Ken Greenberg is the planner’s planner – one of those people who influence where planning is going. Based in Toronto, he doesn’t spend nearly enough time in Vancouver. But he was interviewed recently on the future of urban planning for Metropolis magazine.
This jumped out at me:
Almost everything that we’ve inherited and put into practice in the post-WWII decades has in some way become obsolete. First of all, the way we divided the tasks up: the enormous prominence that we gave to traffic engineers in laying cities out because traffic was such a major concern; the way other modes of travel were sidelined. There is also a huge issue of cities reequipping themselves for cycling as a serious means of transportation. …
This raises the profound question of how we make significant new pieces of cities that can actually accommodate a different way of life, where people will live in smaller units, where they will do more outside the home, where they’ll get their groceries in different ways, travel in different ways.
In other words, how we will move to the Post-Motordom City. The real challenge, I believe, is in adapting and retrofitting those parts of our regions that were designed and built on the assumption that almost everyone would drive almost everywhere for almost everything.
(Thanks to Brent Toderian for link.)
It’s funny to read that (knowing how true it is) and at the same time watching the great dichotomy that is Greater Vancouver (this is has been written about on this blog many times).
Vancouver – Skytrain, buses, the new Bombardier Granville Island tram, seabus, false creek ferries, walking, biking, seawalls, sidewalks…..
East Of Vancouver – Twinning the Port Mann, Golden Ears Bridge, expanding Hwy 1, parking lots parking lots parking lots, big box big box big box, trucks trucks trucks….
I live in downtown, so I am a very mixed use transit person. This past weekend I had to go out to Langley to visit a friend and it is truly amazing to see two worlds go in completely different directions.
@mpm
Given the different stages of development at which the inner city and the outer suburbs are at, and are likely to be well into the future, if not indefinetely, what do you think the appropriate mix of transportation infrastructure would be? Should it be the same in both localities?
Cities evolve – and that takes time.
Change doesn’t happen overnight.
There was a time when Downtown South was occupied by single family houses, followed by one storey light industrial buildings and acres of parking lots – and now higher density condo towers and townhouses.
You can’t expect an urban form in an area that has room to grow (after all, that’s why families move other there – for the “space”).
It’s like telling everyone in the bus to stand, all squished together, at the very back (while the front is empty to accommodate more passengers).
That isn’t going to happen unless it is “necessary” –
until the city grows and evolves to the point where greater density is “required” (and “allowed” by the municipality.
Vancouver is at that stage – and look at the resistance you see against EcoDensity.
There is fierce restistance in the City of Vancouver against densifying the single family areas of the city.
To expect a surburban environment to jump straight into that dense urban form – to me – is unrealistic.
It may be unrealistic, and you are right, people do move there for the ‘space’. But why build something with zero options when we know that sooner or later the density will fill up? Provide some options now, change a few peoples life styles.
There is no doubt that the twinning of the Port Mann is 40 years to late (I never understood how the Second Narrows are the Port Man, built in the same era can be a 6 lane and a 4 lane bridge respectively….especially considering the Port Mann was always going to be the last bridge out of town), but maybe provide some bus options to Coquitlam – try taking the bus, skytrain, skytrain, bus from North Surrey/Langley to Coquitlam, I would wait 45 min in a bridge lineup as well.
Add some bike lanes, commuter lanes….and hey, even some sidewalks in the big box centers. We can’t pretend that the density will never come when in the last 20 years Langley has grown 10 fold.
I won’t say there are zero options. There’s always a push for the historic town centre areas to be maintained and densified (as part of the evolution) – Port Coquitlam would be an example.
To decry suburbanites just because they live in single family homes seems odd to me. Ditto with the strip malls that are being uilt. They will provide the basis for future town centres (as these tend to be clustered around each other).
I think I read that Oakridge Centre, when first built in the 1950s, was equivalent to being located in farmers’ fields. After a major expansion in the 1980s and a few condo towers on the periphery in the 1990s, it is only now proposed to expand into a full town centre concept. Only this year (with the arrival of the Canada Line) has Oakridge gained the a potential be grow into a significant transit-oriented development. (And even then, most of the development (rezoning) appears to be restricted to the already consolidated mall site – not the surrounding single family housing neighbourhood. Hmmm.
In time the same will happen to suburban developments.
Note:
Oakridge Centre was originally built as a strip mall – but has since evolved…
Ron C. – I like your point about decrying people in suburbs who live in single family homes. I used to wonder why people who lived in Vancouver City in single family homes weren’t similarly denounced. Then I heard the jargon line, “those are street car suburbs”, so they’re OKay. No, they weren’t all developed during the street car era, but this is the silly rhetorical out that’s used to excuse them.
mpm – yes, … why was Second Narrows built 6 lanes and Pr Mann 4? Curious, don’t you think?