Here’s a review of Robson Square by Jake Tobin Garrett in Beyond Robson - a byline I’ve not seen before.
Yesterday, I went back to Robson Square to check out the first phase of its reopening–the underground ice rink, which hasn’t been there for many years.
It was an Olympic dreamworld down there, with LED lights in our official pastel green and blue colours,
a jazz band performing at one end, and the Olympic logo plastered around competing for space with the large GE logos stamped onto the surface of the ice and set to remain for a few months (it is the GE plaza after all).
It was the first time I had seen people taking the time to come off the consumer flow of Robson to walk down the stairs and check out what was happening beneath the street.
Could this be the rebirth of our public square?
More here.
Categorized in Public spaces
Sorry for the lack of posts. A little of the ol’ H1N1, I think. Like a fine wine, it lingers.
But comments keep coming in. Here’s one you might have missed from David at placemakingstudio.com:
I came across the following, which I found to be thought provoking and inducive to generating commentary: “If you take away the dominant Tier One cities like New York, Chicago and Los Angeles – places no one expects the average U.S. city to be able to imitate – you will find that the “progressive” cities aren’t red or blue, but another color entirely: white.
In fact, not one of these “progressive” cities even reaches the national average for percentage of African-Americans in its core county. Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group. The progressive paragon of Portland is the whitest on the list, with an African-American population less than half the national average. It is America’s ultimate White City.
The contrast with other, supposedly less advanced cities is stark…Many of the policies of Portland are not that dissimilar from those of upscale suburbs in their effects. Urban growth boundaries raise land prices and render housing less affordable exactly the same as large lot zoning and building codes that mandate brick and other expensive materials do. They both contribute to reducing housing affordability for historically disadvantaged communities. Just like the most exclusive suburbs.”(i)
(i) http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-renn_22edi.State.Edition1.1691580.html
Categorized in Social issues and Urban planning
The New York Times covers Woodward’s.
With so many public and private interests involved, the Woodward’s challenge was “how to give everyone a part in the movie, yet not be so burdened by their interests you could actually create something,” Mr. Gillespie (the developer) said.
“Come back in a year,” he said, “and see how this social experiment turns out.”
In the Canadian Architect, Frances Bula reports on the new convention centre, with the 
best critique so far of some of the concerns expressed during the design stage – and how in the end it all turned out. Excellent photographs too.
Categorized in Architecture and Social issues
I was down in Portland last week to give my annual lecture for the ‘Transportation and Traffic” class – a course offered by the City of Portland and Portland State University (PSU) that gives students and residents an understanding of transportation issues.
Rather than attacking city staff in a heated atmosphere, the course participants engage in more considered discussion with the top talent in the city, who no longer seem isolated from the community. The assigned projects, presented in the final class, usually in three-minute presentations, have in some cases been implemented by the City, whose staff in turn have become more aware of citizen interests.
The class started in the mid-1990s with 45 people. Though the initial expectation was that it 
would continue for about five years, it has found steady interest, with more young people being attracted to it. There have been something like 1,400 graduates of the course – an important constituency in a city that has grown increasingly sophisticated on matters of transportation and land use, in part because of the class itself. The SFU City Program is looking to construct a similar course in the Vancouver region.
Thanks to promotion by BikePortland, a larger crowd than usual showed up to hear the lecture. And BP blogger Adams Carroll did a nice job of summing up the talk here.
Don’t miss the comments that follow. Many of the posts will seem familiar to Vancouver readers.
Categorized in Bicycling, Transportation and Urban planning
From MIT’s Technology Review:
Luciano da Fontoura Costa at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil and few pals created a computer model of the street and underground networks in London and Paris. 
The networks of Paris and London had 11699 nodes and 6885 nodes, respectively.
They then let loose ant-like agents to crawl the city streets in self-avoiding random walks and watched to see where they ended up. The researchers simulated a total of 10,000 walks for each node in each network.
They then calculated a “diversity entropy” for each node, a number which captures how easily it is to get from one node to others nearby. The results are shown in the pictures (London on top) in which red areas are more easily accessible.
Why the difference? Rivers and parks, apparently.
(Thanks to Murray Pinchuk.)
Categorized in Transportation and Urban Design
From an article in the Portland Daily Journal of Commerce:
Small bridge, livable downtown
The comparison between the Portland and Vancouver, B.C., metro areas goes only so far, officials from both areas are quick to point out. A transportation decision that’s good for one region won’t necessarily be good for the other.
That said, Gordon Price, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University and a former longtime Vancouver, B.C., city councilor, is glad to have a narrow, three-lane Lions Gate Bridge. “The conclusion I’ve drawn from looking at the history is that it’s one of the reasons we are one of the most livable cities in the world,” Price said, “on both sides of the inlet.”
Vancouver and its northern suburbs had a chance to see whether maintaining the size of the crossing would lead to increased congestion and a worse economy. “The answer, apparently, is no,” Price said. “If it were true that congestion would lead to an economic decline, you wouldn’t have the affluent area on one side and a vibrant urban area on the other.”
In any community, Price said, residents need clarity on transportation-planning decisions that determine where people live, where they work and how they commute. In Vancouver, people know there won’t be a new Burrard Inlet crossing.
“We said, ‘That’s OK; we will live with the existing capacity,’ ” Price said. “Once it became clear that wouldn’t change (and) we wouldn’t be overruled by the provincial and federal governments, then we took the other (transportation) options seriously and started to design cities to be walkable, to have more transit, and to be more bicycle friendly.”
When people have the opposite understanding that freeways and bridges will keep expanding as metro areas sprawl, they’ll count on that as well, Price said. “When it comes time to decide where they’re going to live and work, they’ll live farther away.
“And then the government comes along and builds them a wider road,” he said. “Because the government has done such a great job of delivering that for three generations, people expect that will continue forever.”
Complete story here.
Categorized in Uncategorized
And back on Monday. Keep dry.
Categorized in Uncategorized
Globe columnist Adele Weder critiques a revved-up Gastown as the new A+D centre of Vancouver:
… just in the last year, the area has assumed the enhanced role of archi-town: both a go-to enclave for architects and designers looking to source products; and a place for them to set up shop. Retailers like Koolhaas, Nood and p + a furniture have moved into the neighbourhood, joining the handful of homesteader design firms …
Developer Robert Fung, realtor Bob Rennie, architect Walter Francl
“Gastown has become the design epicentre of the city,” says Robert Fung, of the Salient Group, one of the main developers in the district. “There’s a growing attitude that this area is where all the talent and creative energy of the city lie.”
Categorized in Development
The church at Nelson and Burrard is one of only two places in the world offering weekly Jazz Vespers. You’d have to go to Manhattan to find another church with an equally serious commitment to this music.
This Sunday (November 15) Dal Richards’ powerhouse orchestra, a legend on the Vancouver scene, will fill the sanctuary with swinging music ranging from jazz to 1930s dance tunes.
The following Sunday (November 22), pianist and composer Sharon Minemoto brings her lyrical style, and one of the tightest and most exciting quartets to the audience.
And, finally, Cory Weeds (on November 29) top-notch saxophonist and owner of The Cellar along with his quartet will dance the audience into the holiday season with his upbeat, original performance.
All performances are 4-5 pm in the beautiful Gothic sanctuary at St. Andrew’s on the corner of Burrard and Nelson.
There’s no admission, parking is free – a musical bargain .
Categorized in Uncategorized
