Posted May 24, 2011, 5:13 PM
|
Registered User
|
|
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 73
|
|
"Vancouver coasts on its beauty, but misses out on creating vibrant city life."
Can't help but agree with a lot of what this guy says:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business...867/story.html
Quote:
Vancouver coasts on its natural assets, too rarely learning from other cities that do more with less, says Michael Goldberg, a professor emeritus at University of B.C.'s Sauder School of Business and an outspoken critic of urban planning and development.
"Great cities are about street-level experiences," he told me over the lunch the other day -at a table near the window of a pleasant little eatery, a spot I chose because there was no functioning outdoor patio this time of year on this section of busy Robson Street.
"But we [in Vancouver] rely excessively on being beautiful and being next to nature. All our planning tends to focus outward toward the views, and there has been no attention to the street-level experience for people.
"You might as well be living in a hotel in Banff."
What Vancouver needs to do, Goldberg said, is take lessons from other places that have made themselves far more vibrant. Places as diverse as Milan and Melbourne, Singapore and Seoul. Indeed, he even mentions -and this is embarrassing to me as a Vancouverite -Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto and Winnipeg as places that do better than us, at least in some ways.
From the Canadian cities on his list, he said, we should learn from their world-leading experience in creating "winter cities" -vibrant urban cores that are well protected from the elements.
"It has been known to rain here," he observes dryly. "Yet we've paid no attention to building underground passageways among shopping centres -Pacific Centre and Bentall Centre, for example."
Nor does Vancouver have arcades -those functional, often wonderful midblock connectors that have been centrepieces of downtowns in Europe and elsewhere for 200 years or more.
"It would make it much more userfriendly, because our blocks are quite long. And it creates retail space, it creates life, weather protection, a whole bunch of things."
Similarly, we need pedestrian-only streets and squares, and pedestrian bridges to link now-separate neighbourhoods like the north and the south sides of False Creek. Goldberg also cites a plan once drawn up by a University of B.C colleague, architect Bud Wood, to convert Carrall Street into a shop-and restaurant-lined canal between False Creek and Burrard Inlet.
"This is bold planning," he said. "But we don't do bold planning."
The city has done a good job of protecting and enhancing the oftenspectacular views along much of its waterfront, he said, but then it tightly limits what people can do there. Permits for outdoor patios, to mention just one thing, are extremely difficult to obtain.
"I look at the park where I live at Coal Harbour. Why not use the first 30 or 40 feet of grass -cover it over with retail opportunities, use part of the walkway for chairs where people can sit out and drink and eat and enjoy themselves?
"The same thing at False Creek. There are beautiful opportunities to build retail right out onto the waterfront so people can stroll and stop for a beer.
"The view of city planners is that a park means walking. It's somebody's preconception."
Vancouver is a latecomer to the triedand-true formula of blending retail and living space in the same streets, he said. And we still don't plan for nearly enough density to lower home prices and enhance livability -in part because transportation and land-use planning are disjointed and badly done.
"The fact the Cambie Corridor study was launched three months after the Canada Line opened is shocking. They knew for five years it was being built. The plan should have been there when it opened.
"And now the densities they've come up with are pitiful."
These are, he concedes, harsh words. "But lots of other people praise the city, and I don't see many people throwing horseshoes made out of lead. So, as an academic, that's my job."
dcayo@vancouversun.com To comment, visit Don Cayo's blog at www.vancouversun.com/cayo
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Opinion+...#ixzz1NI65vPBm
|
|