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.

The City is undertaking a refresh of its sign bylaw, the regulatory tool that defines almost every aspect of signage within Vancouver. As they note on their webpage, it’s an important opportunity to update regulations to reflect new technologies and trends. It’s also a great opportunity for public space advocates to have their say. Recent concerns around floating billboards in False Creek, outdoor projection advertising, or the longstanding issue of non-compliant billboards, make this a particularly important and timely engagement process.

The proposed engagement will unfold in two phases. The first phase focuses on business identification signs on private property. An online survey on this aspect of the regulations is now “live” and will be available until mid-September.

Following that, the second phase will look at outdoor advertising, focusing on advertising in public spaces, streets, and parks. It is aimed at developing a strategy for billboards, digital and transit shelter ads, as well as other advertising signs.

More information

• City of Vancouver – Sign Bylaw Update Webpage
• City of Vancouver – Online Survey
• Naoibh O’Connor, Vancouver Courier. Bylaw review a sign of the times. August 19, 2016

One of the new PavCo digital billboards. January 2012.

The new digital billboards installed around BC Place Stadium have been causing no end of headaches for nearby residents. The billboards are enormous – many times the size that would be allowed under the City’s Sign Bylaw – and they’re very bright. So bright, in fact, that one resident nearby told us that at 2:00am he can now read in his bedroom without any additional bedside lights whatsoever.

The signs were installed by PavCo, a Provincial Crown Corporation of the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Innovation, following the renovation of the stadium. PavCo replaced a set of older, smaller digital billboards in roughly the same location – plunking the new ones down, it would seem, with nary a whit of forewarning or consultation.

The previous digital billboards – pre-renovation. April 2008.

Needless to say, people living nearby – particularly on the west side of the stadium – have been trying to get the billboards removed for some time. They’ve even started a blog on the subject, documenting the challenges they’ve encountered.

The City is also irked by the gargantuan signage. The Mayor wrote a letter to Minister Pat Bell, but it appears not to have resulted in much change.

Unfortunately for the City, the fact that these signs are located on a provincially-owned property means there’s a bit of jurisdictional conundrum. From a legal perspective, it doesn’t appear that the City can enforce the provisions of the municipal Sign Bylaw as a means to reign in the nuisance factor. That being said, it can, and has, asked PavCo to act in the spirit of good neighbourly relations and respect the provisions of the Bylaw. (It’s worth noting that it’s not clear if the intent of the City’s initial request was to encourage PavCo to reduce the size of the signs, remove them all together, or simply to eliminate the increased nuisance that comes from the brightness of the signs at night. We hope it was more than just the latter).

In any event, the issue of the PavCo signs is to be considered at City Council next week. Councillor Geoff Meggs has put a motion on notice that will be considered on Tuesday, January 17 @ 9:30am. The motion asks for “a clear action plan by PAVCO to bring the signs into compliance with City standards.”

If you’ve got a position on this issue we encourage you to make your voice heard by emailing geoff.meggs [at] vancouver.ca and mayorandcouncil [at] vancouver.ca. The motion will likely be referred to one of Council’s Standing Committees later in the week. If this happens members of the public will also be able to make a short presentation in person (5 minutes).

Here’s the motion from Councillor Meggs:

BC Place Stadium Digital Signs
MOVER: Councillor Geoff Meggs
SECONDER:
WHEREAS

1. residents around BC Place Stadium continue to report significant negative impact from the installation of large digital signs at three locations around the stadium;

2. these signs were not installed with advance public consultation and public input, as would have been required on a similar project under City jurisdiction;

3. efforts by Mayor Robertson to resolve public concerns through correspondence with Minister Pat Bell have not produced results;

4. claims by PAVCO that they have mitigated the impact and reduced brilliance and intrusiveness of the lighting have not produced the improvements sought by residents.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT Council direct the City Manager to advise PAVCO that the City requires a clear action plan by PAVCO to bring the signs into compliance with City standards and processes, failing which the City will seek further remedies to reduce neighbourhood impact.

Now, on the heels of the same populist approach that has driven them to gut the City’s ability to generate tax revenue wherever possible, they’ve started looking at ways to fill an enormous (and growing) gap in revenue.

It didn’t take them long to fix on corporate branding. Just today, according the Globe and Mail, D-Ford has suggested that “the city should be selling naming rights to just about everything but city hall.” His brother, the Mayor, likes the idea too.

This idea is problematic for a lot of reasons. For one, naming rights and branding of this sort seldom bring in the sort of revenue streams that are really needed. They’re a modest supplement at best – and represent a much much bigger win for the advertiser (not the best example, but think of how many times “Rogers Arena” has been printed or mentioned over the Cup run alone).

More importantly, the sale of naming rights and the branding of public space compromises the spaces themselves – and the people that use them. Shellacking public spaces in a layer of corporate advertising, or selling off naming rights to the highest bidder makes these spaces feel less public. It privatizes them. At times, it can even make the space seem down right exclusionary.

A city’s parks, plazas, community centres and libraries ought to be places where people can avoid the incessant shill-job that surrounds us at so many other junctures in our daily life. These spaces – and many others – are public assets and are part of the commonwealth of the city. They ought, by and large, to remain free from the noisy layering of big advertising symbols with their constant entreaties to buy something. (And to be clear, I’m not talking issue with the small a-frame sign from the adjacent mom-and-pop cafe).

There are exceptions to this, of course. Times Square in New York, Dundas Square in Toronto. But they’re designed to be exceptions: an obesity of signifiers (pouting lips and perfume bottles, shiny electronics and skinny jeans) all soaring 100 feet into the air. These spaces are outliers, artifacts, larger than life – a set of spaces covered with big ads and an over-the-top narrative of excess.

Times Square has a story to tell, for sure. It has its place — outside the norm. This approach should not be the m.o. for public space.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world… a crowd gathers for New
Year’s celebrations at Mrs Macquerie’s Point in Sydney Australia.
Submitted by VPSN member Lisa M.

A late year greeting to all of you from the gang at the VPSN. This is it: day 365 of 2010 and we’re a mere few hours away from a brand new year. We hope you’re having a grand time with you various celebrations.

We wanted to take this opportunity to send you out a quick thank you for all your support this past year. 2010 has been an exciting one for us – and a busy year for public space related issues in the Vancouver. We had the opportunity to be involved in a great number of initiatives, and it’s been fun take this holiday period to reflect on the public space ‘scene’ in Vancouver over the past 12 months.

This time last year, Vancouverites of all political stripes were gearing up for the Olympics, planning a range of activities. In addition to some pre-Games advocacy work around Olympic gathering areas, corporate signage and the deployment of surveillance technology, the VPSN also launched our blog during the 1^st month of 2010 – using it to report out on urban issues – starting with the Game’s related transformation of the City. Since that time, we’ve seen our readership grow in leaps and bounds… and it’s been a great tool to connect with residents of the City about civic affairs issues.

2010 was also a big year on the active transportation front. The Olympic transportation plan marked a watershed moment for shaping urban mobility during the Games. But that was only the start! The Vancouver Courier recently declared their ‘Newsmaker of the Year’ to be the bicycle – no small tribute to the many initiatives that have taken place concerning the humble two-wheeler this year. Chief amongst these was the installation of the Dunsmuir viaduct separated bikelane in the Spring of this year and the more recent opening of the Hornby Street separated lane. These weren’t controversy free, to be sure, and yes, the process could have been handled better… but regardless, we feel that they will help to put Vancouver on the path to a more sustainable, healthful future.

Pedestrian issues have also begun to come to the fore and we’ve been working to support these where possible. There been an increasing focus on improving the pedestrian experience, the walkability of neighbourhoods, and attending to issues of pedestrian safety. And with the City focusing on “green mobility” as part of its Bright Green Future initiative and planning to develop a new Transportation Plan in 2011, this positive trend will only continue. Our prediction? 2011 will be to pedestrian issues, what 2010 was to the bicycle. Just watch what happens when the international Walk 21 Conference landing in town in November.

Animating the city’s public spaces has always been part of our strategy to focus attention on the public realm. This year was no exception! In the summer time we transformed Granville Street into a giant percussive ensemble with our Stick it to the Streets event. Later in the year, we were pleased to roll out two of our annual favourites: in September we participated in our third Park(ing) Day celebration – that international day of parking space reclamation (this year we had sites in Davie Village and at City Hall). Then in late October, we had our annual Halloween transit party – a massive costumed take-over of the Seabus. And then in November we managed to get 100 folks together on Vancouver’s coldest, snowiest day, to make a giant ‘ecological footprint’ as part of an international public art project.

In 2010 we continued to wear our advocacy hats on all aspects of Vancouver’s public space policy – from arguing against the deployment of surveillance cameras in schools to raising the alarm over new forms of corporate advertising, from to registering concern with increased fees for community-based events, to taking a stance against the proposal to extend the municipal vote to corporations.

We’ve also weighed in on site-specific spaces as well – we participated in the discussion around moving the Vancouver Art Gallery, developed new community gardens, completed an ethnographic film on Yaletown Park, and focused a considerable amount of resources towards advocating for a sufficient quantity and quality of public space (and other public benefits) as part of the development of Northeast False Creek. And of course there’s another item we’re very excited about: the push to transform the 800 block of Robson Street into a public square (a move that was recently supported by all three municipal parties!)

This was just a sampling of some of the things we were involved in last year. As with all our projects, the aforementioned initiatives gave us the chance to work with fantastic volunteers, amazing community organizations and stellar people in local government, schools and universities and the community at large. It’s an honour for us to be able to collaborate with Vancouver’s many excellent space-makers and urban enthusiasts. 

* * * * * 

VPSN Coordinators also took the first weekend in December to plan out some of our activities for 2011. Here’s a sneak peek of a few of the many things you can expect to see over the next 12 months:

• Where’s the Square II – stay tuned for our summertime animation of Robson Street – with a fantastic food-themed event.
• Vancouver Votes / Public Space Manifesto – 2011 is election year, and as with the last municipal contest, the VPSN will be developing a new manifesto and a number of election related events aimed at putting public space issues on the agenda. 
• Relaunching PubliCity – we’ve had an issue ready to go for a few months now… and we’ll be rolling this out in the first few months of 2011.
• Transforming Broadway – Due in January, our report on transforming Broadway into a Great Street will showcase exciting options for the future of Vancouver’s longest east/west corridor.
• Speaker Series / Backgrounders / Websites – We’ve been developing new backgrounders on public health, parking space reclamation, and greenspaces, to name a few. We’ll also be launching version 2.0 of our website, holding key speaker series events and a range of other open-source materials
• Collaborative ventures – We’ve got some exciting things lined up with the Museum of Vancouver and the Vancouver Art Gallery, and other projects in the hopper as well.

And there will be lots of other stuff coming as well… including all your favourite annual events, parties, film fest activities and more. 

Finally… don’t forget, the first big community opportunity to embrace public space takes place tomorrow morning, January 1, with the annual polar bear swim. Even if you don’t brave the chilly waters of English Bay yourself, the scene is a festive one.

The year begins and ends with celebrating in public space. Happy 2011 everyone! Very best wishes to you all.

Your friends at the Vancouver Public Space Network

It’s a given that advertisers are always looking for new ways to sell products and services – from ads in bathrooms and on building steps, and now – coming in January – on the fare cards used by Translink. From a marketing point of view, the more people you can get your message to, the better the “job” done by the ad. And newer and more novel forms of advertising help to fight that malaise that marketers dread the most: people tuning out of conventional forms of advertising hucksterism (a silent tragedy, we understand).

Unfortunately, the nature and placement of advertising often means that public space is impacted in a negative way. Urban spaces – sidewalks, utility poles, street-facing views – get targeted for branding activity and used as a medium to sell one or another projects.

To counter this, cities have long enacted mechanisms like sign bylaws in order to control the nature and distribution of outdoor advertising, particularly to limit its impact on the public realm. The intent is not to stop outdoor advertising, but to ensure that it doesn’t proliferate in an unchecked fashion.

By and large, we think the City of Vancouver has a pretty progressive Sign Bylaw. Unlike many cities, ours has fairly tight restrictions on the size of billboards, the presence of rooftop signage, the placement of sandwich boards and so forth. The challenge – and it’s a big challenge to be sure – has always been in the enforcement side of things. 

That, of course, bodes well for advertisers… who continue to test the limits of what they can get away with. As we’ve pointed out on a number of occasions, almost half the billboards in the city are actually non-compliant with the City’s bylaws… so if this is any indication, you can imagine the scale of the problem.

The image at the top of the page is another, newer example of the get-away-with-it-while-we-can school of advertising: a six-story projection sign for Oakridge Mall that loomed over the corner of Davie and Burrard on December 14. A rough guess places this non-compliant gem at about 8 times the allowed limit under the Sign-Bylaw… assuming that it even had the appropriate approvals in place (we doubt it).

It’s not the first time projection advertising has been used in Vancouver and likely won’t be the last… but it’s the biggest example that we’ve seen of this sort of thing in a while. 

The City is currently in the process of reviewing its Sign Bylaw. We hope there will be some opportunity to take a good look at the role that newer forms of advertising such as this will play in shaping the look of Vancouver. Our hope in this is that the City will continue to enact a progressive approach to outdoor signage and branding activity – because we believe that this will have a positive affect on the look of the city. Perhaps a clarification to advertisers might be in order as well: projection signs, ads etched into the sidewalk, mobile billboards – and all the other newer forms of marketing that have sprung up around Vancouver – are still forms of advertising subject to the City’s bylaw.

In the meanwhile, unless there’s a cry and hue that suggests that six-story projection advertisements actually strengthen the Vancouver aesthetic… we also hope that the City will work to reign in advertisers who opt to circumvent regulations.

First up, in January, a series of smaller, pole-mounted, VANOC-created, street-signs appeared at key locations around the city. While helpful, they were clearly temporary – corrugated plastic – with type that was surprisingly small and difficult to read (especially the tone-on-tone colouration of the French script). On this note, one plus: the signs are bilingual, which is nice… though given the linguistic diversity in the city, perhaps other languages could also have been incorporated.

Things, thankfully, got better still. In late January and early February we had the pleasure of seeing the Engineering Department zip around town installing not one, but two different sizes of information signs. These wayfinding “kiosks” are part of a $200,000 program to provide enhanced directional signage for the Olympics and beyond. vancouver.ca/ctyclerk/cclerk/documents/a14.pdf

Of the 200 or so signs installed through this program, the bulk are of the “small” kind — characterized by a narrow, two-sided, steel-framed information pillar that has directional arrows pointing to key sites, a larger neighbourhood map in the middle and a smaller context map of the entire city situated below. The entire pillar – about eight feet in height – is clearly adorned with an “i” for information, and the same information is reproduced on both sides. Again, English/French bilingual, though this time with far better contrast between text and background, making it easier to read.

To complement this, a number of larger information kiosks – about the size of the short end of a bus shelter – have also been installed. Like the smaller kiosks, they have the same style of metallic silver frame, but are adorned with larger, poster-size maps. Sadly, however, they are also adorned with bus shelter size corporate advertising. This is unfortunate and detracts from the important role of wayfinding devices. (Not to mention… has the City’s Olympic Legacy fund supported the creation of new advertising opportunities?)

Finally, to add to to the alphabet of wayfinding, we have a capital “T” that has now shown up to provide some other much needed clarity: yes, transit here! If you’ve ever tried to explain where some of our out-of-the-way transit stops are, you’ll know how helpful these signs (and related transit information) will be!

Post-script 1 (Feb 17): TransLink has now added some on-the-ground wayfinding support. Key SkyTrain stations around the city – like Yaletown Roundhouse (see below) – now have two or more people standing by to offer information and directions to wayward travelers.

Post-script 2 (Feb 19): We thought this might happen! One of the interesting omissions in the new Canada Line SkyTrain stations has been the absence of platform identification signage in the spot where people need it the most — at the foot of the stairs and escalators that take people down to platform level. We’ve had the chance to see folks get to the bottom of these bottom of the stairs and spin around trying to figure out what side of the platform that they should stand on. Evidentally TransLink has now noticed this as well – as evidenced by the sudden appearance of these make-shift signs:

The changes are the end result of a package of commitments made by the Olympic bid partners (including the Province and City) to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in order to secure the Games. The commitments promised, in essence, a series of favourable marketing opportunities for the corporate sponsors that would be investing in the 2010 project – favourable, here, meaning big visual wallop combined with messaging exclusivity. Goodbye Cola wars, hello Coca-collosal.

The commitments were then set into regulatory motion late last year and early in 2010 when City Council rolled out a number of amendments to existing bylaws and controls (even requesting changes to the Vancouver Charter itself). In many cases, these changes suspended normal governance practices for the period of the 2010 Games.

And the murals? One set of changes was made to the Sign Bylaw – the tool through which City licensing officers and bylaw enforcement folks regulate the size, materials, placement and related details of almost any sort of sign that you can find in the city.

The result? The following are a few examples of what’s been installed throughout the city.

One of the biggest appears to be the 14-story building wrap at the TD tower (Georgia and Howe):

Another prominent mural ad covers off on the host province tourism message:

Some, like the Canadian Flag installed at the Hotel Georgia tap into the nationalist spirit, others, such as the murals wrapping Hudson’s Bay, or Canada Post (see below) feature prominent shots of the athletes, with corporate logos comprising a small part of the overall sign.

Here’s another one at the corner of Burrard and Hastings:

Incidentally, the massive signs and murals which now dot the downtown core are part of a one-two branding punch that saw VANOC purchase every available outdoor advertising surface in the region, billboards, bus shelters and more. All, ostensibly, under the International Olympic Committees request to protect Olympic sponsors from “ambush” marketing.

Thus, for the period of the Games, we have a reshaping of the branding iconography found in the Vancouver cityscape. On one hand the breadth of messages has shrunk considerably (only sponsor ‘voices’ can be heard), while on the other, the sheer size of these sponsor messages has grown on an Olympian scale.