Over the past months, the VPSN has been advocating enthusiastically for the design of one of Vancouver’s most exciting new public amenities. Tracing the former CP rail corridor, the Arbutus Greenway stretches 9 kilometres from Marpole almost to Granville Island. Stitching neighbourhoods together over its peaceful yet varied course, it’s designed to accommodate pedestrians, cyclists and eventually a streetcar (it’s great for inline skating too!).

The temporary path is now fully paved, with lane markings to clarify separations for pedestrians and bikers. Benches have also been installed, and there’s a Mobi bikeshare station where the greenway intersects Broadway.

So what’s ahead?

Now that the temporary path is done, the City says it’ll be looking at various permanent design options over this summer, subject to public review: a process that we’ll be following closely. The City projects starting permanent construction in late 2019. Having participated as a stakeholder group in the early consultation, we’re encouraged that the overall vision for the greenway articulated by the City in its public statements and its RFP is consistent with the hopes that we and other nonprofits and individuals have expressed. The City has made it clear in its communications that it wants the greenway to function as an accessible, biodiverse connector of linked places with public art along the way, as well as a destination in its own right.

Where it comes to public art, in fact, you can see a delightful new installation of rainbow-coloured stones lining the greenway between Nanton and 33rd. Earlier in the year, the grade 2 students at York House came forth asking permission to create public art at the greenway. Rainbow Walks on the Greenway was installed in partnership with Vancouver Biennale local artist Toni Latour. If you turn the rocks over, you’ll see inspiring little messages written by the kids in their own handwriting, such as “Smile,” “Count the trees” and “Think about what this space could be.”

All that said, the VPSN continues to be concerned about the lack of safe clarity remaining at a number of the arterial intersections (e.g., 12th, King Edward, 41st, 49th). We urge the City to expedite the creation of more obvious crossings that establish priority for pedestrians and cyclists and deter parking over the greenway. (Update from June 30: A communication circulated by the City announces that next month there will be “finishing touches” made to the West 41st intersection, with “safety improvements at local intersections along the greenway” and “signage to either end of the temporary path to help visitors get to the Seawall/Granville Island and the Canada Line Bridge.”)

For further details on the temporary path, check out our earlier coverage and the City’s video.

Do you have feedback on the greenway? We’ll continue to advocate with the City, so feel free to get in touch with us. You can reach Naomi at naomi@vancouverpublicspace.ca.

If you’ve walked the Arbutus Greenway lately, you’ve probably noticed that the temporary pathway is all paved now. Every time I go on it, I’m encouraged to see it well used by pedestrians and cyclists alike.

Time for an update.

From January 18 to February 15, the City ran an extensive public consultation gathering feedback on what people wanted from the greenway in its final form. The results are now in, and a comprehensive summary and short video are posted online.

The City also issued an RFP for consultants bidding on engineering, landscaping and other work associated with the permanent path. The RFP, which incorporated the results of the public consultation, closed on April 4.

So what’s the upshot?

What Vancouverites want

In the January–February consultation, the City asked residents for input on what would most entice them to use the greenway. Stakeholders, members of the public and City advisory committees were all involved in this process of articulating values.

The City held online Talk Vancouver and paper questionnaires, three stakeholder meetings, three public open houses, three “Pop-Up City Hall” events, a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” and meetings with four of the City’s advisory committees: children, youth and families; persons with disabilities; urban Aboriginal; and active transportation. The City reports more than 4,000 interactions with participants through these activities, including almost 3,000 responses to questionnaires.

Having participated in the second of the three stakeholder meetings (“Transportation and urban design”), I’m encouraged that the values informing the VPSN’s own advocacy for the greenway going back many months are highly consistent with the main objectives articulated by the public in the recent consultation. As reported by the City, the public wants the greenway to:

• be “a high-quality, accessible public space for walking and cycling”;
• be “a safe, comfortable, and welcoming destination with places for gathering, socializing and relaxing” that would be “not just a corridor, but a destination or series of linked places,” with coffee shops, park space and “perhaps outdoor exhibits”;
• connect “to neighbourhoods, parks and other points of interest … as well as the broader transportation network”; and
• offer green spaces: places for finding tranquility, reconnecting with nature, growing food and nurturing ecosystems and biodiversity.

Residents expressed appreciation that the Arbutus Greenway gives access to green space and community gardens. Shown: gate to the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden from the greenway. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

Consensus was strong, evidently, on the points above. The overwhelming majority of participants expressed interest in using the greenway for walking, cycling and/or enjoying nature. Such being the case, it’s unsurprising that reactions toward a future streetcar were somewhat divergent. While some responded favourably, others questioned the necessity or expressed concern that having a streetcar could detract from non-motorized uses. This ambivalence toward streetcar use – and indeed to the corridor’s overall designation as a transportation corridor rather than a green trail – was consistent with the ambivalence on this point that the VPSN has observed in past meetings as well.

Construction right now

Though fully paved, the temporary path is still under construction. In a newsletter, the City has announced that the following improvements will be made in the coming months:

• pavement marked with separations for pedestrians and cyclists;
• “minor improvements to street crossings”;
• pollinator seeding; and
• benches

Since the first two of these points have serious safety implications, the VPSN urges that they be treated as pressing. With regard to separations, I’ve had feedback from pedestrians who feel threatened by the speed of bikes and have expressed apprehension that the final design could privilege cyclists over pedestrians by giving them more room. Clearly, the sooner the separations are indicated, the better.

As the VPSN has also argued, the confusion at street crossings is an accident waiting to happen, and I’m not sure what scope is intended under “minor improvements.” We reiterate our keen hope that the City will hasten to provide obvious priority for greenway users. Many times, drivers either disregard the greenway or simply seem unaware that it’s even there. At the intersection with 6th, for instance, I snapped this photo of cars parked across the greenway:

Photo: Naomi Reichstein

Toward a permanent design

Meanwhile, the City is moving ahead with developing a permanent design.

Throughout the RFP, there’s a strong emphasis on transportation as a fundamental component of the greenway’s identity. Beyond that, I’m pleased to see that the values expressed at the consultation – and in the VPSN’s own advocacy – figure explicitly in the RFP’s emphasis on accessible use and safety, community connectivity, amenities, focus on ecology, placemaking opportunities and integration of cultural and heritage elements. 

For example, I’m pleased that the RFP places explicit value on attending to neighbourhood variety: “Early discussions with stakeholders and the public have indicated a desire to reflect the distinct character of each neighbourhood along the greenway. With such a long and linear site, one of the design challenges will be the development of features and elements that can maintain a coherent experience within the physical confines of the entire greenway while allowing for uniqueness within distinct sections of the corridor” (p B-9).

I’m also happy to read that the “City’s expectation is that public art [will become] an integral component within public landscapes throughout the City, including the Arbutus Greenway” and that “the City’s Public Art Program will oversee the preparation of the ‘Arbutus Greenway Public Art Plan’ in conjunction with the Arbutus Greenway’s Project Manager” (p B-23).

Paved now, the Arbutus Greenway retains echoes of its railway past with its track-like quality, running behind the little park at 6th. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

Next up

According to the City, various design options will be developed over the summer, and the public will receive further communications in the fall. After seeking public review and evaluation of these options, the City will provide a detailed update on the one preferred.

Do you have any feedback on the greenway? The VPSN will continue to advocate with the City for its design, so please feel free to get in touch with me at naomi@vancouverpublicspace.ca.

Following publication of this article on the major upcoming changes to the framework for the Vancouver Heritage Register, VPSN communications coordinator Naomi Wittes Reichstein appeared for an interview on Roundhouse Radio 98.3 FM, on “Sense of Place” with host Minelle Mahtani. They talked about the effects of demolition on historical memory and the cultural erasure that can result when the built environment gets torn down.

Check it out!

Looking for something to do in Vancouver this weekend that’s entirely satisfying, but you don’t have lots of time? There’s good news in town if you’re a lover of murky wetlands, especially ones that never look the same no matter how many times you visit.

The Camosun Bog must be in the running as one of the greatest of Vancouver’s underestimated small-scale treasures. It’s an ever-changing tapestry of reds, golds and chartreuse, a nest of sphagnum moss within the darker Pacific Spirit fir forest, with a soundtrack of bird calls and occasional frog ribbits.

Colours in early spring, Camosun Bog. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

Until this point, whenever you wanted to have an exploratory stroll or do a walking meditation there – and I’ve done both – you’d encircle the bog by staying on its perimeter boardwalk, which is several feet above water level with wooden guardrails on both sides.

Now, a new little extension through the bog’s southeastern grove takes you to an unrailed deck right at the water’s surface, bringing you into more direct engagement with what’s growing or living there. The idea is to allow closer observation of “plants such as arctic starflower [and] sundew,” offering more accessibility so that you can “see, smell and touch the bog,” in the words of the Camosun Blog Restoration Group.

Deck expansion takes you right to the water’s surface. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

The extension gives you the feeling of moving into a more secluded, semi-wooded zone, as if you were in a Japanese garden. The kids will like it.

Just one heads-up: dogs aren’t allowed on the new extension, though there’s no problem walking them around the main boardwalk.

In our physical environment, what crystallizes historical memory? What represents the collective consciousness of a community or part of it? What sums up a period – or even just a moment – in our shared experience, past or present? And who are “we,” anyway?

If you’re like many Vancouverites, you may have heard of the City’s recent efforts to find ways of protecting its historic housing stock under the Character Home Zoning Review. (“Character houses” under the City’s definition are pre-1940 residential properties with authentic period features remaining.) What you may not realize is that the focus on character houses is just one piece of a much more comprehensive pie called the Heritage Action Plan. The plan is geared toward revising the existing Heritage Conservation Program, which hasn’t been comprehensively updated since its creation in 1986.

Amid all the bitter debate surrounding the preservation versus demolition of character houses, there’s a really important component of the heritage plan that has made way less noise among residents but that in fact has the potential to affect our city in ways that are equally significant. It’s a sweeping update to the approach for deciding what gets listed in the Vancouver Heritage Register.

In its current form, the register contains some 2,200 buildings and structures, streetscapes, landscape assets (such as parks and trees) and archaeological sites. Widening broadly the scope of what we consider as heritage, the new framework will open up the register to a much greater variety of assets. In doing so, it will also offer great potential for informing future planning.

On March 23, I attended a panel presentation hosted by Heritage Vancouver called “The future of heritage in Vancouver: What the new thematic framework means for our city,” one of the events in the Shaping Vancouver 2017 series. The focus of the presentation was to review and discuss the register’s new framework in a public forum.

What “heritage” is and why it matters

Finding definitions of heritage that we can agree upon is no easy task. Deciding which built assets should be enshrined in memory, taking account of voices beyond just those of people in power and developing incentives to support conservation while respecting owners’ equity: such issues have all been argued over, often acrimoniously, in a city where pressures of growth and skyrocketing real-estate values frequently point the way toward demolition, redevelopment and cultural erasure.

It’s not just about saving individual residential properties. From the destruction of Hogan’s Alley during the creation of the Georgia Viaduct to Chinatown’s threatened status today, we know that the implications extend way beyond the private into the public realm. The way we document what matters to us holds implications for streets, neighbourhood scale and character, property use and more.

Art deco: so rare in the Vancouver cityscape. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

These issues extend also to cultural space, which is often under private ownership yet with public function and value. Think of our theatres: the Pantages and the Ridge Theatre and bowling alley, victims of the wrecking ball; the Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts, its use effectively lost to church buyout; Kitsilano’s Hollywood, its status still indeterminate. 

Once lost, such assets can never be recovered.

A new way to understand heritage

As principal consultant for the Heritage Action Plan, Don Luxton delivered the panel’s keynote, a high-level summary of the most important points of the new framework. Also on the panel were Helen Cain, planner, City of Richmond; Joanne Proft, manager, community planning, UBC; Britney Quail, planning analyst, City of New Westminster; and Tanis Knowles Yarnell, planner, Heritage Action Plan implementation, City of Vancouver. Javier Campos moderated, as president of Heritage Vancouver.

The most significant way in which the new framework departs from traditional conceptions of heritage is that it gets away from narrowly architectural definitions and moves toward a more holistic view that takes into account a much greater variety of themes that could make assets worthy of conservation or remembrance.

In articulating such themes, the working group reports having compiled approximately 3,000 pages listing categories along many different dimensions for recognizing historical significance. Ethnocultural communities; social and reform movements; activities such as sports and arts; types of places, including overlooked ones like corner stores, gravesites and brothels; individual persons whose lives were historically significant but whose houses aren’t on the register: these and numerous other themes are included.

The Hollywood Theatre, Broadway, served temporarily as a church during its transition out of active cinema use. Photo: Adam Jones under Creative Commons 

Such a multifaceted approach could, the panel made clear, help us correct for taste. That is, we shouldn’t just keep what we happen to like in the fashion of the moment; we should keep what’s representative or distinct as a reflection of its own era

Speaking as heritage planner for the City, Tanis Knowles Yarnell commented that the new framework would make it easier to ascribe history and identify gaps. Currently, according to the panel, about half the register consists of Edwardian houses, with many old churches as well. The new framework will help draw attention to whole categories of assets that aren’t yet on it. Such an approach, according to Yarnell, will give an informational basis for a variety of City programs, from zoning and community plans to arts and culture grants, street naming and more.

Once the new framework is ready, the City will launch a process for engaging the public.

The Shirley Houses on E 27th, listed on the Canadian Register of Historic Places. Photo: kennethaw88 (own work), CC by 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Teeth for heritage

Without a doubt, the new approach is a highly welcome tool for widening and deepening the pool of assets listed. That said, Vancouver in comparison to other jurisdictions still has a very soft regulatory environment for heritage conservation. Inclusion in the register doesn’t necessarily guarantee that an asset gets retained. The broadened scope for defining heritage will offer opportunities for dialogue as neighbourhoods evolve, but as clearly explained by the City at the panel, it still won’t mean that everything is kept. It’s worth underscoring that just this week, an obituary and wake were dedicated to a 1914 heritage-listed Craftsman-style house on 12th Avenue in West Point Grey.

Not everything can be kept. As Yarnell pointed out, some things are already gone. Beyond keeping buildings, plaques can capture “intangibles” (to use Yarnell’s word) by telling stories. Cultural planning, events and urban design can go beyond the heritage silo to make use of the information in the register. Some on the panel even expressed a preference for getting away from the “heritage” moniker altogether and moving toward a cultural or placemaking conception of this work. Indeed, the revised framework will be helpful in identifying the context that can give character its placemaking power. For example, the City is reportedly looking for a way to revive the culture of the corner store with a house in the back. Thus the intention of the new register isn’t to halt change; it’s to offer tools that will enable discussion of what we care about and how we wish to see it represented.

And that, perhaps, is the cautionary take-home. No matter how comprehensive a list may be, it’s still only that: a list. Any list will just sit there if we don’t take it down off the shelf and act on it. All of us who care to conserve the city’s built environment will need to continue speaking up as heritage is debated, asset by asset, neighbourhood by neighbourhood.

Want to learn more?

On May 11, Heritage Vancouver hosts its second panel conversation in the series: “Undefined heritage: Diversity, inclusivity and understanding.” It’s free and open to the public, with registration.

Recently I crossed the border for an overnight stay in what is probably my favourite small town in the United States.

Bellingham, Washington. The friendliest human ambience. Proximity to nature. Wooded trails where everybody says hello when passing by. Strong civic pride among committed residents. Highly successful urban renewal placing value on heritage preservation and creative commercial reuse in the city’s two downtown cores of Bellingham and Fairhaven. (Love Port Townsend? Yep, you’d love it here too.) Excellent restaurants, especially if you want your choice of Mexican food. And the best bookstore north of Seattle, Village Books: venue of last summer’s Steampunk Festival and a generous stream of other events before and since.

In fact, in June 2016, Bellingham had the distinction of making the landing page of 24/7 Wall Street’s “50 worst cities in America to live in”: clearly high praise when you consider that New York, San Francisco and Boston also made that list.

Historic Fairhaven, with outdoor cinema. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

I’d visited Bellingham many times before, but this time round I had a fairly specific motive: walking the Bellingham Interurban Trail. Aside from my general fascination with rails-to-trails (because, of course, they’re among the coolest things ever), I wanted to see what this established 6.6-mile railroad conversion could teach us in developing the Arbutus Greenway here in Vancouver.

A forest, a creek, a 50K race

The Bellingham Interurban is a north-south trail along the former right-of-way of a Bellingham–Mount Vernon electrical passenger line built in 1912 and decommissioned in 1930. The railway’s trajectory forms a poignant testament to an era when much work went into building short-lived local trains. Happily for the community, the line earned permanent life through its designation as a rail-to-trail in 1987. It originates in the Fairhaven historic district, passing through the canyon-filled woodlands of Arroyo Park to terminate at Larrabee State Park to the south.

Colours of early spring on the Interurban. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

With some concrete trestle footings as historic remnants, the Interurban has a surface of hard-packed cinder and a number of convenient access points along the way. Here’s a map in case you want to hike or bike it yourself.

For our walk, my co-traveller and I started at 10th and Donovan in Fairhaven and did about half the trail before running out of time and turning back. It was Saturday, March 18, and the Interurban was fairly busy thanks to the Chuckanut 50k race, on its 25th run. Funky little motivational signs along the trail encouraged runners to reach the end.

From Fairhaven, the Interurban takes you along Padden Creek. Submerged under a tunnel starting in the 19th century, the creek has been the subject of a 2015 daylighting project to encourage restoration of the ecosystem, as signs along the Interurban explain. (Interestingly, daylighting has made recent news in Vancouver as well, with the proposed restoration of our own Tatlow Creek.)

Padden Creek daylighting, with trail access. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

The Interurban also takes you right beside Padden’s fish ladders.

A wide, level train bed passing through a variety of plant systems, streams and remnants of old railway embankments, the trail leads into narrower footpaths full of switchbacks running through mossy Arroyo Park. I would’ve loved to continue on and see the train bed pick up again to feed into Larrabee State Park, but that remains for another trip.

Salmon ladder, Padden Creek. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

Bringing it home: The Arbutus Greenway

What can we take from this as Vancouver builds its own railroad conversion?

In the past I’ve spoken of Arbutus as a rail-to-trail, but the visit to Bellingham helped me to appreciate that it isn’t actually one in the true sense. As emphasized both in public forums and in the RFP recently published for contracting work on the greenway, the City of Vancouver purchased Arbutus with the intention of turning it into a transportation corridor accommodating an eventual streetcar. By contrast, the Bellingham Interurban epitomizes the type, as reflected in its listing by the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy. So the analogy between Bellingham’s pathway and the much more urban Arbutus is far from exact.

That said, there’s a lot we can learn from the Interurban’s successes:

Multipurpose use

The combination of the 50k race and the ecosystemic context provided along the trail (by the signage about the Padden Creek daylighting, for instance) brought to my mind the opportunity to bring together recreational, environmental and educational experiences along Arbutus through events, informative installations, public art and more. At the VPSN, we’ve consistently advocated for such enriched and multifaceted possibilities.

Retaining wall greened with moss and sedum. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

Community

The sense of camaraderie along the trail – with even the most exhausted joggers smiling and saying “Hi” as they passed – affirmed for me the potential of Arbutus to bring people together out of social isolation and into the community: indeed one of the most vital aspects of its value as a public space, as emphasized by some of the greenway stakeholders during the consultation.

Connectivity

A super-important asset of the Bellingham Interurban is the connectivity it creates among different parks and between parks and urban areas. Public space is a network. It’s not just the nodes that matter, but the connections also, and a trail like this – and like Metro Vancouver’s Central Valley Greenway – provides the perfect means. The Interurban stitches the area’s jewels together via neighbourhood access paths that are plentiful and easily attained. Depending on where you live as a resident, you can use the trail to visit a friend in another neighbourhood, visit the Fairhaven historic village centre or take a walk or your mountain bike through the woods. Such connectivity is a principal objective for which we’ve been advocating where it comes to Arbutus, as a means of opening up the city’s green spaces, neighbourhoods and commercial pockets while also getting people out of cars in accessing them.

I’ll plan to course through the Interurban’s southern stretch on my next visit to town.

The Chuckanut is a 50k race, after all. Photo: Naomi Reichstein

On March 6, the Georgia Strait Alliance led a State of the Waterfront event at Simon Fraser University, Harbour Centre, as part of its ongoing Waterfront Initiative. I was excited to participate along with Michelle Pollard, vice-chair of the VPSN.

The GSA is a marine conservation organization that, in the words of its website, works “to protect and enhance Vancouver’s waterfront through cross sector collaboration, integrated planning, and targeted action.” Launched in 2013, the Waterfront Initiative represents the GSA’s effort to bring together a wide selection of disparate stakeholders from the region that have a part to play in the stewardship of this precious resource.

The purpose of this week’s forum was to present and discuss the preliminary results of the GSA’s work in assessing the condition of Vancouver’s waterfront. The GSA’s goal is to produce a comprehensive State of the Waterfront Report this spring, with a view toward planning action on the waterfront in the fall.

As explained in the opening presentation, the Waterfront Initiative started up when the GSA observed the success of the Waterfront Alliance of New York and New Jersey in guiding collaboration among many different agencies and other parties in that vastly complex metropolis. Restoring and protecting a city’s waterfront can be particularly challenging given that it requires involvement by organizational players that often default to functioning in a fairly siloed fashion.

This history really resonated with me because I grew up in Manhattan back when the waterways were so filthy that many of us wouldn’t even have put so much as a finger in the rivers, let alone swim races in the Hudson, as people are doing now. Reports of large marine mammals returning to the New York area have also been immensely exciting to residents there.

Vancouver variations

In our city here, we have every interest in acting now to protect a waterfront with complex ecosystems inhabited by a wide range of native species and to preserve and enhance public access for our human communities to as many stretches as possible.

Gazing at the waterfront from the Vancouver seawall

When we think of our waterfront, it’s curious that we often picture it in reference to the downtown core around the old Canadian Pacific terminal, Canada Place and SFU Harbour Centre itself. In fact, as the GSA’s event made clear, when considered holistically, it encompasses most of the city’s perimeter and, very arguably, the North Shore and Fraser River coastlines as well.

The Waterfront Initiative has identified five themes for focusing collaboration where it comes to sustainability for the waterfront’s natural and human communities:

• living (residential use)
• working (industry, commerce)
• moving (transportation, shipping)
• playing (recreation)
• environment (healthy ecosystems, climate change)

At this week’s forum, we heard a variety of presentations exploring specific aspects of the shoreline’s state. We heard from the GSA on its mapping efforts; from Metro Vancouver on coastal habitat; from Ebbwater Consulting on climate change and flood management; from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation on the traditional indigenous relationship to the waterfront and the nation’s present-day Burrard Inlet Action Plan; and from Bird Studies Canada on its B.C. Coastal Waterbird Survey, consisting of over 20,000 surveys conducted by more than 620 volunteers from 1999 to the present.

Habitat Island, Southeast False Creek, an urban oasis for plants and animals

The GSA presented a number of maps with data on various dimensions such as population densities, land use and amenities as they related to the waterfront, as well as transportation access. We broke out into table discussions focused on the Waterfront Initiative’s five themes, to comment on the data included in these maps and point out any information that wasn’t included but that we thought should be.

Next landings

At the VPSN we’ll look forward to reading the GSA’s final State of the Waterfront Report, commenting on issues of shared interest and staying tuned as waterfront planning proceeds. We’ll keep you posted.

Top image: evening on English Bay

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.