The latest iteration from Patrick Condon and David Beers, in The Tyee:
Why have we become so willing to leave behind our paradise? It must not be lost. …
Therefore be it resolved that Vancouver will, by the year 2050, become the World’s Slowest City. …
To achieve this Lotus Land 2.0, the City of Vancouver has set out four measurable goals:
- Slow down travel to make it better.
- Cool out home buyer competition.
- Doze through the tech job frenzy.
- Hang out more.
OUR FOUR GOALS
Goal #1: Transportation (Slow motion)
Slogan: What’s your hurry?
Lotus Land 2.0 chooses to see time spent getting from one place to another not as a collective waste but as a resource. Thus, we will incentivize and enforce the slowest ways to do so: Drivers, rather than roar through, will putt along. Bicyclers and joggers will maintain a pace that produces a smile rather than grimace of pain. Walking will be much encouraged, perambulation particularly. …
By 2050, a city-wide speed limit of 30 kph will be imposed and enforced (city streetcars in dedicated lanes occasionally exempted).
Goal #2: Housing (Grow your own homes)
Slogan: Let’s get hive!
This starts by recognizing our impoverished catalog of housing types amounts to just two: the tower and the bungalow, which unfortunately afford ideal investments for the world’s One Per Centers pushing our market out of sight. …
Limit or eliminate parcel assembly. Relax zoning otherwise to allow rebuilding by right for up to six dwelling units per parcel, conditional only on preserving (in most cases) the original structure. …
Lotusland 2.0 bylaws will promote adapting detached existing buildings into restored and expanded buildings. On-site parking requirements will be eliminated. Parking passes for on street parking will be available at 2,000 dollars per year. Proceeds will be poured back into the housing fund and/or for free bus and tram passes for all citizens.
Goal #3: Jobs (That are actually workable)
Slogan: Serving up something new every day!
We are realistic. We know that 80 per cent of all jobs are service sector jobs, and that proportion is still growing. Service jobs may not pay a lot, but in this age ruled by algorithms they retain a human connection. …
By 2050, Vancouver will be famous for its full embrace of the service and craft economy. We will have the most brew pubs, food trucks, local bistros, dentists, accountants, nurses, teachers, artists, furniture builders, carpenters, transit drivers, music producers, graphic novel authors, disc jockeys, painters (fine and house) and home-stay purveyors in North America.
Goal #4: Public life (More hang time)
Slogan: C’mon. Have a drink! Or whatever!
At the heart of the Lotus Land 2.0 vision lies a network of social gathering spaces for true communion. … We dare to imagine, as building blocks for our hassle-free civic culture, places that combine pub, community centre, seniors social club, yoga studio, art gallery and coffee shop cultures. Places where the absence of our octogenarian friend Joe for more than a day would ring alarm bells.
Life in Lotus Land 2.0, ultimately, will not be a lazy life, really. But it will be a life much different from what we are told must be Vancouver’s frenetic future. …
What is the virtue of achieving a city run purely on green power if its residents are drained of their own energy by the struggle to rush around and pay the bills? Why should Vancouverites fight harder and harder to live in a global hot spot that, by design, keeps turning up the competitive heat on its own citizens?
Cool it everyone! That is the counter-message we deliver here today. Fellow Lotus Eaters! None of us should get busy doing anything! (Except, of course, implementing this, the Slowest City Action Plan for Vancouver.)
For the full version of this highly edited excerpt, go here.
Huh?
Exactly.
It’s a goofy filler piece by 2 Americans of the woodstock generation. Condon is nearing age 70 and should’ve retired by now. It sounds like they’d be happy if we turned into a stoner city. Can you imagine if someone told London or New York to chill out? Bizarre.
The thing about aging, is that people become myopic and resistant to change and adaptation. So while it seems like the world is accellerating, it is you that is slowing down.
We recommend these guys read Florida’s ‘Who’s Your City’ and move to Parksville.
Damn whippersnappers and their ageist bigotry! I shake my cane (very slowly) at you Dawson Summerville! Gord, old man, we need to meet up at the senior home shuffleboard and discuss this! BTW, you are seven years slow to the Slow London movement http://www.carlhonore.com/2009/04/slow-london-2/ and New York’s Highliner is all about providing a slower-paced meander above the busy streets. I’d argue with you more Master Summerville, but it’s time for my nap.
If you think it doesn’t make sense, can you explain the logic in what many of us do now?
How much joy is there in trying to speed around the region, whining about traffic, congestion and overcrowding and those *(^%&*^ bike lanes? How much time is left for the things you really love?
I live the slow life on a modest budget. I get where they’re coming from – tongue-in-cheek as it’s meant to be. I do not envy those who think happiness comes with a wider bridge.
Most of the people racing around the region are trying to meet family or work time pressures.
Next time someone is late for dinner, a movie, a practice or a family gathering,
think before you say “You’re late”.
Because they live/work/play too spread out. Perhaps rather than “you’re late” it should be “you’re far!”.
There is a famous line by Francois Villon: Du mouvement avant toute chose. To which one might add: Pourquoi?
Cineaste Denys Arcand’s grand-maman decided he was rushing too much; so she bought him a tiny plot of land – with a tombstone.
Like busy kids in a sandbox we rush around. They are in their stream of consciousness – we in ours – in our flow of hubris.
During this little cold spell it’s clear how many vehicles have not moved. Cars, trucks, trailers, vans – surrounded, covered by snow. Waiting for the thaw. Motordom laughs at cyclists in the rain; but there they sit – useless.
Just build big, frees parking lot at the skytrain stations in surrey, new west, coquitlam and burnaby. Nobody wants to drive downtown anyway
Diversity in mobility = freedom.
I say that as a very strong advocate of public transit and building walkable communities, and in counterpoint to road building gluttony. It will take at least as many generations to rebuild our car-addicted cities as it did to create them.
Those who advocate for slower lives probably have tenure in a campus within a 15-minute bike ride of home. The alternative could be to replace our established neighbourhoods with trailer parks. There. That will solve the affordability crisis and allow folks to move their homes closer to new employment improvement opportunities on a moment’s notice, and live a slower life with less commuting.
No civilization ever advanced by slowing down movement.
Too pat. No civilization endlessly sped up movement and survived forever. The quest for more of what enabled and enhanced their speed — slaves, colonial riches, oil — tended to be part of their undoing.