Sometimes after I read a lot of stuff, I start to think that Vancouver focuses only on bike lanes, throbbing motor vehicle arterials and empty mansions.
But after a walking trip from home along the seawall and then into the ferry to cross False Creek to Granville Island, I realize that a healthy part of our city is in, on, over, or near various types of watery place.
False Creek Ferry near Granville Island
Right! Which is why we should also be creating more floating home communities around the city and region!
Absolutely! It’s extraordinary that there is so little travel and living on the water in and around Vancouver. For a waterfront city in a mild climate the waters around Vancouver are underused.
Indeed one of the main benefits and attractions of Vancouver & area is its water orientation, to walk/bike or just look at, coupled with mild weather year-round. 30 km seawall from UBC via Kits, then Granville Island, False Creek / Olympic Village, English Bay, ’round Stanley Park ending at Waterfront station is awesome .. Plus dikes along Richmond on three sides, or in Tsawwassen, W-Van and N-Van ..
We could certainly develop more housing in the tidal flats off UBC, Richmond, N-Van, Delta or Surrey, as the Dutch have shown, or many other parts of the world where cities end up with semi-useful or under-utilized tidal flats. Perhaps some blog posts here would be useful what we can learn from Amsterdam, Venice, London, Hamburg, Barcelona, San Francisco Bay Area, LA, Taipei etc ..
Methinks this is maybe what long time Vancouverites take for granted: multi-modal can also include several different short water commuter daily transportation providers.
Other big Canadian cities, don’t have quite the same variety of different types of water based transportation for commuting purposes. (Not for tourist sight-seeing). Toronto does have their regular Toronto Island ferries which gets you at foot Waterfront on mainland to get into downtown ….by walking, cycling or transit/streetcar.
Of course, one can go from sea-plane to bike…which I have done this. Cycled to seaplane departure dock at Coal Harbour, lock up my bike and board seaplane for day trip to Victoria.
It would be great to see a series of kayak “docks” or even “lockers” at strategic locations on our seawall; including Kits Beach, False Creek, English Bay and Coal Harbour (and perhaps the the North Shore??). This would allow people to use their kayaks as a form of transportation, not only recreation.
Floating communities — and greater access over the water — is an unrealized opportunity here with great potential.
I conducted a preliminary urban design study on Berry Point in Burnaby some years back. Three versions were created, from a simple green “kayak park” with limited access to a full-blown marina with watercraft and floating homes, adjacent amenities and buildings on shore, large floating breakwaters, Granville Island-like urban light industrial programming and big decks. We included a West Coast Express station connected to a bus stop at the foot of Penzance Drive and ultimately connected to Brentwood Station, an overpass for vehicles with generous bike lanes and sidewalks, and indicated the possibility of a passenger ferry service to Deep Cove across the inlet.
What killed the project were the results of a geotechnical study that determined that the fill dumped on the site and the slopes above were very unstable and would require tens of millions in seismic remediation. Since then, a 1,000% increase in oil tanker carrying capacity has been proposed from the oil docks to the east. A five-year old can imagine the risk now.
Nonetheless, it created awareness of the possibilities of living ON the water in our waterfront cities and towns, just how much water acreage is available behind the federal harbour headline, the increased potential additional sites that can be created behind floating breakwaters in deeper water, the fact that your water lot is mortgage-free, and your floating home would be (as yet) not susceptible to inflationary foreign money and local speculation and shortage of supply given the unrealized potential.
If push came to shove though, I’d prefer a floating community closer to the inner city.