Time for a Real Change
Rob Grant offers PT readers a critique of Vancouver urbanism and follows on with ideas around the downtown viaducts’ redevelopment. I’ve shown the document section headings, and the illustrations.
Viaducts- Real Change (the original document)
Vancouverism – a critique
A New Kind of Plan (see a large detailed Figure 1 PDF here)
New realities and possibilities for auto accommodation.
A neighbourhood of small, medium and large.
Narrow streets and broad minds.
Park that thought. Big is not necessarily better.
Vancouver Art Gallery: Location, Location
A new vision for the water.
Rob Grant practiced architecture in Vancouver for 30 years. He worked in several offices as principal designer on a variety residential projects ranging from hi-rise to low-rise apartments and townhouses, as well as single-family dwellings and infill projects. He consulted briefly on the planning for South East False Creek before it became Olympic Village, where he suggested separating parking from individual buildings, as well as making the streets narrower.
He has won a number of local design competitions including the Vancouver Special Competition, the Seachange Competition and the Arbutus Corridor Competition. Most recently he has been designing several courtyard houses for the car-free resort community of Loreto Bay planned by the New Urbanist firm of Duany Plater-Zyberg in Baja Mexico. Influenced by the writing of Jane Jacobs and extensive travels, he retains a continuing passion for what makes cities work.
Pavers? Really? People hate walking on them and they are horrible for wheelchairs. Plus the concrete ones are really ugly. The City actually removed some of them on the Comox Greenway.
Folks from Vancouver really need to check out the newer great pedestrian spaces in Europe. They use machine cut smooth granite set in concrete. Great for heels and wheels plus it looks great.
I’ve biked on many many many kms of brick pavera in the Netherlands and never had any hate for them … Ditto in Vienna, Copenhagen, Prague … If they’re so vile inherently why would they be used in places that value bikes highly?
One side benefit of these hated pavera, they might let you live longer http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050630055256.htm … The reason they might have been removed is likely the same reason they are having issues in the Oly Village, they weren’t installed tightly or with enough sand, and they are moving around. Or maybe someone just decided to hate them one day. Some people do that it seems.
He never mentions cyclists – please re-read his post.
He mentions pedestrians in heels walking and wheelchairs (who may move much slower than bikes (i.e. hand-propelled wheelchairs), have small front wheels and may get stuck in the grooves).
He (Richard) did mention the Comox Greenway. That is a cyclist mention. I replied to. (I don’t know if you’re asking me to re-read, or Richard, as you didn’t reply to my message, but his). The health benefit article is specifically about pedestrians, and wheelchair users benefit from the same kind of surface as bikes do – if it works for one it works for the other.
… also, properly installed brick streets/paths have no gaps of sufficient dimension that would affect either wheelchair or high heel, unless the wheels of the former were miniscule, or the point of the latter quite deadly-pointy.
I appreciate and respect this effort by Mr. Grant. His treatment of an at-grade Georgia Street in the present viaduct alignment appeals to me more than the T-intersection approach proposed by the COV.
However, and admittedly not having gone into it in great detail, two things that first catch my eye are the loss of waterfront park space east of Carrall Street and the significantly enlarged marina east of the Plaza of Nations. Not happy with those ideas.
In addition, the high levels of historic contaminants on the Creekside Park expansion site makes redevelopment of those sites unlikely (given that the Province will foot the bill and taxpayers would be on the hook) – that’s why Creekside Park is planned to be the “tomb” for area contaminated soil (just like David Lam Park and Andy Livingstone Park are).
Remove that repository and not only contaminated soil from that site, but soil from all the adjacent sites will have to be relocated somewhere else.
I like the idea of placing the ped/bike ramp above the Skytrain guideway. However, a 5% grade is way too high – It should be max of 3%. Also, no need to enclose the guideway unless this is for noise abatement.
His Worship the Mayor is in Paris on the world stage making the case for action against climate change and no doubt lobbying the Prime Minister for infrastructure money for the Broadway subway line.
Meanwhile back in Vancouver a shadowy gang is trying desperately to get the province to participate in the destruction of very serviceable infrastructure. The NEFC Beauty Contest continues unabated predicated on the new found hope that the viaducts will soon fall down.
Fortunately City building is about much more than beauty alone and its expensive pursuit, it is also about moving the wheels of commerce along Broadway and through the intersection at Terminal and Main. So maybe, just maybe we ought to start acting like responsible stewards of that which we have received and ask Minister Stone to help connect the Viaducts to Clark Drive which would solve many a traffic snarl going east from downtown. It might just demonstrate that we are actually serious about reducing emissions and that we are entirely deserving of support for the Broadway subway from both the Feds and the Province.
As things now stand we are lacking in the credibility that might give us hope.