“Vancouver benefits from an amazing natural backdrop, with the North Shore mountains, forests, and connection to water around the city. However, through its past colonial actions, the City of Vancouver has removed almost all of the pre-existing natural environment, along with the narratives of these lands’ Indigenous stewards, and we now rely on human-built systems to sustain ourselves.

The VPSN submitted a letter in support of this work, and noted that urgent action to address climate change and its impacts are necessary to ensure the well-being of common future.

Given the Network’s focus on placemaking, advocacy and research related to the city’s public realm, our chief consideration in supporting the various actions relates to areas that have the potential to improve Vancouver’s public spaces. That being said, we are broadly supportive of ALL the directions outlined in the staff report. Climate change represents an existential crisis for our city, the country, and the globe as a whole. Unless we work hard to solve the various issues it poses, public space will be the least of our concerns.

With that in mind, we noted specific support for key transportation related recommendations, including a city-wide parking permit system and congestion charging. The following is an excerpt from our letter:

We would like to particularly applaud the bold proposals for achieving zero emission vehicle targets including a citywide parking permit system, support for EV adoption and increasing opportunities for non-motorized and public transportation options. Our hope is that as road space is reallocated away from free private vehicle storage there will be opportunities to retrofit add or implement desperately needed public space amenities and infrastructure for people rather than cars, including seating for resting and contemplating, lighting for safety and other more unique additions to our streetscapes – boulevard gardens, tiny free libraries, bird and insect-friendly planting, storm water management (and many others). Permit-only parking has been implemented in the West End neighbourhood with good results – extending this scheme to the remainder of the city seems to be a logical next step.

We observe that while sometimes difficult politically, a well-managed and implemented a city-wide transportation demand management system (congestion charge) is extremely effective at shifting mode share away from high-carbon private vehicles and into lower carbon modes. London, England which introduced a similar system in 2003 has reduced congestion and provided better transport services, cleaner air and safer roads as well as providing the city with significant additional revenue to in turn help support increasing non-private vehicle mode share and improving streets for pedestrians and bikes among other actions. We encourage the City to work with Translink, regional municipalities and other regional partners to ensure that there are safe and affordable alternatives to private vehicle trips particularly for essential workers and those that cannot avoid using private vehicles for work and pleasure access to the Vancouver core.

In January 2019, City Council unanimously supported the declaration of a climate emergency, and subsequently supported a program of Six Big Moves in April 2019. These were important directions in their own right, but now it’s time to take the next step and invest in meaningful action to advance the necessary next steps. The proposed actions that will be debated this week can play an important role in that regard.

Currently, there are approximately 40km of streets that have been designated as part of the program. The initial intent is that the streets be used primarily for walking, biking and other recreational purposes — with automobiles using the streets on a “local access only” basis. The first wave of interventions are primarily in the form of barriers and signage.

One of our hopes is that the program will start to focus on local placemaking opportunities, treating these streets as places and not just pathways. This would open up opportunities for greater community participation and stewardship, additional types of interventions and COVID-responsive activities.

We encourage everyone to take a few moments to fill the survey out.

:: More information on the Slow Streets Program | https://shapeyourcity.ca/slow-streets
:: Take the Survey! | https://shapeyourcity.ca/slow-streets/survey_tools/survey

Given these propositions, the VPSN suggests that the City of Vancouver remove or repurpose existing non-compliant billboards and facilitate a comprehensive plan for both digital and ordinary billboards. The VPSN is asking for:

1. Enforcement of existing Sign Bylaw to remove non-compliant billboards

2. Broad, inclusive public consultation/review of proposed revisions to the Sign Bylaw

3. Consideration on the place of digital signage and other emerging technologies in the city.

More than 50% of billboards in Vancouver are non-compliant; they are located too close to residential areas, adjacent to bridges or public transit or are too big or too bright too often.

If a neighbour was playing obnoxiously loud music, would you be offended? The likely answer is yes. You may ask them to turn it down, or perhaps phone the City to stop the racket. This is noise pollution and collectively we have agreed that certain rules should be followed in order to make everyone a little happier.

What about visual pollution? Would you complain if your view of the mountains was blocked by an advertisement for yogurt or a new juice? The answer is likely yes. Unknown to many people is the fact that the City of Vancouver has a sign bylaw limiting the size, brightness and location of billboards.

Also unknown to many people more than half of all billboards in Vancouver are non-compliant; they are located too close to residential areas, adjacent to bridges or public transit or are too big or too bright, too often. It’s just as if we are surrounded by neighbours playing loud music and the enforcement officers are not answering the phone.

In 2003 the City of Vancouver approved a tough new sign by-law that would limit the number and location of billboards in public space. Included in this bylaw was a five year time limit for removing non-compliant billboards. In 2008 this limit expired and rather than issuing violations the City decided to suspend and review the sign bylaw following the 2010 Olympics.

This review should be complete sometime this year. However, in the interim new outdoor advertising technology has entered the market including programmable digital billboards. How should these technologies be allowed in public space? How could citizens and the city derive public benefits? Who should own these spaces?

Like loud music at concerts, there is perhaps a time and place for billboards and digital signage in the city. However, that time and place needs to be decided on by the citizens of Vancouver, not by private or corporate interests. Civic authorities need to enforce existing rules and consider how to integrate outdoor signage into a vibrant and beautiful city.

The Big Ideas are 12 Priority Areas we see as an early release of the VPSN Manifesto on public space policy. We’ve made online access to the Routemap 2012-2014 and the original Manifesto 2008-2011.To learn more about this initiative and to get involved, please write us an email.

Public transit and land use planning plays a critical role in enriching and enlivening our public spaces and this session will aim to explore some the many ways that this takes place around the city.

We’ll be joined by Joanna Clark, Citywide Transportation Planner and member of the Transportation 2040 team at the City of Vancouver. Joanna will provide a short presentation on what the Plan entails and progress made on accomplishing goals since its launch in 2012. The presentation will be followed by an open discussion which we’ll be using to review previous VPSN initiatives around streets and transportation, and talk about potential placemaking, research, and advocacy projects that we can focus on over the next little while.

The event takes place:

Monday, January 21
7:00-8:30pm
Meeting Room, VPL Mount Pleasant Branch
1 Kingsway

Registration: The event is FREE. To help us with our planning, please let us know if you’re joining us. Email info@vancouverpublicspace.ca to reserve a space.

Image: The Georgia Gateway – one of the areas of the City’s policy focus over the past couple of years.

The event takes place:

Monday, November 19
7:00-8:30pm
Location: Strathcona Community Centre, 601 Keefer Street

We’ll be joined by Eric Fredericksen, head of Public Art in Vancouver. Eric will provide a short presentation, which will be followed by an open discussion. In addition to looking at the City’s efforts with public art, we’d like to use this opportunity to review previous VPSN initiatives around public art and street art, and talk about potential placemaking, research, and advocacy projects that we can focus on over the next little while.

The event is FREE. To help us with our planning, please let us know if you’re joining us. Email info@vancouverpublicspace to reserve a space.

About the Speaker

Eric Fredericksen is Head of Public Art at the City of Vancouver, BC. He was formerly the Waterfront Public Art Program Manager for the City of Seattle, and the director of Western Bridge, an art exhibition space and collection in Seattle. As an independent curator he has organized exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Or Gallery, and Artspeak, all in Vancouver; the Noorderzon Festival, Groningen, The Netherlands; the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and Open Satellite, Bellevue, Wash.

Headline photo: Dustin Quasar, Creative Commons

After many years and many changing faces around the table, the City of Vancouver, earlier this month, finally published a draft area plan for the development of Northeast False Creek. The document, (which was open to comment until June 30) is the physical manifestation of not only this most recent phase of public consultation, but nearly three decades of consideration, beginning in 1990.

Spanning 152 pages, the document takes into consideration a variety of topics, such as public space, urban design, sustainability and climate change resilience, as well as the ideas of the 8,300 citizens who participated in the 2016/2017 consultation process. All of this was first and foremost informed by Council’s 11 Guiding Principles, approved in 2015.

Evolving out of the many public open houses, workshops, and online surveys were several core community values, which I also saw reflected in conversations initiated by the NEFC Park Design Advisory Group: creativity in design, affordability, accessibility and inclusion, vibrancy, connectivity, and honouring history.

How the City fared in representing these values is ultimately up to you, (don’t keep your opinions to yourself – weigh in), and my barometer is up and down on many of these points. In part, this is due to the interesting role NEFC has to play in continuing to shape the identity of our city. Located at the nexus of the Downtown Business District, the Downtown Eastside, Chinatown, and Hogan’s Alley, the neighbourhood has the potential to exemplify and celebrate the diversity for which Vancouver is known. However, it is also in a place of immediate tension, located between areas of extreme wealth and those of poverty, between those of immense privilege and the traditionally marginalized.

From a parks and greenspaces perspective, the plan holds up well against citizens’ aforementioned values. James Corner Field Operations, the landscape architects behind the design of the 13.75 acre waterfront park have done an excellent job of drafting an ecologically complex space that is both public and private, programmable while also remaining flexible. In conversation with residents, he noted the casual relationship that Vancouverites have with public space, and his intention of allowing us the freedom to decide how we want to use our new park is clear. Large green lawns, suitable to events of all sizes (if the City can relax its archaic permitting regulations), lay surrounded by forested alcoves, a stormwater-cleansing wetland, and covered hardscapes. The space is porous, accessible from all edges, with the intention to being open to a diversity of mobilities. In recent conversation with the Urban Aboriginal Advisory committee, productive discussions were had over how to ensure the park represents not only the reality of its placement on unceded Coast Salish Territory, but the city’s diversity of First Nation citizens.

And yet, while I am buoyed by this addition of greenspace to an area very much lacking (i.e., Chinatown and the DTES), I am disheartened by the privatization of the water in the form of absurd floating restaurants. By the incessant demand of developers for cars directly at the water’s edge. By the unwillingness of the City to make provisions to support local business or businesses that will benefit surrounding low income communities. By the fact that at their heart, areas 6b, 7a and 6c are not being designed for those who will call the affordable housing apartments their home; they are being designed for a wealthy, elite class first, and everyone else second.

There’s a lot going on in parks news this spring. At Hillcrest Park, the new Challenger sports field is making it easier for children with physical or cognitive disabilities to play baseball. Meanwhile, the Vancouver Park Board has approved a new joint operating agreement designed to add programs and improve facility access at 20 community centres across the city. Plus, and not least, the VanDusen Botanical Garden has received a 150 Garden Experience designation as part of Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations.

Batter up at Hillcrest Park Challenger baseball field

The Challenger baseball field – the first of its kind in Western Canada – has the same elements of a typical little league diamond, but with several key design features to help kids with disabilities participate in the game.

The artificial turf is wheelchair-accessible, and the bases and pitching mounds are graphically imposed on the surface to remove any raised obstacles for mobility devices. Dugouts are also larger, and the base paths and pitching-mound distances are slightly shorter.

A second set of bases means that the field can also be used for regular little league play.

The $450,000 project was funded by Variety Children’s Charity, Jays Care Foundation, the Vancouver Canadians Baseball Foundation, the parks board and the City of Vancouver. The facility is one of 10 sports fields that are currently being upgraded as part of the City’s Emerging Priorities Fund.

Community centres: Unified under new agreement

According to a staff report, the new joint operating agreement (JOA) will pave the way for benefits like having the OneCard and Flexipass instituted at all community centres. The JOA will also make low-income discounts available across the city and eliminate membership fees at individual facilities.

For a number of years, community centres across the city have operated under various agreements, some dating back as far as the 1970s. The park board has tried several times over the years to bring all of the community centre associations under one arrangement but has been unsuccessful until now.

The associations have until September 30, 2017 to sign the new agreement, which will take effect on January 1, 2018.

The VanDusen Botanical Garden has received an award as part of Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations. Photo: City of Vancouver

VanDusen recognized for Canada’s 150th

The 55-acre VanDusen, featuring 7,000 different plant species from around the world, is one of 150 jury-selected gardens highlighted across the country as part of the 150th celebrations. It features a hedge maze, some local wildlife and quiet green space surrounded by ponds and waterfalls.

The award was jointly presented to the park board by the Canadian Garden Council and the Canadian Nursery Landscape Association.

With spring well under way, now is a good time to visit the VanDusen.

For more information and a calendar of upcoming events, go to vandusengarden.org.

From the Grandview-Woodland community plan to the City’s purchase of the Arbutus Greenway, from the launch of Vancouver’s Mobi bike-share and the permanent redesignation of the 800 block of Robson as pedestrian-only to the introduction of taxes on housing vacancies and foreign purchases, the year 2016 was packed with an extraordinary number of major moves in planning.

In recognition of these, the Vancouver City Planning Commission (VCPC) held a year-in-review panel discussion on January 30, 2017 revolving around a selection of the most notable ones. Moderated by Stephen Quinn, host of CBC Radio’s On the Coast, the panel included Carla Guerrera, strategic advisor in urban planning and real-estate development; Mike Harcourt, former Mayor of Vancouver and Premier of B.C.; Jen St. Denis, urban affairs journalist, Vancouver Metro; and Andy Yan, director of the SFU City Program.

Robson Square redesign concept

The panel’s conversation covered a variety of topics from over-building in Chinatown to the rise in First Nations real-estate development and economic self-reliance. While clearly acknowledging the good-news events of 2016, the panel was united in laying major emphasis on the urgency of addressing Vancouver’s affordable housing crisis and the threat it poses not only to residents’ well-being but to the area’s overall economic sustainability. In that regard, the event sounded at times less like a retrospective and more like a rallying cry well timed with the arrival of the City’s new general manager of planning (who, coincidentally, also came on board in 2016).

Building a chronology: past to future

The VCPC hosted the Milestones event as part of its larger project of compiling a chronology of major planning decisions over the city’s history since the early 20th century. According to the VCPC, the reason for the project is that such decisions were under-documented in the past, leaving a need for better records for informing the future. The VCPC intends to continue building this chronology in the years ahead as further projects emerge over time.

Image (top): Proposed design concept, including plaza, for Safeway site at Broadway and Commercial, Grandview-Woodland Community Plan

We’ve been following closely the latest developments on the Arbutus Greenway, Vancouver’s 9-km rail-to-trail corridor. On February 2, I was excited to attend the stakeholders’ workshop that the City hosted with the intention of formulating a vision for the greenway’s permanent design. Participants included representatives of Vancouver-based organizations involved with green space, human mobility and health, cycling and public consultation, with students of architecture and landscape design also present.

The intention of the meeting was high-level: to formulate overall “vision” and “values” for the greenway’s design, leaving specific recommendations and troubleshooting to further stages. The City kicked off the workshop with a clear emphasis on the greenway’s purpose as a transportation corridor, reminding participants that this formal status was in fact a condition of the original purchase. The long-range intention is to introduce light rail, though as we’ve described earlier, there’s no timeline for that because the streetcar isn’t funded. The City’s reminder was important, though, in framing the conversation.

After the City’s presentation, we split up into two tables to exchange ideas, then came back together for a discussion as a whole group.

With any major city project, residents will hold out a variety of hopes, some of which may be more compatible than others. Around the room, participants clearly agreed that the new greenway should represent a commitment to ecology, with indigenous plants, habitat for species including pollinators, preservation of quiet green space and the opportunity for non-motorized movement. Equally universal was the feeling that the greenway should both represent and enable social inclusion and interaction, allowing people of all ages and mobilities to come together within the community and engage in healthy physical activity in an accessible public space. Participants likewise agreed on what I call the attractive duality between the quiet seclusion available on parts of the greenway and the relative busyness at neighbourhood hubs. People appreciated and expressed the wish to preserve the way in which the greenway traverses tranquil green areas while occasionally coming upon larger gathering hubs interspersed (such as 6th, 41st and 57th), offering variety and interest over its long course. Supported too was the idea of incorporating plenty of benches for resting, plus cultural elements from street art to preserved railway markers.

Unsurprisingly, certain values were somewhat at odds. There was a bit of tension between the vision of Arbutus essentially as a green space needing conservation versus its status as a transportation corridor including a streetcar. One view expressed was that a streetcar could eventually reduce the greenway’s appeal as a walking and bike route and its ecological qualities. Other participants advised that designing with the streetcar in mind should play a role from the start so that improvements made now wouldn’t have to be ripped up and redone later should funding for rail come through.

What you can do

The public consultation is happening now. You can participate by taking the survey and dropping in on one of the City’s open houses on February 9 (tonight) or 11. In March, the City will report out on the results of the consultation, including this workshop.

We’ll keep you posted.