Pete McMartin has come up with a great idea in his column today :
The Vancouver that Gregor Robertson inherited was largely the legacy of a man who defined the terms of the city we know and love today.
That man would be Art Phillips, Vancouver mayor between 1973-1976.
Like Robertson, Phillips was good-looking, athletic and wealthy. He was also extremely smart. Phillips ushered in a new era at city hall, taking over a tired institution dominated too long by the NPA and reorganizing it from top to bottom to be more interactive with the people.
Those ideas of livability and design we now take for granted found their roots in Phillips’ term.
“The citizens of Vancouver,” he said in his inaugural speech, “and other major cities across Canada, now realize that progress can’t be measured in the height of buildings or in the amount of pavement. As Arthur Erickson once observed, ‘North Americans have regarded their cities as places to work in and get out of rather than places to live in and enjoy.’ I think all that is changing.”
Phillips was instrumental in effecting that change here, bringing in social housing and parks, ending plans for a downtown expressway, establishing the Property Endowment Fund, expanding the planting of trees, beginning the redevelopment of Gastown and establishing a system to save heritage buildings.
Last July, Phillips was given the Freedom of the City Award, the city’s highest honour. It was presented to him by Gregor Robertson.
For all of that, there is little in Vancouver that is a concrete testament to his contribution here.
As my colleague Rick Ouston pointed out to me recently, there isn’t a statue of him, or a school or park named after him.
Phillips is now in his mid-80s, and, according to his wife, Carole Taylor, “frail.” He no longer speaks in public.
Maybe it’s time the city shows its debt to Phillips by stamping his name somewhere on it. Somewhere prominent.
Toronto has Nathan Phillips Square at its city hall. Why not do away with the pedestrianly named Robson Square and rechristen it Art Phillips Square?
Thanks to Pete for a good summary of Phillips’s contribution – the legacy of perhaps our greatest Mayor. A public recognition is something that we should do soon.
Any relation to Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square? 🙂
This is a terrific idea. It make me think of another. After learning about Diana Krall Plaza in Nanaimo and Ben Heppner Way in Dawson Creek, I tried in vain to think of any public place or street in Vancouver named after a Vancouver-born cultural giant. Who is most deserving?
Dan Mangan Boulevard? Haha!
Nickleback Alley
I’m for an Art Phillips square. Good idea.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, Peter, but I’m opposed to naming public spaces after celebrity brand names just because they achieved a lot of money and fame through their passions, unless they also contributed significantly to city life in some other, tangible way besides singing into a microphone (or whatever). If we’re going to honour cultural workers, let us honour them by supporting the arts at the ground level, not with sensational monuments to celebrity worship.
I think it’s a grand idea. As someone who can remember Vancouver in the 1970’s, I have an appreciation of what we have gained and what we have lost. The years of Art Phillips and his TEAM were full of promise – epitomized, for me at least, by Habitat (1976) and the progressive imaginations of the School of Architecture at UBC. To lend Robson Square the name of Art Phillips is a compatible fit in space, time and idea.