Brisbane planner Greg Vann spent a few months in Vancouver and Toronto – and reports out here:
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A Sabbatical with Jane Jacobs. And an ode to Vancouver’s West End
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An excerpt:
As I walked around that area, Jane Jacob’s “four generators of diversity” that “create effective economic pools of use” kept coming to mind:
1. Mixed primary uses, activating streets at different times of the day. The main mixed use is along the “U” formed by Robson, Denman and Davie Streets, but there is a sprinkling of cafés, corner stores and community uses too.
2. Short blocks, allowing high pedestrian permeability. The blocks are longer on the axis to Stanley Park, but it’s very easy to just turn the next corner to find your way.
3. Buildings of various ages and states of repair. The place is a schamozzle of building styles, ages, heights and designs. So much so, that it shouldn’t hang together. But it does.
4. Density. Haven’t seen any figures, but I’d reckon it is on the upper end of the scale.
Her sidewalk ballet was also evident everywhere, with people of all ages and social standing, and lots of dogs, and the performing the dance daily and nightly. It never feels unsafe, and people are usually friendly.
I’m not surprised the West End was used as a model for the principles of good city building. The place just works.
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More on Vancouver and Toronto here.
Not exactly, Greg. The followers of Jacobs here won an election with anti West End rhetoric and then down zoned the area so very little change has happened since. They also downzoned the rest of the city explicitly so more West Ends would not happen. Some planning histories seem to ignore the West End even happened at all. But thank you for your observations. The West End was a product of market forces combined with discretionary zoning powers made possible by the new Vancouver Charter.
WOTD: schamozzle/schmozzle.
FWIW and IMHO, I think the trees are a big part of why the building mixes work. Street grid (fused) and use-mix (sort of, but lets not overplay the rare corner stores) are important of course. But the street trees define the outdoor room, and so let the schmozzle of towers and SFH and everything in between do what it likes.
Totally agree, take away the mature street trees and the large specimens that randomly populate the various setbacks and you have an intense dogs breakfast of building styles. More neighbourhood nodes would be welcome outside of just the mixed use strips of Denman and Davie, thinking Nelson & Nicola.
I hate the street trees. They’re downright oppressive in their canopy. I get more light in towerville on the other side of downtown than I’ve ever seen in the West End. :/
You would get even more light without all the towers.
Really? The street trees are deciduous so the light gets in during winter and in the summer its everywhere plus welcomed for shade as the older buildings get very hot at night.