In a nice juxtaposition, here are the reflections from the City of Vancouver’s Planning Director in the 1970s, Ray Spaxman, describing power in the city at the same time Jim Wong-Chu was taking his photographs.
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When I came to Vancouver from Toronto in 1973, there was an interesting dynamic going on. It was a “dynamic” that was affecting Toronto at the same time. Neither City was aware that something similar was happening in the other city. Major reforms were about to happen.
Here is how I describe that dynamic.
Through the efforts of extraordinary “ordinary citizens”, reform was in the air. People had become fed up with the apparent confluence of a number of harmful processes. The harmful processes were the product of a number of overconfident, perhaps arrogant, single-minded, but oversimplified agreements among certain successful segments of the community. Those segments were comprised of those people who were most influential in developing the city. Single-minded developers, single-minded politicians and single-minded city bureaucrats were, in the minds of those extraordinary citizens, “screwing up.”
While the forces that moved to change this emanated initially from concerned academia, it quickly spread to other thoughtful and caring people. Leaders emerged from the development, architectural, engineering, social, financial, media and community sectors to implement change in government.
These new leaders had to be bold because the old system had become entrenched and many powerful people did not want the benefits they then enjoyed to be lost. The challenge was big because it is always more attractive to be confident, convinced and convincing, than to be reflective about complexity and uncertainty, and especially to get out and be counted.
The extraordinary people took over City Hall and instituted the new planning and development processes that have led to us living in one of the most successful modern cities in the world. The good parts of “Vancouverism “ are a direct product of those extraordinary citizens who understood and fought for genuine transparency, concern for people, acceptance of complexity and uncertainty.
Of course, in that vein, we also have to recognise that the bad parts of “Vancouverism” also derived from those processes!
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[One last tease. I remember feeling that the 1930 Bartholomew Plan was ancient when I arrived in the city in 1973, 43 years later. It was 42 years ago that the reformists (TEAM) took over City Hall in 1972. We have had 40 years of the Development Permit Board!]
There seems to be a lot of nudge-nudge, wink-wink in this write-up. What is it trying to say? Who did what to whom, and what actually changed?
It would be worth re-publishing the late Dr. Walter Hardwick’s article “Responding to the ’60s” in a long ago issue of “Environment & Behaviour”. I’ll dig it out of my files. Walter hired Ray away from the City of Toronto as part of his TEAM shake-up of Vancouver’s political, planning, and public involvement scene. The article presents a great synopsis of a very interesting decade in Vancouver’s evolution.
“Responding to the 1960s: Designing Adaptable Communities in Vancouver”
Environment and Behavior May 1994 26: 338-362,
Perhaps Ray is finally embarking on his memoirs as the COV’s highly respected Director of Planning as well the rest of his planning career, before and after. And, yes, this is just a tease of what such a “journal” might entail.
From my own detailed studies of the history of urbanism in Vancouver, I would first of all like to just point out that in some respects Ray Spaxman is being far too modest in describing the revolutionary impact of his work in Vancouver. As I understand it, the entire culture of planning in Vancouver shifted during his tenure, away from a model which allowed developers to call the shots, towards a more grounded and locally appropriate approach based upon meaningful community participation, grounded in neighborliness. This new approach was implemented through a range of new processes and planning mechanisms that to a large degree continued to work well even after the political pendulum swung back to the right. Of course many other people also deserve a share in the credit for making Vancouver beautiful, but it seems to me that Ray Spaxman played an absolutely essential role in realigning planning priorities and developing effective methods for implementing these priorities.
I was lucky enough to work with Ray…and I say work WITH, because even when you were a young planner as Director of Planning he engaged everyone equally, sought comments and analysis from all, and knew all of the staff.
Ray is being extremely modest. I also interviewed him for a magazine article for the Planning Institute of British Columbia in the 1990’s and found out about his drawing talents, his work in the rebuild of post war Britain, and his birth in King’s Lynn, England, which is also the birthplace of Captain Vancouver.
It really is the extraordinary moment that was created by the TEAM electoral surge that allowed the very talented Ray Spaxman, the planning department and city hall in general to engage in planning in a different way with strong policy direction for guidance.
It was that one Director of Planning-Ray Spaxman with a very long tenure-who set the stage for Vancouverism and livability (I remember the discussion regarding whether an “e” should be in livability!) . Then two thoughtful and engaging planners from within City Hall, Ann McAfee and Larry Beasley became co-directors of Planning reinforcing and teasing out how to implement the work.
Ray quite simply took Vancouver to the international level with his approach.
It is a story overlooked, and one that needs to be told.
I was pretty young at the time, but I still remember the showdown over the new Telus head office building. Telus threatened to “leave and take their building with them” if they weren’t allowed what they wanted. Vancouver stood firm, and that’s why “the boot” was built at Kingsway and Boundary – as close to the city as they could get.
I always credited Art Philips with that, but that doubtless misses a lot of what was going on behind the scenes.
I had the great pleasure of taking Urban Studies 200 when it was still being taught by Dr. Hardwick. In addition to classroom work we had regular walking tours of Vancouver to see theory become practice. It was an elective for me and may not have even counted toward my degree, but was definitely the best course I ever took.
I can’t help but feel that much of what that generation of planners and politicians gave us has been eroded by big money and big egos.
This November I will use all 27 of my votes, as I have done every year I’ve been eligible to do so, but I’ve yet to find anyone like those we’re reminiscing about today.
It may be a good idea not to get too comfortable with Vancouver’s . . .
http://members.shaw.ca/webmaster-nonpareil/Thu%20Horror/thu.horror.html
. . . or, indeed, the regions record of public space amenity.
Unsustainable, cost of land, building and accommodation has been very detrimental to spaces between buildings but that, alone, cannot be attributed to economics.
There looms the possibility of unsophisticated planning.
Compared, say, to Montreal (Place d’Arms, Philips Square, Place Jacques Cartier etc), Vancouver lacks a sense or urban maturity.
I acknowledge old Montreal is of another era but surely should not Vancouver have learned by example rather than pursue a vain indulgence.
There are umpteen lost opportunities!
The manner in which a city treats the spaces between its buildings is a mark of urban maturity.
It may be a good idea not to get too comfortable with Vancouver’s . . .
http://members.shaw.ca/webmaster-nonpareil/Thu%20Horror/thu.horror.html
. . . or, indeed, the regions record of public space amenity.
Unsustainable, cost of land, building and accommodation has been very detrimental to spaces between buildings but that, alone, cannot be attributed to economics.
There looms the possibility of unsophisticated planning: False Creek north and south come to mind.
Compared, say, to Montreal (Place d’Arms, Philips Square, Place Jacques Cartier etc), Vancouver lacks a sense or urban maturity.
I acknowledge old Montreal is of another era but surely should not Vancouver have learned by example rather than pursue a vain indulgence.