There are so many designs for public space hidden inside classrooms and offices waiting for a forum by which they could see light … competitions like Re-Connect and Re-Think Housing, or the RISE competition (rising sea levels) offer glimpses, but then too often disappear into a miasma of non-updated web links and obsolete hosting.
Occasional PT contributor James Bligh has been writing about some of these proposals for Vancouver is Awesome ( http://www.vancouverisawesome.com/author/james-bligh/ ) but there are certainly many many others
Here is a great article in the Tyee about how to infuse interesting ideas into the process, not simply to appease but to inspire … I think there needs to be more of this!
-Ian
http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/04/18/Revolutionary-East-Van-Corner/
“…what about the Grandview Cut, that remarkable angled incision on the bias of East Vancouver’s grid system? That could and should be our very own Arbutus Corridor greenway, or better yet our rustway, if only someone had the wit to do something imaginative there. Our valiant assembly leaves that vision hostage to the city’s planning department, telling them to “immediately study the feasibility of creatively developing the Grandview Cut with the express purpose of creating additional park and public space.” Do not hold your breath.
What is needed in this neighbourhood is a serious jolt. So I went and asked Bing Thom for his take on East Van — asked him if he’s ever even given the place a second thought, which it turns out he has. As ever with Thom, the discussion is less about design, or building form, or materials, or heights, or even density. It steers more to global trends that affect Vancouver much like they do any other desirable and increasingly unaffordable western city. He cites a Guardian report that shows that millennials the world over are falling behind, a “financial rout,” the Guardian says, “besetting an entire generation of young adults around the world. A combination of debt, joblessness, globalization, demographics and rising house prices is depressing the incomes and prospects of millions of young people across the developed world, resulting in unprecedented inequality between generations.”
That, in Thom’s view, is what is going to drive the success, or otherwise, of neighbourhoods like Grandview-Woodland or the adjacent Kensington-Cedar Cottage. A lack of jobs, increasing income disparity, and growing unaffordability is “getting worse” in Vancouver’s neighborhoods, Thom says.
How, then, do such trends come to augur on Grandview-Woodland’s Safeway site? What about the Grandview Cut? Thom doesn’t single out the Citizens’ Assembly per se, he is too diplomatic for that, but he does believe that asking people what they want is the wrong question, “because, of course, no one wants any change.”
Imagine, he says, a city without politicians that quake in fear of residents’ anger, and a neighbourhood ready to take a leap in order to preserve and even enhance its local vitality. Imagine, on the Safeway site, atop the transit hub, an office complex that draws 5,000 people to work on that corner, not just spit out their chewing gum on their way someplace else. That, says Thom, could spark the same sort of transformation he saw take place in Surrey.
And why not embark on a radical remake of the Grandview Cut, maybe even spanning it with a couple of Ponte Vecchio-style bridges so artisans can ply their trades and sell their wares where, today, street entrepreneurship is limited to used books and T-shirt sales? And why not find creative ways to better capture the brilliant views west to the city? As for getting down into the cut itself… well, of course that’s too costly and the existing rail uses make it unsafe and impossible if you think like a planner…. But if you think like an architect who has, for instance, totally reconfigured the watercourse in Fort Worth, Texas, to enable a spectacular urban regeneration to occur? Don’t expect anything like that to come out of 12th & Cambie and Thom himself doesn’t want to speculate on exactly what might happen in, over, or next to the Cut — other than to note that the results will look much different if you approach it from assessing its potential, as opposed to minimizing risk.”