Vibrant food cart life in Portland: Could food carts revitalize Vancouver's underused parks? / Photo by Christopher Cotrell

I read a great article this morning over at Project for Public Spaces blog that combines some of the best things about life in the city: parks and food carts.

The article, “The Power of Food Trucks to Calm a ‘Turf War,'” highlights an underutilized park in Evanston, Illinois. A chief reason people gave for avoiding the park was that it was dominated by residents of a nearby mental health facility, making it uncomfortable for other groups to use the space.

To encourage people to use the park, the Evanston Parks Coalition rolled out the oldest trick in the book: they lured them with food. They invited a variety of food carts to set up for a one-day food festival, supplied music and entertainment, and sat back as the park teemed with people who had previously avoided it. The resident mental health patients didn’t disappear; in fact, the food and festivities drew them to the park in far greater numbers than normal. But since the park had been transformed into a destination, no one group was dominating the crowd and everyone was able to feel comfortable in the space.

This story brought to mind a great space in Vancouver: the My Own Backyard Community Garden at Commercial and 11th. Before the garden was established, it was an empty lot frequented by drug dealers and other intimidating characters. Today, it is a vibrant oasis of greenery where families tend their garden plots before playing on the new playground across the street. But, interestingly, the “unsavoury” residents who once frequented the space haven’t been pushed out. You will still find the same characters sitting on the concrete dividers, looking out at a beautiful garden rather than a trash-strewn lot. A few years ago, I helped build the garden’s cob shed, working alongside young families, university students, and residents of a nearby substance-abuse rehabilitation centre. We were drawn together in a project to grow food – imagine how many more people we would have brought together if we had food there to enjoy in the moment!

What do you think of this? Should we start stationing food carts at our problematic parks? I suggest we station a food cart at the Commercial Drive entrance to Clark Park. Where would you place a food cart?

It goes without saying that the convenience of street food makes it popular with lunchtime crowds, peckish tourists, and, well, hungry guys like me. The opportunity to try new foods that aren’t available in restaurants is also an added bonus. However, realistically speaking, it is inevitable that more street food will lead to more street garbage: I’m talking more containers, more plastic forks, more napkins, more chopsticks, more plastic bags, etc.

Now, if there’s one thing I’ve noticed about Vancouver from my 30 years in this city, it’s that it seems to always have a tendency to be ill-prepared for certain basic city functions. I don’t know what it is really, but for some odd reason Vancouver streets are never ready for heavy snowfall in the winter. When they do happen on occasion, the city is not equipped for Stanley Cup riots. Earthquakes still seem like a new phenomenon. And of course after all these years, it never ceases to amaze me how overwhelmed the city is by the influx of garbage in the downtown streets.

photo: Andy Clark/Reuters

We all know what overflowing trash cans are like. We’ve all tried to throw away that last little something in a waste receptacle that was no longer receptive to waste, trying to balance our garbage between two Starbucks cups and a crumpled-up Blenz napkin, while taking advantage of the friction provided by a banana peel. Look no further than the annual summer fireworks celebration to see this happening at every garbage can along Davie, Denman, and Robson. It’s ugly. It’s gross. And it’s kind of embarrassing that this continues to happen on a yearly basis.

We all know what overflowing trash cans smell like. During the Vancouver civic strike in 2007 where garbage collection was halted for three months, anarchy ruled. Garbage ended up everywhere as every dumpster and waste bin had reached capacity early on during those hot summer months. It wasn’t empty coffee cups stacked on top of an already full waste bins anymore, but full bags of domestic garbage and other nonsense just scattered in the alleyways of the Downtown Eastside. It was ugly. It was gross. It was kind of smelly and I don’t think anybody wants to go through that experience again.

So I hope hope hope that the city is prepared to empty those waste bins on the street before they get too full with Korean taco wrappers and empty tortilla soup bowls. During the Olympics, it was nice to see the city adding more waste receptacles downtown so let’s hope they install some fresh bags and get those going again. But jam-packed garbage bins are not entirely the city’s fault. It’s people who are creating the garbage in the first place. So most importantly, I encourage all of you to think about why you have garbage in your hand and are throwing it out. Was the extra napkin or soy sauce packet necessary? Did your food need to go in a plastic bag if you were going to take it out and eat it 10 seconds later? Have you considered using a travel mug for your coffee? Let’s all be a little more conscious of what we’re throwing away so that we can make the city’s job of collecting it a lot easier.