This project will only take place if backers’ pledges keep coming in. Funding is now at 48% of the goal ($ 17,050 Friday, June 23).
You’ve got 19 days to get your support in place.
Vancouver’s street grid includes over 200+ downtown blocks bisected by laneways. By reimagining and reconfiguring these city corridors as recreational, commercial and performance spaces, we can increase the pedestrian area of downtown up to 30% and inspire new opportunities for social connections.
Plus, it just looks as cool as hell.
Nice idea, but I question transferring what works in Melbourne over to Vancouver. I’m all for intimate and activated pedestrian spaces but the first lane experiment at Granville near Pender isn’t what I’d call a success. It is just as filled with motor vehicles as it ever was and only a few curious humans venture in for more than a peek. Our lanes are heavily used for servicing and deliveries and it helps keep often unsightly stuff off of the main streets. Is garbage collection and quality human space a realistic fit? Is a city that gets a lot less sun than most of us would like and is rarely hot the right place to invest in narrow, mostly dark, shadowy lanes?
And is this whole activated lane concept just an excuse to avoid the hard decisions to finally pedestrianize some of our actual downtown streets? It is probably logistically more difficult to remove motor vehicles from our lanes than from some of our streets.
Agreed.
This is tinkering around the edges and does not address the central issue: our streets need to be seen more in terms of land use instead of in purely transportation contexts.
Further, pretty renderings do not represent the reality of utilitarian downtown lanes. Paint wears off very quickly, then the project flames out and is forgotten. It also reinforces the perception that art can be irrelevant, which is sad because there are many examples where art animates streetscapes and contributes to the enjoyment of urban design over long periods of time.
Of course, there are exceptions ….
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