Squares

Any healthy city has got to have one decent main square. I don’t care how many parks, pedestrian walk ways, sea walls, bike paths Vancouver boasts, a city without a main square lacks a solid pulse; it lacks an incubator for community. We do meeting up online really, really, well. But right now, we kinda lack the physical spaces to do it in real life.

Sure, Vancouver has plenty of ‘squares’, but it lacks a grand open space for us to gather. Most Canadian cities don’t possess the typical main square that European urban centres do. It’s not our fault, we just kinda sucked at urban planning back in the day. But let’s look to the future not to the past, ok?

Vancouver cries out for an urban space with a fountain and some naked angels spouting water, and some cafés with cloth umbrellas and wicker furniture. Or at the very least a central area so that we can hold free concerts, stage some demos, or just sip a coffee which isn’t ‘to go’ and watch the world go by.

Yes, we have Victory “Square”, Granville “Square” and Robson “Square” but does ANY one acutally go there? The closest thing Vancouver has to truly filling the role of square isn’t even a square, but STEPS! Hey, I like the VAG steps, don’t get me wrong. When the sun is shining I sit on them on my lunch break and take in the crazy lady who gyrates to a stereo on wheels or admire how the side walk artist uses spray paint in novel ways. That said, Vancouver is really missing the type of “grand public square” that could – and should – act as a centre point for civic life in the city. I mean, the poor break dancers need more room to do the worm than an expanded side-walk! Even arch nemesis Toronto has in recent years created a grand central square at Dundas and Yonge. It has funky fountains, slick paving stones, some stylized furniture and plenty of space to do whatever. While the visual onslaught of electronic billboards and condo towers make it a bit too, um, Blade-Runnery for my old-world sensibilities, T.O. deserves points for effort in recognizing that its downtown desperately needed a square.

And Toronto’s square has succeeded in getting people to gather and take a time-out in a very commercial, hectic, urban core. So Vancouver! Catch up! Use some land slated for a few condo towers to make a square. Communities will thank you for it.

Check out this list of urban squares around the world, for some inspiration. Take your pick. These cities do some neat stuff with squares. Tehran’s is a little weird, in my view. Maybe we shouldn’t model ours on that one. But that’s also open to debate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_city_squares_by_size

Fireworks

The fireworks festival was great for creating community. Masses of people gathering along Vancouver’s shores and exclaiming “Ooooo” and “Aaaaaa” = bonding, plain and simple. It was also a very expensive and somewhat environmentally detrimental way to get us all together. Still, the summer and our community will be worse off now that the festival has been canned. Fireworks, beyond being really cool, tapped into our desire to gather and share in something collectively. A square could help fill that need on a daily basis without millions of dollars going up in smoke. Sure the fireworks created more business for the downtown core. But they also created a lot of garbage and car traffic. So, if we could just repeal some of the most draconian fireworks legislation in the world, build us a square, we’d not only have ourselves a kickin’ place to meet up, display our talents and have our voices heard, we’d also have a great spot for lighting off some rockets come New Year’s!