Bing Thom re-imagines downtown Vancouver

MT @rdtvan: Bing re-imagines #downtownVancouver http://t.co/W4h9TXU8Vx #rdtvan http://t.co/ioZirDl557 pic.twitter.com/dipdZwWywm

— Bing Thom Architects (@BTArchitects) July 4, 2015

From The Guardian —The Liverpool street that might win the Turner prize

 Cairns St. Assemble helped to transform after ‘managed decline’. A Teebay/Liverpool Echo

At the end of Granby Street in Liverpool’s Toxteth, past relentless rows of tinned-up houses punctuated by half-demolished corner shops, the mood is unusually festive. Television crews have been here for the past few days, camping out amid the jungle of pavement plant pots and poking their cameras into tumble-down terraces. But for once they haven’t come to report on the sorry story of urban dereliction that has plagued these streets for the past 30 years. It’s not the usual social affairs correspondents, but packs of bewildered cultural critics – because this is the street that’s been shortlisted for the Turner prize.The street that might win the Turner prize: how Assemble are transforming Toxteth | Art and design | The Guardian

Toxteth then and now: photographs of a bygone Liverpool http://t.co/SAcpix9PYF pic.twitter.com/YzUPEpweKS

— Guardian Cities (@guardiancities) May 19, 2015

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From The Atlantic — Nice Downtowns: How Did They Get That Way? "It wasn't easy"

JAMES FALLOWS I had anticipated some of the rewards and discoveries of visiting cities in the process of economic and cultural recovery and re-invention. An unexpected reward has been the chance to get a time-capsule view, a kind of real-life time-line diorama, of how the downtown areas of cities look through all the stages of a decline-and-rise cycle. The declining phase includes hollowing-out and pawn-shop-dominated decay. Then there is spotty and tentative improvement. Finally, if all goes well, full-scale health through a combination of stores, restaurants, theaters, downtown condos, and all the other elements of a region that attracts commercial and human activity through most hours of the night and day. Read more: Nice Downtowns: How Did They Get That Way? — The Atlantic

Cities are designed to accommodate cars How do we redesign them to benefit people?

Better urban design could add years to your life#CBCCities Tweets

From Brain Pickings — A Love Letter to Jane Jacobs, Tucked Inside a Graphic Biography of Robert Moses

...make no mistake — Moses was no holy hero. The deep flaws of his power-hungry character and the dehumanizing ruthlessness of his industrial vision reveal themselves gradually and crescendo midway through the book as his counterpoint emerges: Jane Jacobs, legendary patron saint of urbanism and the human-centered city, enters the scene, via the beloved bicycle on which she was known to roam the city. 

Read more: How New York Became New York: A Love Letter to Jane Jacobs, Tucked Inside a Graphic Biography of Robert Moses | Brain Pickings

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Growing An Urban Neighborhood, One Store At A Time @NPR @VibrantStreets

Growing An Urban Neighborhood, One Store At A Time @NPR @VibrantStreets http://t.co/M0TMkcVRxT
— TheSidewalkBallet (@1sidewalkballet) May 19, 2014

Knight Foundation, Centre for the Living City Sponsor English Translation of Jaime Lerner's Urban Acupuncture

Stephen Goldsmith is director of the Center for the Living City and an associate professor at the University of Utah. Through a partnership with Knight Foundation the center is publishing an English edition of “Urban Acupuncture,” a guide to help civic leaders tackle community challenges written by Jaime Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil. Photo credit: Chelsea Gauthier.

Walking from the Bus Rapid Transit stop toward Jaime Lerner’s office a few blocks away last October we were struck by the civility of Curitiba’s streets.

One of Lerner’s many legacies is his attention to streets, their multiple uses, their democracy, and as urban activist Jane Jacobs described them, “the ballet of the sidewalks.” Our observations, magnified by contrast with the auto-dependent North American cities where my students live, were about to become part of our conversation with Lerner. Today, Lerner is an internationally renowned architect, working with a team of young practitioners in an office he refers to as “a clinic.” He consults on projects in cities worldwide, and 15 of my university students from multiple disciplines had been invited for coffee with him to talk about urban ecology. As we rounded the corner to his building, elegant as it was modest, we were about to have a transformative conversation. Read more: Pinpointing areas of change in cities for big impact - Knight Foundation

From Bloomberg Businessweek —Cities Haunted by Too Many Parking Spaces

After decades of copying sprawling suburbs by accommodating the automobile, U.S. cities are starting to tear up their slabs of asphalt.

In Philadelphia, construction will begin by July on a 700-room hotel on a plot near City Hall where vehicles have parked since 1991. In Baltimore, an apartment tower may rise on a parking lot along the Inner Harbor.

Offering developers tax incentives and zoning changes, officials are seeking to remove parking facilities in favor of projects that will draw more revenue, while making their communities friendlier to pedestrians as people eschew cars. Read more: Parking Lots Demolished in Cities’ Revenue Bid as Driving Wanes - Businessweek

From Urban Land Magazine — Keeping an Urban Authenticity Alive: Vancouver's Granville Island

In the early 1970s, Ron Basford, a Canadian Cabinet minister and loyal Vancouverite, seized on the idea of converting Granville Island—a modestly sized pancake barely a half mile (0.8 km) south of the emerging downtown—into a special place. Until the mid—20th century, the island had prospered as an industrial hotbed, jammed with shipyards, metal fabricators, wire rope manufacturers, and warehouses. But with the shift in the post–World War II economy away from industrial production, tenants departed, leaving the island derelict and the remaining structures vulnerable to arson. Read more: Keeping an Urban Authenticity Alive: Vancouver's Granville Island - Urban Land Magazine

Financing Urban Growth: The Use of Development Cost Charges and Community Amenity Contributions @CS_SFU http://t.co/5sQhyHhePf

— TheSidewalkBallet (@1sidewalkballet) January 17, 2014

Post by The Sidewalk Ballet.

Post by Vancouver Art Gallery.

From Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company — The Sprawl Repair Initiative

The Sprawl Repair initiative grew out of the lessons learned in the revitalization of existing dysfunctional or incomplete built environments, in suburban or urban locations. DPZ sees any tract of developed land, however distressed or ill-planned, as a repository of embodied energy that, rather than being discarded, should be reclaimed, re-urbanized, and transformed into a more livable, economically functional, and ecologically sound habitat. The Sprawl Repair method provides the framework and step-by-step process to do so. To read more and download the Sprawl Repair Roadmap and Sprawl Repair Toolkits Overview: Technique: Sprawl Repair

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 EstudioD3 — 500 sq ft East Village NYC

Nanaimo South Downtown Waterfront Initiative

The South Downtown Waterfront Initiative is a long term planning project in Nanaimo, led by the South Downtown Waterfront Committee. This process involves developing visions and opportunities for this complex and challenging property that extend 20 to 30 years into the future. 

Read more: Nanaimo South Downtown Waterfront Initiative: HOME

See also: Wellcox Railyards 

Project maps out #Nanaimo waterfront development path @cityspaces http://t.co/cNp2Tgiutn
— TheSidewalkBallet (@1sidewalkballet) August 13, 2013

From The Atlantic Cities — How Cleveland Lured Young Professionals Downtown

When the Maron family decided to redevelop an entire city block in downtown Cleveland, the area was so blighted no restaurateur would lease space there. A decade later, the East Fourth neighborhood is home to Food Network personalities, a House of Blues, and free Saturday yoga classes. Café-style seating spills into the pedestrian-only street. Apartments on the block are fully leased, and a 100-unit building under construction across the street has already reached full capacity. Read more: If You Build It, They Will Come: How Cleveland Lured Young Professionals Downtown - Sophie Quinton - The Atlantic Cities

Economist Todd Hirsch in The Globe — Fostering Public Spaces – Without Breaking the Bank

Ottawa’s Byward Market

It has been said that the reason people visit Paris isn’t because it’s easy to park downtown. They go because of the culture, the food, the history and the public spaces. Strip all that away and Paris goes from la belle ville to dullsville.

Perhaps Canada’s cities can’t compete with the history and architecture of Paris, London or New York, but they can compete with better attention to public space.

From polis — Poverty Below the High Line

Of all the factors that contribute to urban livability — including public health, education and infrastructure — policy is often focused disproportionately on economic growth. In pursuit of this assumed prerequisite for prosperity, municipal governments around the world are investing in urban design. At the same time, this investment is fueling inequality and displacement. The allocation of public funds to places of high economic potential favors the rich, creating an unfair playing field for all tax-payers. One of the most striking examples of this trend is the High Line in New York City. Read more: polis: Poverty Below the High Line