Posts from — January 2011

Ever since council unanimously approved an engineering study on the future of the Georgia Viaducts, I’ve been doing the rounds of community associations from False Creek to Grandview Woodlands explaining the study, the options under review, and how citizens can provide their views.

There’s increasing interest and excitement about the possibility of an entirely different future for this area in the heart of our city. Many welcome the idea of a plan that knits together some of our oldest and newest neighbourhoods by removing of the stub of Vancouver’s long-ago rejected freeway system.

The current city study is looking at options to reconnect traffic if the viaducts are modified or removed. They were closed completely, of course, during the Olympic Winter Games.

At a meeting at Citygate last week, about 50 residents asked questions for about 90 minutes after reviewing this presentation I have developed to outline the study.

(A contractor has been selected after a competitive process, more traffic data is being assembled and a report should be ready for report to council late in the spring.)

So far, as the Youtube video above demonstrates, the support has been very good.  If council agrees, the traffic and soils study now under way will be followed by a second phase to consider urban design and financial aspects. My key message: we could change the future of this area, but only if neighbouring communities get engaged.

Look here for more information on the Viaducts review and the potential for change.

One of the best things about Todd Wong’s Gung Haggis Fat Choy — a haggis-stuffed evening that melds Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations with Robbie Burns Night — is the unexpected revelations about Vancouver’s ever-changing diversity.

This year’s example was One Big Hapa Family, an award-winning documentary by Vancouver native Jeff Chiba Stearns. At a family reunion in 2006,  Stearns realized that everyone in his extended family had married outside the Japanese community. This documentary and animated feature explains why.

As his family members struggled to describe what they were — “half Japanese, half Canadian, but 100 percent Canadian” — Stearns stumbled on the Hawaiian term “hapa,” evolved by Japanese of mixed race on those islands to describe their ethnicity.

The result, in film and animation, is an insight into the possible evolution of multicultural Vancouver.

(More on One Big Hapa Family here.)

Pedestrians, cyclists and almost every city neighbourhood will benefit from $2 million in strategic “active transportation” investments proposed in this year’s capital spending program, headed to council for approval next week. (Details are in Appendix 6.)

These new bikeways and traffic calming measures will dramatically improve walking and cycling on the North Arm Trail Greenway, generally along 59th Ave. from Angus Dr. to Vivian Dr.; the 45th Ave. Bikeway; the Dumfries St. Bikeway; thePrince Edwdard St. Bikeway and the long-awaited first phase of the Comox-Helmcken Corridor, which will ultimately link Stanley Park to the Seawall near the Roundhouse, then to the Central Valley Greenway.

It’s all part of the $20 million in capital investments promised last year as the city prepares to rewrite its transportation plan for the next decade. As the title of these investments imply, the city’s engineering department is focusing now on “active transportation,” not just cycling, to ensure pedestrians get their due as one of the largest and most sustainable participants in the city system.

Consultation has been extensive on all the routes and none involves a separated bike lane.

According to Danish architect Jan Gehl, a global leader in the development of active streets and successful public space, those who want to improve the lot of pedestrians and cyclists should follow the example of traffic engineers. They should assemble data.

By studying what people were doing on streets — for example, that they walk in spaces and stop at edges — Gehl was able to predict and plan what would enliven and animate streets.

“We asked why people stop walking, what they are doing was that means for homo sapiens, democracy, social inclusion.”

In an engaging workshop today with faculty and students from the UBC School of Architecture, Gehl urged his audience to “focus on people.” It is easy to discuss buildings, he told them, but much more difficult to understand the “life and interaction” of the people in and between them.

Gehl’s work, summarized in his new book Cities are for People, emerged from his experience in Copenhagen, where the data collected from a street closure inspired politicians to “clean up the city” to make it more useful to pedestrians and cyclists. Traffic engineers had long used data to move the political agenda, Gehl noted, and facts were needed to help other city users.

The result is an emerging global movement in many cities to “have citizens, face to face, getting to know each other,” in public space and streets. The results are good: for people, for business, for the community overall.