From Price Tags — Ed Glaeser (“Triumph of the City”) on Vancouver… and Sam Sullivan

Georgetown row house block; courtesy of the Congress for the New Urbanism

Ed Glaeser (“Triumph of the City”) on Vancouver … and Sullivanism | Price Tags

In a one-week period earlier this month, Edward Glaeser’s schedule took him from a conference in Leeds, England, hosted by the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to Stanford for an urban summit, to Milwaukee to speak at Marquette, home to Boston for a night, down to Washington to give a keynote address at a World Bank conference and finally off to Delhi for a two-day visit. What’s driving this demand for his views is not only his reputation as a top-notch urban economist, but his thoroughly researched message about our urbanizing world. Half of humanity now lives in urban areas, he reports, and by 2050, that figure will rise to three-quarters of humanity. In Glaeser’s eyes, this urbanization is a profoundly positive trend. Despite the challenges cities must learn to overcome — including crime, sanitation, services for the poor — they are sites of intense collaboration, innovation and opportunity. Read more: Humanity’s Greatest Invention? Face-to-face with Edward Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City — Medium

From Price Tags — How Vancouver does successful retail

Sam Newberg – known as ‘Joe Urban’ – sent this request to Price Tags:

 We’re having a crisis of urban design in Minneapolis. (How the City of Minneapolis Actually Influences Building Design). We’re talking too much about materials and not enough about frontage. One of the comments in this post is from a city planner who is sticking up for his staff at the city, but I still think we need to do a better job at frontage. More doors, more active, not just windows. Any advice on what specifically Vancouver does to get better results? More at: Advice for Minneapolis: How Vancouver does successful retail | Price Tags

Condon / @pricetags Debate: Should #Vancouver Change How It Zones Big Projects? | @TheTyee

Post by The Sidewalk Ballet.

From Price Tags — Transit and Business: Attracting the Best and the Brightest

Here are Microsoft’s soon-to be new Vancouver offices – basically on top of the Canada Line station, left, in the heart of the city (map here): Right, where Microsoft used to be located – a business park next to a freeway interchange in Richmond, in the heart of nothing (map here): Read more: Transit and Business: Attracting the Best and the Brightest | Price Tags

Vancouver Cycle Chic: Another adorable video http://t.co/iABgQVcjhb

— pricetags (@pricetags) February 5, 2014

Careful, it’s a trick question — RT @pricetags: Why We Are Here http://t.co/mWhk4hmAEJ

— TheSidewalkBallet (@1sidewalkballet) January 16, 2014

From Price Tags — Agony in Langley: Problems of Car-Dependent Communities

All the problems of suburban transportation in one handy story from the Langley Advance. A bad fit for car-dependent communities. Read more: Agony in Langley: Problems of car-dependent communities | Price Tags

Nanaimo's South Downtown Waterfront Initiative

From: frankmurphy@thesidewalkballet.com
Subject: S Downtown Waterfront Initiative Survey
Date: 9 October, 2013 1:20:50 PM PDT
To: sdwaterfront@cityspaces.ca

Comment submitted earlier to your online survey —

Some preliminary thoughts — Early effort to build a public identity for the initiative — the new website, the boots on the ground fair that invited people to discuss the site while touring it, encouraging citizens to attend the (brutally early) committee meetings — is positive and welcome. I'd like to see this phase followed by one where the committee itself and its consultant move to a proactive role in educating people that to be truly successful in realizing the potential of this extraordinary site, there will need to be some discomfort inducing change in the way we have imagined and designed our city. More on this later but for now: I'm referring to dynamics such as Nanaimo's low population density and accompanying car dependency. A number of external factors impact the potential of the site and it's important (though generally in Nanaimo considered impolite) to air them in the earliest days of this process. For instance I'll draw attention to First Capital's Port Place blank wall and expanse of surface parking which has done probably irreparable harm to the Front Street streetscape and made a key piece of the site's interconnectedness puzzle a huge challenge. Also more later on connectivity. 

I'm still trying to get my mind around some of the complexities here. The combination of primary property ownership and rights of access in covenants and existing leaseholders are confusing me. Fascinating and full of potential but confusing. (See map).

While the City-mandated study area is quite rightly the entire waterfront area between the Snuneymuxw lands and the Gabriola Ferry (some say a at-least-broad-brush-stroke study should have been done as part of the 2008 Downtown Urban Design Plan and Guidelines), it's the City, Port and Provincial Crown lands north of the trestle bridge that hold short and medium term potential for redevelopment. Do I have that about right? And the redevelopment of this portion will require a shared vision with the Island Corridor Foundation and the Port Authority and will impact the existing leaseholders. Seaspan's right of access through the site holds the key to moving to the next step if I'm not mistaken. And in case this was all starting to look pretty simple, there is a memorandum of agreement between the City and the Regional District to locate a "transit hub" here. What exactly is meant by a "transit hub" in a sprawling City with a commercial highway running through its downtown scares the bejesus out of me. I see examples elsewhere of transit interconnections by design creating prosperous successful human scale urban "place". Time for an indication that we have some idea of how to do that here.

My initial focus will be the Esplanade and north waterfront connections. Key I think is identifying the characteristics and purpose of "precinct" here. Central is public space. Waterfront access is a primary opportunity of course but there's the chance to do something so much better than just a sea wall. Connected public squares and plazas connecting both at and to the waterfront and through the site. Connected and integrated. This is in general not something Nanaimo has done well. In terms of primary use, Nanaimo has long needed a downtown satellite campus of Vancouver Island University. As Gordon Price has pointed out one of the our biggest urban planning mistakes has been the remote isolated locations of university campuses.

http://www.thesidewalkballet.com/2013/02/from-price-tags-biggest-public-sector.html

A public sector education and training cluster here (ideally including the SFN) integrated with a convenient modern transit system (passenger ferry, light rail, inter city bus all included) holds much promise seems to me.

Meanwhile I'm re-reading Ken Greenberg's Walking Home about his experiences over his career working on many sites not unlike this one and close with this thought —

Who will break it to Nanaimoites that for any potential to be realized here there will be virtually no surface parking?

Frank Murphy
Selby St Nanaimo
www.thesidewalkballet.com

From Price Tags — The (2nd) Biggest Public-sector Mistake in B.C. Urbanism

Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo

When asked for an opinion, in The Province article below, as to what Kelowna should do, Gordon Price suggested “focus on increasing transit and public infrastructure investment downtown.”

And from his post on pricetags.wordpress.com:

In fact, there is no shortage of municipal institutional development in downtown Kelowna: art gallery, civic theatre, library, stadium, law courts, City Hall. But one big thing is missing: a university. In fact, next to overbuilding motordom, that’s the single biggest error this Province has made in urban planning. Ever since SFU, we’ve insisted on putting our new universities on tops of mountains:

Read more: The biggest public-sector mistake in B.C. urbanism | Price Tags

From Price Tags — Shared Spaces in New Zealand

Shared space is “a design feature that aims to encourage pedestrians, cyclists and drivers to share the same deregulated space.” The concept can be traced back to the work of Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman.

More at PriceTags:  Shared Spaces in New Zealand « Price Tags

From Price Tags — A Multimodal Marvel in Portland

If you want to get a sense of how extraordinary the City of Portland has become … well, you can go to Pioneer Courthouse Square, one of the great urban spaces in North America. At certain times, there will be a light-rail train on three sides, and on the fourth, a few blocks away, the Portland Streetcar. But if you want to see what Portland is becoming – and to watch the interactions where five modes of transport come together – Read more at PriceTags: A Multimodal Marvel in Portland « Price Tags

From Price Tags — The Massey Tunnel Announcement: Motordom Unconstrained

"Increasingly it’s clear that Motordom has no real constraints; it’s always planning for the next big project, always claiming that expansion is necessary to solve the congestion problems that it creates and then decries..."

More disturbing, though, is the disconnect between the money we’re prepared to spend on more roads and the refusal to fund more transit – particularly South of the Fraser where it is most needed to help shape growth.

The gap is too wide (and now getting wider) between what we need, what we know will work (e.g. the Canada Line) and what our plans call for, compared to the car-dependent transportation system (more and wider roads) that has a very poor record of solving congestion problems.

Read more: The Massey Tunnel announcement: Motordom unconstrained « Price Tags

From PriceTags— Bob Rennie on New Patterns in Home Ownership

The baby boomer is so automobile dependent because they needed it to socialize. Today youth does not need a car to get a date. Everything is done on their iPhones. It’s just a completely different culture. We’re really trying to tie that into our product design. Is youth going to be as competitive with the jewelry of home ownership as their parents were? I don’t think they are. …

When we sold out Marine Gateway in March, 414 units sold in a day. It was on the Canada Line. Twenty per cent of the product didn’t have parking. I actually phone the city manager and I said, “Screw the planning department, and screw the community groups. The consumer has spoken. They want to live on transit, and they’ll buy without parking.” I think that our elected officials need to hear what’s really going on.

- Bob Rennie

Quote: Bob Rennie on new patterns in home ownership « Price Tags

Email to Mayor, Council, City GMs re: Vancouver Urban Forum

Date: June 16, 2012 11:59:00 AM PDT

To: mayor.council@nanaimo.ca

Cc: GeneralManagers@nanaimo.ca

Subject: Vancouver Urban Forum

Mayor Ruttan, Nanaimo City Councillors and General Managers,

Last week I attended former Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan's Vancouver Urban Forum. It was as former Vancouver City Councillor Gordon Price said, a feast of ideas. Here's 3 that stood out for me.

1 Municipal government reform. The level of government not only closest to us but the one with the most immediate impact on our daily lives, municipal government should be more inclusive and representative. The forum was subtitled the "Fourth Wave of Urban Reform", the first 3 dating back to Confederation followed by reforms, one in response to the other, in the 1910s and 1960s. 

UBC's Prof. Max Cameron, head of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, made a point which gave me pause: the concept that dates back to Aristotle of the separation of the judicial and legislative powers of a governing body. He points out that elected municipal officials are asked to participate in the Public Hearing Process as both the people who wrote the law and those who adjudicate disputes or applications for variance. A fundamental time proven principle, the separation of these responsibilities at the municipal level might offer a good place in moving toward reform. Sullivan asks the question: "Can we design our democracy better by implementing the separation of powers?"

2 The (mostly) single occupant car vs public transit. Cities around the world are realizing, even from a constitutional equal rights of all citizens perspective, the correct hierarchy of mobility in the city is 1. the pedestrian, 2. the cyclist (and other folks on all manner of self-powered wheels), 3. transit and 4. cars and trucks. I think it's fair to say we're continuing to plan and develop Nanaimo in about exactly the reverse order. I found very interesting, in TransLink's presentation, the insight that one of their proactive contributions to successful transit is the promotion of well designed, more densely populated, walkable neighbourhoods, where both work and amenities are located close to home.

3 Economic development. Harvard economist Edward Glaeser (keynote presenter and author of The Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier) examines the American Sunbelt cities, where the greatest, sprawling growth of the last 50 years and the worst of the devastating damage of the 2008 economic crisis occurred. (As have many others, notably Richard Florida in his The Great Reset: How New Ways of Living and Working Drive Post-Crash Prosperity) These  economies, booming prior to the real estate crash, were based on 2 elements: appealing climate and the self-generating construction and marketing of residential housing at very low levels of population density. Insufficient attention to  more sustainable economic development along with the prohibitive costs of infrastructure made these economies vulnerable to an inevitable shock: if it wasn't the economic crisis it would have been the rising costs of fossil fuels or any of a number of other factors. In the end they were little more than a Ponzi scheme. Surely a warning a city like Nanaimo should heed.

A fascinating forum and as I'm sure you agree, from where you're looking at it, it's an exciting transitional time for cities large and small.

Frank Murphy

www.thesidewalkballet.com

The Vancouver Urban Forum, Wed. June 6

The Vancouver Urban Forum will take place on Wednesday, June 6 from 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre. About 300 delegates are expected including some from cities across Canada as well as from Albania, Australia, Bangladesh, Colombia, etc. Attendees will experience a daylong program of short presentations that will inform, provoke and entertain and will be connected to the theme "achieving urban densification" and a coming "fourth wave of urban reform."

Prof. James Lightbody of the University of Alberta will set the stage by describing the first three waves of urban reform in Canada and why we might be on the verge of a fourth wave.

California city planner Dan Zack will give an abridged version of his "Delightful Density" presentation that is wowing residents groups in that state.

Brent Toderian, Vancouver Director of Planning from 2006 to 2012, will present on "Density Done Well."

Prof. Edward Glaeser of Harvard will recommend what Vancouver needs to do to achieve affordable housing and how density relates to economic prosperity.

Global Civic Policy Society ― Vancouver Urban Forum, June 6

Former Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan's think-tank Global Civic Policy Society is presenting the upcoming Vancouver Urban Forum. Participants include Harvard Economics' Edward Glaeser author of The Triumph of the City and the Maytree Foundation's Alan Broadbent author of Urban Nation. Global Civic offered 30 seats sponsored by The Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia. I applied for one and was accepted. The two speakers mentioned above are of particular interest and there will be much else to discover and explore I'm sure. I have just received the full itinerary and will post detail as the date of the forum approaches.


Global Civic Policy Society | Vancouver Urban Forum

From Spacing Vancouver—Price Points: An Easter House

Less than half a kilometre from Burrard and Robson, one of the city's busiest intersections. At 1063-69 Barclay Street, a half-block from the YMCA, it's tucked into the eclectic landscape of the West End, maintaining the architectural diversity of a neighbourhood which still contains every residential style this city has seen since 1890. But despite its look, it's one of the newest. 

This house is actually four strata-title units, built in 2003, as you can see from the map here.

There's no such thing as a Missing Middle in the West End. We have it all.

Price Points: An Easter House « Spacing Vancouver

The Sandpit — Reposted from Price Tags

NYC as it might be seen by a seven-year-old Robert Moses.

From Gordon Price's Price Tags blog —The Most Important Thing That Never Happened in Vancouver

Project 200 along the Burrard Inlet waterfront would have required the demolition of everything from Granville Street, including most of the heritage buildings in the Sinclair Centre, to Cambie Street, including most of Gastown to Woodwards. You can see the remaining W sign at the far left centre. Granville Square was the only part of the project actually constructed – which is the reason there’s a yawning entrance to a parkade at the foot of what was once our most prestigious street.

The main feature though is the waterfront freeway, connecting the Chinatown Freeway with the proposed Third Crossing, off to the right. It would have been part of a loop surrounding the entire central business district. More here.