank Ducote // Apr 11, 2012 at 10:51 am

  Well, after that blast of negativity, it seems the conversation has been stifled.

  To offer a different and more positive take – and as I’ve said before on the Fabula blog about this project: I think this project has the potential for true greatness. It offers so many needed services, amenities and connections in a horrible location, and does so in an incredibly unique and memorable way.

  Further, the image that will be created by this landmark structure will make this wasteland location a must-see destination as well as gateway for locals as well as visitors. The spaces under the bridge and ramps promise to be really exciting.

  Can’t wait.

• 3 Joe Just Joe // Apr 11, 2012 at 11:21 am

  Tickets are almost as hard to come by as Canuck playoff seats. Beleive there are several hundred on the wait list right now, goes to show you how cherised planning is in our city. Heck I hear even Frances had a bit of hassle to pick up her tickets yesterday morning. 😉

• 4 MB // Apr 11, 2012 at 12:37 pm

  I know it’s an optical illusion, but I gotta say I sure hope the structural engineers do their final calculations on any day but a Monday following a playoff weekend.

  That cantilever ….. in a seismically active zone …..

• 5 A Dave // Apr 11, 2012 at 1:09 pm

  Can’t argue with Frank’s points on this one. However, I do take issue with buildings like his that are totally clad in glass – I mean everywhere – advertising themselves as cutting edge “sustainable design”. Puh-lease.

  I wonder if Mr. Ingels believes in this now ubiquitous greenwash / marketing ploy too? And will anyone in Vancouver’s planning or architectural community have the guts to stand up and question him about it?

• 6 Guest // Apr 11, 2012 at 2:14 pm

  As Frank mentions (and has been mentioned on various internet forums), this project provides an excellent use of the spaces in and around the Granville Bridge viaducts.

  It can (and should) form a precedent for the treatment and use of lands surrounding the Dunsmuir and Georgia Viaducts rather than tearing them down while they are sound and in good condition.

  That said, I do find the particular design “top heavy” and a bit ungainly. That’s not necessarily derived from the height, but the massing.

  I think the short buildings on the triangular parcels could be better resolved (they may end up being glass spandrel clad generic blocks) – perhaps a bit taller with facade variations and awnings.

• 7 Higgins // Apr 11, 2012 at 2:43 pm

  Been at the city hall today for BIG’s presentation of their project. Not impressed. Nothing I didn’t see before, blah, blah, big tower, we can do taller, blah, blah, here is much nicer … tallest, and so it went.
  Procession of architects lauding the project and each other, and the city, and the developer, and the city, and the developer, and each other…
  Only one missing… Brent Toderian, unless I didn’t see him, perhaps would have been too painful a reminder… all the Vision/ Ballem applaudistas, they were all there for the show, sandwiches and a pat on the back.
  The only thing that came out of this exercise… the city’s architecture critics, the city itself, and their locals hit a mid life crisis of sorts and needed some variation, some change… and entertainment we’ve got. When the BIG one will come I wouldn’t want to be living on the top floor of that building… not even under that bridge, ha.

• 8 Roger Kemble // Apr 11, 2012 at 3:09 pm

  “ . . . and in the room the women come and go talking of Michelangelo.“

• 9 jolson // Apr 11, 2012 at 3:59 pm

  What is the measure of greatness asked the blind man. Can you see it?

• 10 gmgw // Apr 11, 2012 at 4:06 pm

  @Frank Ducote:
  “Wasteland location”? “Gateway for locals [and] visitors”?? (Gateway to *what*, exactly??) No more than a block in any direction from one of the densest agglomerations of condo towers on the north shore of the Creek, with more and even bigger a-building as we speak? You have great potential as a comedy writer, my friend.
  gmgw

• 11 Frank Ducote // Apr 11, 2012 at 4:13 pm

  gmgw – gateway to and from downtown across the Granville Bridge. It may sound like arcane urban designer speak to you, but I’m willing to bet that the “gateway” phrase has and will continue to be used extensively to describe this project. Whether you like it or not.

  My friend, whoever you are.

• 12 Lewis N. Villegas // Apr 11, 2012 at 11:54 pm

  Frances, I got the jumper cables, so let’s just hook them up and get this conversation kick-started in the direction it is clearly missing.

  If the Vancouver Leaky Condo fiasco has already not woken up the sleepy heads in our city to the fact that the city building professions have let us down, that somehow or another the very ‘gate keepers’ have either fallen asleep on the job, or worse, taken a bribe to ‘look the other way’…

  Then, let’s just point to this Rize Tower fiasco in Mount Pleasant to see a different take on the same problem.

  The entire city machinery that is supposed to stand between the market forces and the values of community and values of place engendered by the people that make Vancouver their home appears to be ‘over the barrel’. When I meet with folks that have been giving of their time, and of themselves, really, what I hear most often is, “we just can’t trust the planners”.

  So, I offer a meek analysis here that “good urbanism” is now the test for ‘good’ architecture.

  Whatever Bjarke has to say, it have better resonate with answers to an overheating residential market; homelessness in our streets; underfunded transit; and a planning process that is starting to look—and walk—like the most tawdry Canadian urbanism ever.

• 13 Roger Kemble // Apr 12, 2012 at 7:03 am

  http://www.planetizen.com/node/43935

• 14 Lewis N. Villegas // Apr 12, 2012 at 8:23 am

  As Jane Jacobs advised, let’s do density properly. Let’s see lower building height (as is seen all over Europe), less parking, fewer luxury amenities, and a wise, attractive manner of fitting buildings into existing local history and texture. We can still get an astonishing amount of density while avoiding distorted real estate economics and aesthetic ruination.

  Lindsay Brown in

  http://scoutmagazine.ca/tag/lindsay-brown/

• 15 Frank Ducote // Apr 12, 2012 at 9:22 am

  @Roger – thanks for the link to Duany and the related discussion, but I wonder how you think it applies to the BIG proposal? Please elaborate. Cheers.

• 16 F.H.Leghorn // Apr 12, 2012 at 9:57 am

  @Frank: Roger no sooner gets pithy (with a th) than you encourage him to “elaborate”. I knew it was too good to last.
  No-one but developers thinks high-rise condo-racks are attractive or “iconic” or anything else. They all scream low-bid.

• 17 Roger Kemble // Apr 12, 2012 at 10:46 am

  Frank @ #15

  . . . but I wonder how you think it applies to the BIG proposal? Please elaborate.”

  Frances writes . . . ” . . . a special lecture at the Chan Centre, courtesy of developer Ian Gillespie, on Thursday night.

  To elaborate . . .

  This is Gillespie softening up potential public hearing opposition: although quite unnecessary given local paucity of talent.

  His proposed BIG Twist is just another cliché when built will be yesterday’s “What might have been . . .

  “What might have been is an abstraction

  Remaining a perpetual possibility

  Only in a world of speculation.

  What might have been and what has been

  Point to one end, which is always . . . 

  Towards the door we never opened
. . .” Excerpted (apologies) from T. S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton.

  The last hero lecture I sat thru was Rem Koolhaas: what a disappointment especially how dated his stuff is today. Ditto BIG!

  Don’t be disappointed Frank these guys pop up and down like fleas on a Rhino’s horn.

• 18 Guest // Apr 12, 2012 at 12:40 pm

  Lewis @ 12

  what I hear most often is, “we just can’t trust the planners”.

  I think the word “planners” can be generically replaced with “government”, “bureaucracy” or “politicians”.

  We live in a very cynical age (perhaps it’s an extension of the “me” generation and the Vietnam War protests and rsulting mistrust of government).

  i.e. Consider all of the cynics who doubted ridership on the Canada Line – where are they now?

• 19 Lewis N. Villegas // Apr 12, 2012 at 1:59 pm

  @Guest

  It is always the office, not the office holder, that we are referencing. We all understand following “marching orders” within a bureaucratic setting. However, when it comes to putting the message out to the four communities that are currently engaged in a “planning process”, the short hand “don’t trust the planners” gets the job done.

  Neither the government, the bureaucracy, nor the politicians are on the front lines, meeting with the neighbours and soliciting their input.

  On the front lines are the planners. With no dis-respect meant to the individuals, the Mount Pleasant Plan & process was a lie perpetrated on the community.

• 20 gmgw // Apr 12, 2012 at 4:05 pm

  @Frank Ducote:
  Interesting that you see the Aquabus as the “gateway to downtown”. The location of the tower in question would presuppose that conclusion, since the bridge ramp next to which the Ingels tower would nestle is southbound, and the only northbound transportation artery immediately nearby (one short block over) is the ferry. Furthermore, I would think that the developers of the two large towers currently under construction at the north end of the bridge (well, OK, one’s at Drake and Howe, half a block west) are more geographically entitled to claim first dibs on the “gateway” marketing concept, should they choose to go with such a hackneyed idea.
  gmgw

• 21 Andrew Browne // Apr 12, 2012 at 4:41 pm

  @ Various

  RE: Evil planners, gov’t, and everybody, assorted banal cynicism, get off my lawn, etc.

  When your baseline in life is: things must not change, and if they do, they must change in this very specific way that matters so very dearly to me in particular… well, you’re making it pretty easy to be let down by planners/gov’t/whoever else you care to blame, aren’t you?

  I’m not saying that any of the neighbourhood planning process was perfect or even ideal… I just think some in this thread are wandering into the trap of equating an outcome that you disagree with as somehow stemming from lies and mistrust.

  The hysterics that some work themselves into, the way some convince themselves that their very being will be rocked to the core by changes, that whole communities will be irreversibly devastated by a particular project… I don’t know.

• 22 david hadaway // Apr 12, 2012 at 5:36 pm

  The ‘beer garden’ view under the bridge ramps is really not honest. Admittedly it’s not an easy place to deal with, but at the moment there is a certain gritty honesty there. Cutting off daylight with these rather crude wedges, no matter how shiny they and the people in them may be, is not going to create the happy environment of this photoshop world.

  I was recently in Edinburgh and was very impressed by the way, in the Old Town, its levels connect and cross one another. Also in Newcastle upon Tyne how the riverside bridges quite crudely yet very impressively ride over the buildings below. Both cities embrace their ‘grim’ side to considerable architectural effect, and it certainly doesn’t seem to make them any less lively.

  I won’t speak to the tower itself but this proposal at ground level seems likely to achieve the worst of all worlds.

• 23 Lewis N. Villegas // Apr 12, 2012 at 6:29 pm

  @ Andrew

  Or if you’ve spent, as I now have, over 4 weeks meeting with the planners twice, reviewing the documents, listening to 4 nights of public hearings, and meeting and engaging with neighbourhood groups, speaking to a community forum (unattended by city staff btw), reading and writing in the press…

  If you’ve done all that and you come up with a set of conclusions that points to the language in the Plan being… well, ignored.

  Then, why plan?

• 24 Frank Ducote // Apr 12, 2012 at 7:13 pm

  gmgw – since at least the mid-1980s or so the area of the Granville loops and south end of Granville Street have been considered by a range of urban designers as a gateway to downtown on the bridge axis. (Nobody’s talking about the Aquabus, certainly not me. Don’t know where you get that.)

  This was again reconfirmed c 2000 or so by design consultants for the Granville strip. The clients were the business association, not the city, just in case those suspecting the motives of the city’s planners.

  And, once again c. 2005-6 by Central Area Planning, post planning for the “normalization” of the 1950s era loops, as a result of the Downtown Transportation Plan.

  I am sorry for your ignorance of this history, but nonetheless it is there, and because of it the idea of a major architectural expression in this area has “legs”, as they say.

  Over and out.

• 25 Michelle // Apr 12, 2012 at 8:12 pm

  Bjorke Ingles… BIG deal! Grow up people! Get over it, another hip story from the wefare belt of Europe…

• 26 Michelle // Apr 12, 2012 at 8:13 pm

  oops, “welfare belt” … sorry!

• 27 Lewis N. Villegas // Apr 12, 2012 at 8:43 pm

  The idea of a ‘Gateway’ is very automobile, very ‘view from the road’. We don’t really have ‘gateway’ experiences when we are out walking on foot.

  ‘Node’ is another of those concepts that would seem to have the same pedigree. I’ve never experienced a ‘node’ on foot. At 50 k/hr—maybe I can start thinking of ‘nodes’.

  The best ‘idea’ i’ve heard about the downtown side of the Granville Bridge is doing away with the loops altogether and just landing the bridge on Granville Street.

  I’d do away with the loops on the south side as well. I find them about as blighting as skytrain. The new Cambie Street bridge just about does away with ramps, and would have fared a whole lot better if it hadn’t been designed to allow too much clearance underneath into the pleasure boat estuary of our False Creek.

  Here’s another place where Paris presents a fascinating example.

  I’ve always felt that in Paris, “the Seine is the Scene.” When you walk along the Seine, especially in the centre of the city, you experience both sides of the river. The Arno in Firenze is like this too.

  Reason? Bridges are low.

  In Paris river traffic has been relegated to low flung barges, and flat-top tourist boats probably since they completed Pont Neuf in 1600 or so. Amsterdam has more or less the same approach.

  That makes the bridges walkable. You don’t have to climb higher than the top a a sailboat’s mast, for example, and it makes the bridges less obtrusive on the townscape on either side.

  A Paris-style bridge at Granvill would begin on Granville Island and merrily hop across at a vertical extension just tall enough to let the Aqua Bus through.

  Of course, it would revolutionize our experience of place.

  The pedestrian Ponte Sisto that crosses into Trastevere in Rome is another case in point. About the most fun walk with one of the most pleasant destinations on the other side. Piazza Sta. Maria in Trastevere is just what would work in the middle of the Rize block.

  But, not matter which way I picture it, crossing into Trastevere—or coming back the other way—I’ve never had a ‘gateway’ experience there.

• 28 Bill McCreery // Apr 12, 2012 at 10:34 pm

  The models and drawings are intriguing, particularly what’s happening at the lower levels interwoven with the bridge ramps. It could be quite wonderful, but a lot more fleshing out will be necessary. If the buildings are to high and bulky the bridge protected space will be a dreary place that’ll have to rely on artificial light, hardly a green solution.

  This will be a particularly satisfying achievement for me because then Alderman Geoff Massey and I tried to have the huge, linear V.I.E.W. building in South False Creek retained for similar reasons. Vancouver’s wet, temperate climate cries out for such places. We were overruled by those on Council at the time who were concerned about the bottom line, perhaps rightly. I also attempted at the Park Board to save one of the three Jericho RCAF hangers that were used for Habitat 76 for similar reasons. It, not so mysteriously, burned down.

  There are some things about this proposal that are interesting and there is potential there. Without being negative, there are some questions that need to be asked:

  1) The City owns most, if not all of this land. Is it necessary to bonus this site to the heavens to achieve what’s happening below?

  2) While the twisted form catches one’s attention, it does so in no small part because it is visually as well as actually defying gravity. The old adage: “firmness, commodity and delight” do not apply here. We are told this will be an iconic building. Perhaps the jury will be out a bit longer (I say this not critically, but largely because I’m not sure what makes an iconic building in this situation and that this design will achieve that end).

  3) We are told we have a “green” Council. Is a solution that requires tons of extra steel and engineering gymnastics just to remain standing contributing to their principles and goals? Wouldn’t it be better to design a really ‘iconic’ architecturally visually and functionally innovative and attractive, and equally innovative energy conserving building rather than a different twist on what’s been done before just because we can?

  Council has said all buildings by 2020 must be carbon neutral. What does that mean to the design professions and the development industry? To the public? 2020 is 8 short years away. This isn’t just going to happen. What’s Vision Vancouver’s plan? What are the necessary steps to get us their? What are the costs to the industry, Vancouver’s economy? The Public?

  I’d like to see not just one or two iconic structures downtown, but every major new project working towards the 2020 goal. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to use such projects to highlight this process of evolution?

• 29 Frank Ducote // Apr 12, 2012 at 11:18 pm

  Bill – Good comments. Once again, I think you could/should be the urban design writer for one of our local dailies.

• 30 spartikus // Apr 13, 2012 at 9:10 am

  Cutting off daylight with these rather crude wedges, no matter how shiny they and the people in them may be, is not going to create the happy environment of this photoshop world.

  Count me too as skeptical of the happy-happy world of mass yoga-ing presented in the renderings. It would be dark in summer. Imagine winter…

  What about the air flow (wind tunnel effect?)

  The building itself – well it gets marks for attempting to be different, but it does strike me as some precocious kid’s Lego project.

• 31 Westender1 // Apr 13, 2012 at 10:35 am

  I’ve been interested to hear a number of commenters (including Councillor Meggs) indicate that the proposed building will serve as an iconic tower marking the arrival to downtown. As most of those viewing this building during their arrival will be travelling from the south, I find it surprising that the south elevation of this building belies the structural gymnastics of the view from the north:

  http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/rezoning/applications/1412-1460howe/documents/elevs.pdf

  The view of this building for those arriving from the south is akin to a (really big) filing cabinet, so I’m not sure I’m getting the iconic part. I’m also skeptical of the practical function of the “under-bridge” elements of the complex, the co-opting of public road areas to serve this development, the rental units facing into the side of the bridge deck, and the number of massive units (with presumably massive pricing), but I think we can all see that this project is headed for the “approval stream” at 12th and Cambie so it’s probably just best to hope that the good will outweigh the bad.

• 32 MB // Apr 13, 2012 at 10:59 am

  Lewis #19:

  It is always the office, not the office holder, that we are referencing. We all understand following “marching orders” within a bureaucratic setting. However, when it comes to putting the message out to the four communities that are currently engaged in a “planning process”, the short hand “don’t trust the planners” gets the job done. […] On the front lines are the planners. With no dis-respect meant to the individuals, the Mount Pleasant Plan & process was a lie perpetrated on the community.

  With no disrespect meant to your commitment to high-quality urbanism, you have obviously never worked in a planning office or represented anything but your own interests to the community.

  And your last sentence is most certainly very disrespectful to the community volunteers who put together the Mount Pleasant Plan. I know two of them (one is a planner on leave, but she was acting as a private citizen with deep attachment to the neighbourhood). They’d be totally pissed off with your cavalier and arrogant dismissal of their hundreds of hours of work.

  What is “wrong” with the Plan is simply they didn’t have a mandate to carry their work into the deeper layers of urban design workshops (we’ve discussed this before ad nauseum), something that is obviously needed now in all historic neighbourhoods.

• 33 MB // Apr 13, 2012 at 11:13 am

  David Hadaway #22:

  I was recently in Edinburgh and was very impressed by the way, in the Old Town, its levels connect and cross one another. Also in Newcastle upon Tyne how the riverside bridges quite crudely yet very impressively ride over the buildings below. Both cities embrace their ‘grim’ side to considerable architectural effect, and it certainly doesn’t seem to make them any less lively.

  Ian Rankin has Edinburgh nailed to a tee. His books have even generated their own tourism. Your description confirms the perception that they celebrate the grit, the difference being that it’s very historic grit.

  Next time I’m in the UK I’ll make the effort to go.

• 34 david hadaway // Apr 13, 2012 at 11:53 am

  Like so many of its kind this proposal has the look of a gigantic consumer product. I can equally see it (in various sizes) as an energy saving convection heater, a designer chef cheese grater or an ergonomic leg shaver.

  And if I’m saying what I really think, those shiny wedges, green roofs notwithstanding, look like something out of a suburban business park.

• 35 MB // Apr 13, 2012 at 12:04 pm

  @ Bill McCreery #28, thanks for your architectural perspective on this project.

  There are those who leap to judgement solely because its design is somewhat progressive, or “different.” That view unfortunately negates the vast mediocrity that befell most Canadian cities since 1950. Vancouver is better than some, but it still hasn’t done enough to counter the ‘beautiful setting in search of a city’ critique.

  I saw this recently with Calgary’s new Santiago Calatrava pedestrian bridge. The tabloids lit up about the cost, the imported architect, the colour, the whatever. In fact, it’s a gem that cost 1/2 of one percent of a new ring road, and it has about as much effect a chilli pepper flake on a mountainous plate of mashed potatoes.

  Likewise, this ‘leaning’ tower won’t change the city, but what I do like about it is its poke in the eye of the green glass tower-on-podium convention, now the central cliche for downtown Vancouver. Vancouver will be better for the risk-taking and debate.

  And the energy conservation comments are particularly good. This is an issue for the 21st Century.

  I second Frank’s recommendation that Bill M. should write a column for a local paper. Having said that, I know the fate of every architectural critic who guest wrote opinion pieces for the Sun. The Sun will not tolerate criticism of specific developments because it PO’s the developers who buy ads. The weekend Homes section is consumed by ads with occasional generalistic (but often inciteful, hardly critical) pieces by Bob Ransford and Peter Simpson. I’d write off any Postmedia / CanWest paper for this reason and recommend the Globe and Mail which doesn’t have nearly as many local real estate ads. Alternatively, Web media could even draw an income of sorts.

  Whattaya say, Bill?

• 36 Bill Lee // Apr 13, 2012 at 12:18 pm

  @MB // Apr 13, 2012 at 12:04 pm
  “recommend the Globe and Mail which doesn’t have nearly as many local real estate ads”
  Well they are a Toronto paper, and we only see the colonies edition, not the ad strewn Metro Toronto edition.

• 37 Bill Lee // Apr 13, 2012 at 12:32 pm

  Speaking of Ingels, anyone read Clog #1, also know as Clog: BIG?
  [ LCCatNo: 2011203980 That issue’s ISBN: 9780983820406 (Oct. 2011)

  http://www.clog-online.com/issues/clog-big/
  I can find only one copy at the expected QMMCCA (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Library/Centre canadien d’architecture, Bibliotheque)
  “[Clog:Big] attempts to step back and take stock. Bringing together contributors from backgrounds including architecture, criticism, parkour, engineering, comics, photography, philosophy, and more, CLOG:BIG presents the first holistic, critical examination of Bjarke Ingels and his firm. ”

  Ok an inverted needle. We have better luck not to get his ziggurat pyramid for Durst on West 57th in New York and being sold to “artistes” with art fairs this month before it is even started.
  See the March 12 2012 issue of the New York Observer about “The recession has left the city with hundreds if not thousands of vacant lots, stalled sites and empty storefronts”

• 38 MB // Apr 13, 2012 at 12:55 pm

  @ Bill Lee #36, true enough. More the reason for the G&M to expand regional content and hire more local writers like Frances Bula.

  Other than that, there’s only the Web.

• 39 Guest // Apr 13, 2012 at 2:42 pm

  The most obvious enviro friendly aspect of the tower is the inset windows – that’ll provide a lot of sun shading for the suites. Unfortunately for the residents, that’ll also mean that their views will “have blinders” to some extent.

  At least this building (the tower (not necessarily the lowrises)) avoids the proliferation of spandrel panels seen on other buildings (intended to reduce the surface area of vision glass to reduce the solar gain into suites).

  WRT the market under the bridge – that project has been planned by the City for years – this developer simply provides a cohesive opportunity to get it done without laying out taxpayer money (in theory).

• 40 guest // Apr 14, 2012 at 12:21 am

  Frances, didn’t you write about Vancouver’s fascination with Starchitects before? Do we really need to anchor our space with the design of a twisted towel to maximize developers space?
  This is so thirty years ago. Smoke, mirrors, sold out appearances and disco.

• 41 Bill McCreery // Apr 14, 2012 at 12:24 pm

  Frank and MB, your insights into the matters at hand here are inspired, as are those of many other commenters’. Such diverse contributions are one of the fascinating aspects of what Frances manages to achieve here.

  It is evident that those who comment are passionate about Vancouver. In addition there are many others who follow these discussions, who do not comment, but do care. Someone I met recently said they had to stop commenting because it was to stressful. What a testament for how much Vancouverites care about their City! There is a host of people in Vancouver’s many rich and diverse neighbourhood groups who also care deeply.

  There are capable Councillors, both with Vision, as well as with the too meagre, opposition. But, it is also clear more people need to be included on an ongoing basis in civic decision-making discussions in Vancouver. Those who’ve been watching the political, planning, urban design, architecture and development processes before, as well as since the election, are aware of the scale and speed of change currently underway, and know that those decisions are significantly impacting our City, its quality of life, financial and environmental sustainability, as well as other future implications. The discussions here and elsewhere on blogs, neighbourhood gatherings and coffee shops are informed, intense, and mostly well intended and constructive.

  Those conversations need to be expanded to a wider audience for the benefit of the City’s wellbeing, but also because alternative voices need to be heard. An urban affairs commentator could help stimulate that dialogue. There is a need to expand these discussions at this critical juncture to a larger portion of the population. With your encouragement, I am considering such a role. There are others who could also do so, and perhaps they may. I do hope one of our City’s newspapers will become the vehicle to encourage such a Citywide urban affairs dialogue about Vancouver and its’ role in the Twenty First Century.

• 42 RON // Apr 16, 2012 at 10:05 am

  If you hav’nt seen it already, there’s excellentcoverage of the BIG project on
  http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/20436/big-architects-beach-howe-tower-vancouver.html

• 43 MB // Apr 16, 2012 at 10:14 am

  Bill M., I wish you all the best in starting your urban affairs column.

  I wonder, though, if hosting your own Web site or blog would allow constructive criticism to be kept liberated from the main stream media censors always ready to snip snip snip anything that may offend their advertisers.

  Having said that, even the Sun publishes guest op-eds that may run counter to their shareholder’s, owners and advertiser’s leanings.