After a lengthy application and recruitment process, two new City advisory groups – the Northeast False Creek Stewardship Group, and the Park Design Advisory Group – sat down for their first meeting in late August. Appointed by the City, these two groups marks a new phase in a consultation process that began many years prior, and which seeks to guide the redevelopment of lands adjacent to Science World, Andy Livingstone Park, Creekside Park, and Rogers Arena.

In total there are 28 members (16 in the Stewardship Group and 12 on the Park Design Advisory Group, or PDAG), representing a range of community interests from mobility and access for those differently abled, to public art, to skateboarding, to Chinese seniors, False Creek residents and more. I represent the Vancouver Public Space Network, and serve as a member of the PDAG. Our task is to provide advice on the design of more than 12 acres of parkland for the neighbourhood (see the Terms of Reference for the Group’s full mandate).

In addition requesting a substantial expression of interest and intent, the application process was designed to bring together a diverse group, with attention to a balancing gender and ethnocultural composition. Diversity is important to note when discussing an area situated in close proximity to Chinatown, the Downtown East Side and the downtown core. As these neighbourhoods continue to rapidly develop, the robustness of this consultation process has the potential to set a precedent for further consultations in the area.

The work of the two groups will carry on until September 2017 (for the Parks Group) and November 2018 (for the Stewardship Group). This timeline is designed to ensure input is developed into the City’s final report and area plan, (intended to be complete next December). During this time, concurrent consultations will occur with various other stakeholder groups and the general public, the results of which will be reported back at our meetings. This engagement process has only just started – with a well-publicized and popular “Planning Party” kick-off event taking place in mid-September. It was great to see all the enthusiasm for this process, and my fellow advisory group members and I are eager to build upon the thoughts of the broader community.

As of yet, our groups have only met twice. The first meeting was an orientation consisting of an overview of area planning history and context (see the City’s backgrounder for more details), as well as a site visit, and interactive mapping. Our second session focused on examining the city’s engagement plan. Our third meeting is set to take place later this week, on October 22.

At our last session, we discussed the factors that will contribute to the new area plan’s success. Some of the ideas focused on process. Many in my group talked about the importance of reaching out to groups traditionally marginalized from engagement processes, ensuring consultation facilitators are well versed in the community’s background and values, and utilizing multi-lingual communication materials. Another key point raised, was ensuring that a variety of voices are heard – and the issue of loud versus quiet voices. We discussed the importance of ensuring balanced input so that groups who are used to having their opinions heard, do not dominate all airtime.

Other ideas zeroed in on content – and various ideas for the vision for Northeast False Creek were identified, including access to nature, programming, social interaction, aesthetics and safety (see the guiding principles here). Alongside concepts of flexible programming, rainproofing, the prioritization of biodiversity and wild landscapes, there were conversations about how the space would be experienced by different groups of users, young, old, differently abled. What would the area smell like? How would it sound? How would it feel?

At our next meeting, we will delve deeper into these issues after hearing presentations from landowners and partaking in a City-led design exercise. Given that the focus of the Park Group is on the creation of important public space, my VPSN colleagues and I are interested to know your priorities for the area. What should we be taking forward to the Park Group? What are the values you would like to see reflected in this redesigned space? What are your favourite places in the surrounding neighbourhoods? How would you like to see the principles there, reflected in Northeast False Creek? Feel free to share your thoughts by email. You can reach me at wendee [at] vancouverpublicspace [dot] ca.

For further information of the process to date, please see the October 5 update to City Council.

We continue to support the proposal to remove the viaducts. The most recent technical report produced by City staff – and currently being deliberated by City Council – responds to a number of questions (particularly around road realignment, traffic flow and existing parks and gardens) that had been raised by residents earlier in the process. We think this document does a commendable job of further making the case for taking the viaducts down. Earlier this week, we wrote to Mayor Robertson and members of Council to say as much. The following is an excerpt of our submission.

…The VPSN has supported the removal of the Viaducts since the City first introduced this idea a number of years ago. We have participated on the NEFC Steering Committee, written previous letters of support, and have discussed this issue widely with our membership.

After reviewing the most recent staff report and documentation, we continue to support the removal of the Viaducts on the basis that this move will:

• Remove aging and overbuilt highway infrastructure from our city’s core area
• Enable significant public space improvements
• Better knit together the existing downtown, Strathcona and DTES communities and road networks
• Create new opportunities for urban growth and development that support the goals of compact, walkable neighbourhoods and the creation of new social infrastructure

We are particularly supportive of the further work that has been done to identify potential public space improvements, including:

• Expanded park area in Creekside Park, modifications to Andy Livingston Park, the replacement of existing skatepark facilities, the opportunity to achieve the “Georgia Steps”, and the creation of a Creekside Promenade
• An elevated park area that utilizes components of the Dunsmuir viaduct
• Improvements to active transportation facilities in the area
• Public space programming ideas that reference a range of uses that will appeal to the diverse interests and needs of Vancouver’s residents and visitor base

While we understand that the capital costs of removing the Viaducts will be a cause concern for some, we also understand that the City will be required to spend significant capital dollars regardless of whether or not the Viaducts are removed. (This isn’t a matter of paying or not paying – it’s a matter of when.)

We believe the City is being proactive and has taken the right steps to assess the implications and opportunities associated with removing this aging highway infrastructure. We don’t feel that the Viaducts should ever be upgraded. Simply put, the opportunity to improve the City though the creation of new neighbourhoods, better open space and more social infrastructure is infinitely more compelling.

1) Final Concepts for the Jim Diva (“Heart of Davie”) Plaza at Bute and Davie are being presented for comment on Thursday, October 22 (4-7pm) and Saturday October 24 (11am-2pm). Stop by the proposed plaza area and share your thoughts! | More info –

2) The Park Board is also holding an open house on Thursday, October 22 to review design options for a new park at Smithe and Richards. Drop in anytime between 4:30 – 8:30pm at the ArtStarts Gallery, 808 Richards Street. | More info –

3) Finally, Looking for other ways to engage? The City Council is also currently deliberating over the future of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts.

A City staff report (PDF) has been prepared that outlines various technical considerations related to the decomissioning of this highway infrastructure. Several acres of new and improved park space are proposed as part of the discussion, as well as better neighbourhood connections, a “Georgia Wharf”, new housing and additional social infrastructure.

A presentation by staff took place on Tuesday, and members of the public were able to share their take on the removal of the viaducts starting today. Council is reconvening to hear from speakers on Tuesday, October 27. Review the report and share your thoughts by attending Council or sending your input via email – mayorandcouncil@vancouver.ca.

Updating Vancouver’s Transportation Plan

Since last June, the City of Vancouver has been hard at work updating its transportation plan. This June and July, the City will be talking to residents about the plan’s targets and proposing actions to shape how we move around Vancouver in the year 2040.

If you’ve taken a stroll on the Seawall, felt safer riding your bike on a neighbourhood bike greenway, or crossed the street at a bulge from the sidewalk, these are exactly the kinds of improvements for which the City’s previous 1997 transportation plan laid the groundwork.

But what is it that the City needs to think about doing right now in order to continue meeting the transportation challenges on the horizon?

At the Vancouver Public Space Network, we have continually emphasized the close connection between transportation decisions and the quality of our public spaces, and integrating them into all the other concerns and activities that make a city tick, like regional transportation, sustainability or goods movement. That’s why we’re glad to see that the City’s upcoming transportation plan update devotes significant sections to public spaces. We think that public spaces have and will continue to play a very important role in improving the experience of walking, biking and taking public transit in our communities, and quality of life in Vancouver generally.

But there’s still plenty of work to be done and things to consider when it comes to all of us and the City making that future a reality. If you are interested in getting involved in improving Vancouver’s public spaces and the future of our transportation, we’ll be having a project meeting to discuss the City’s Transportation 2040 plan update on Thursday, June 7 at 6 p.m. at The Edge Cafe (2450 Yukon, near Cambie and Broadway — note updated location) Harbour Centre (515 West Hastings St). RSVP Karen Quinn Fung ( quinn AT vancouverpublicspace DOT ca) and she can keep you in the loop in case of venue change, etc. Alternatively, there’s a Facebook event page where you can RSVP as well.

Looking for more details? The Transportation 2040 team made a presentation to City Council on Tuesday, May 29; that presentation is now online. As soon as information about the City’s own events is available, it will be posted to the Talk Transportation website.

A Plan for Vancouver’s Viaducts

Photo: modified enzyme

As you may have heard, the City of Vancouver has been exploring different options around changing or removing the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts around Vancouver’s False Creek. There are many considerations, but, as evidenced by the City’s ideas contest from last year, lots of potential for what we could do with the opportunity presented by re-thinking the viaducts.

The City of Vancouver will be holding a series of events next week on June 5, 7, and 9, where you can learn more about their new proposal for the viaducts. Some highlights: the proposal would allow for a 13 per cent increase in park space and make space for affordable housing in the neighbourhood while adding only a negligible time for those traveling into downtown from the eastern portions of the city and region.

Check out the City’s Viaducts website for more information on both the proposal itself, as well as opportunities to provide input to City on the proposal in person and otherwise.

Harry Enchin – King and Bay

The nice thing about a vacation is that it allows you to slow down a bit. It’s literally a change of pace… and the ‘time out’ is reflected in a different way of walking through the city. Too often during the busy-ness of the week, one’s pace is all geared up the hustle and bustle of work, school and who knows what appointments. There’s stuff to do, places to get to, less time than would be ideal. The stride of everyday life is seldom taken at the sauntering pace that Thoreau found most ideal.

But when your schedule becomes loose and flexible, when you’re on an out-of-town sojourn, you can meander a bit and be a bit more attentive to your surroundings. And then… you never know where your feet will take you. For me this means actually taking more time to slow down and step inside the cool little galleries that I find punctuating the neighbourhoods I visit.

On my recent trip to Toronto I happened unexpectedly upon a number of these places – three of which were showcasing a display related to the city itself. Each was quite distinct but wonderfully complimentary to one another. I’m showcasing two of them in this post and will save the third, on the subject of civic engagement, for later.

Dusan Petricic and the illustrated city.

The first came the day after I landed when, fresh from skating at Nathan Phillips Square, I found myself at Campbell House – a lovely old Georgian structure dating back to 1822. It bills itself as the oldest remaining building from the original town of York. It had been years since I’d last been inside, and I didn’t realize they had a little gallery upstairs.

What a treat! On display was a collection of political cartoonist Dusan Petricic’s work. Petricic, an émigré from Belgrade, brings what journalist Rick Salutin calls “an intellectual style of drawing” to his portrayal of city issues. While the themes he covers in his work are wide ranging, a good number of the drawings on display were about planning and matters relating to public space.

For example, in the last few years Concord Pacific (and other developers) have been building condominiums in the old railway lands near the CN Tower. The massing and height of these buildings has created a noticeable change in the Toronto skyline. Seemingly unimpressed, Petricic points a finger at city planning on this one.

(As an aside, coming back to Vancouver I was struck by how slender many of our downtown condominium towers are compared to their often gigantic, slab-like counterparts in Toronto).

Here’s an image that seems particularly germane to Vancouver. It was done around the time that public discussion on the future of the Gardiner Expressway was at its height. (The Gardiner is the aging elevated expressway that runs along the foot of the city, separating the downtown from the waterfront). At the time (and it’s still an ongoing debate) there was lots of talk about removing part or all of the highway, beautifying it, or trying any number of other schemes to mitigate the problems that it posed to the city. The conversation it provoked was (and is) not unlike the discussion we’ve been having around the future of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts.

This last one is my favourite, playfully illustrating the idea of distance in Toronto and the walkability of the city.

One of the things that I found so appealing about it was the fact that it used the walking time between public clocks as a basis for the image: a splendid trope to use, and one that gives an affectionate nod to the role that these timepieces play in city life – both as reference points and icons, and for there more functional aspects. (Indeed, despite the fact that a digitial, iPhone literate city changes things a bit, the Downtown Design guidelines for Vancouver still encourage the placement of clocks in public gathering areas.)

Harry Enchin: change, continuity and juxtaposition.

A few days later I had a chance to hit the Twist Gallery on Queen West. Quite by luck I walked in on one of the last days of an exhibit called Toronto Tranformed, featuring the work of Harry Enchin.

Those of you who are fans of Vancouver’s Changing City blog (and props to our friends John Atkin and Andy Coupland for their excellent work on this) will appreciate Enchin’s images. They juxtapose digital photographs of city life taken over the last couple of years with archival photographs. But rather than stop at a site-by-site, side-by-side, before-and-after comparison, Enchin actually weaves old and new images of the same place together into a single picture.

Here’s a particularly striking example that will appeal to fans of Toronto’s streetcar network:

And here’s another that puts a 21st century CBC ad for George Stroumboulopoulos into an early 20th century street scene. The same building – now about 8 decades older and many retail turn-overs later – has worn the ‘Strombo’ ad for a few years now.

There were several dozen of Enchin’s works on display. Some held together better than others, but all of them produced a remarkable and overlapping sense of change and continuity.

Both Petricic and Enchin play with the theme of time and place in their work – one from the perspective of an illustrator providing comment on the issues of the day, the other as an photographer and archivist who revels in the nature of everyday city life. In so doing, both regard the Toronto as a dynamic entity – one marked by resilience, adaptation and metamorphosis.

Thankfully, in the process, neither seem too inclined to the sort of nostalgia and wistfulness that can easily wash-over the deck of projects like these. Theirs is work that respects the city on its own terms, as a living organism rather than a museum piece.

We’ve been excited to follow the progress of the City of Vancouver’s re:CONNECT ideas competition. The future of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts has been a hot topic for the last year or so, and even surfaced a few times during the recent election debates.

Earlier today the City posted the entries that have been received. You can view them online and the vote for your favourites.

The follow is the email that was sent out by the Planning Department on the subject.

Just when you thought your chance to vote in Vancouver had passed, here’s another opportunity to have your say and help inform the future of our city.

The deadline for submissions to the open ideas competition re:CONNECT has come and gone and we’re thrilled by the response. In total we received 104 unique submissions from 13 countries (US, Mexico, UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Poland, Turkey, Slovenia, South Korea, Hong Kong, Australia and Canada). While the international response was wonderful, we were particularly pleased with the number of local entries, showing the great energy and creativity around this key city-building question (60% of the submissions were from Vancouver and 75% from Metro Vancouver).

Our exceptional jury of urban experts led by Great Streets author and urbanist Allan Jacobs, has done their hard work and selected winners and honourable mentions in the 3 categories (connecting the core, visualizing the viaducts, and wildcard), in both the fee and free streams and now it is your turn!

On-line voting is now open and will determine the “peoples choice” winners in each category (voting will run from today until November 25, 2011 (this Friday). If you have an interest in the future of the viaducts and our Eastern Core, we hope that you’ll study the entries on-line and help us select the winners! You can rank each entry out of five and comment on any or all of the submissions. This feedback will be used not only to award winners, but will also provide important feedback for the future of this area of our city.

Submissions range from the beautification of the viaducts, to their re-use as open space or other uses, or their partial or complete removal and replacement. The ideas illustrate development, open space and even naturalized futures. The visions range from the practical and pragmatic, to the futuristic and whimsical. Submitters appeared to be inspired by everything from water and nature, to our urban past and current housing challenges, to volcanoes, horses, corn-dogs, and knitting yarn!

All of the winners will be announced at a public event on December 1, 2011. Stay tuned for more details on this event.

Deadline approaches for ideas competition on future of viaducts and Eastern Core

Only two weeks remain to enter the re:CONNECT ideas competition, which is open to anyone with inspiring and innovative concepts for the future of Vancouver’s viaducts and Eastern Core.

The competition is part of the City of Vancouver’s ongoing review of the Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts and strategic planning for the Eastern Core, which stretches from Northeast False Creek to Clark Drive. Registration deadline is November 2, and entries must be received by November 4.

Citizens and design professionals are encouraged to think big and bold about the possibilities, taking inspiration from transformative urban projects such as New York’s High Line, a linear park built on a decommissioned elevated rail track and Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon, where an elevated highway was removed to create an urban recreation space featuring a day-lighted stream. 

The opportunity to offer ideas for shaping Vancouver’s future has sparked interest around the world. Since the launch of re:CONNECT in late September, over 70 registrations from more than a dozen countries have been received.

While no decisions on the future of the viaducts are being made through re:CONNECT, the City welcomes inspiration and fresh views to help inform future planning.

The competition is divided into two entry streams — free and fee. Both streams will accept submissions in three categories: Big Picture, Viaducts, and Wild Card.

The free stream is directed toward people from any background. The fee stream, while open to anyone who wishes to enter, is directed more at design professionals such as architects, engineers and urban planners. This stream requires an entry fee and will include a monetary award for winning entrants.

Winners from both streams will have their ideas presented in post-competition literature that will be made available online and to Vancouver City Council and profiled at a public forum.

An independent design jury, made up of renowned international and local urban experts, will choose the winners in both streams. A People’s Choice Award will also be given in each category with the winning entries decided by public online voting, which will be open from November 21-25.

Winners will be announced at a public forum on December 1.

To enter or for more information: vancouver.ca/reconnect