Vancouver’s growing up. Like a teenager on the cusp of big changes, the city — and people who live here — have lots of questions. What does affordable housing look like? What does livability mean? What impacts will climate change have on how neighbourhoods look, feel, and operate? How will we deal with population growth and density?

As a dense urban neighbourhood where 80 per cent of residents are renters, Vancouver’s West End is often looked upon as a desirable place to live. But what makes it so great? And is it possible for the West End to emerge as a sustainable, livable, affordable leader in Vancouver? What can residents do to optimize change in the neighbourhood and plan for the future?

In efforts to explore intersections and tensions between affordability, sustainability, and livability, the West End Residents Association is hosting an interactive forum this weekend that will feature a planning workshop for residents and a presentation by Brent Toderian, the City of Vancouver’s director of planning. The goal is to encourage progressive and inclusive dialogue about the future of the community. Join us!

Date: Saturday, May 29
Time: 1-3 p.m.
Place: Empire Landmark Hotel, 1400 Robson Street
Admission: Free

Riding through vineyards is fun - but watch out for snakes.

Urban planning is a lot like oxygen, you don’t miss it until you realize you no longer have it.

I realized this on my recent father-son bike tour through the Okanagan. Last week my dad and I set out to wander the vineyards of the Okanagan and test our mettle against the windy hills of Penticton and beyond. During the journey, we visited three small Okanagan cities and one small town.

In Penticton, we found the first great example of a contrast between good and bad urban planning. The effects on local community were just as obvious. As we drove into the city, we were met with a strip of fast food joints all serving the same cheap, unhealthy stuff. The roads were large and the parking lots massive and packed with every type of American built truck you could imagine. After cruising by half-a-dozen RV parks, drive-in motels and big box stores we finally found ourselves in the three square blocks of downtown Penticton. Unlike the train wreck of urban sprawl we witnessed on entry to the city, downtown Penticton was quaint with a variety of small cafes, a couple little mom and pop restaurants and a used book store that was to die for. There was even a local community mural project that had drawn dozens of young artists to spray a wide array of different gorgeous designs on the walls (some of these designs were as impressive as Vancouver’s recent offering of community art). The whole project was funded by the Penticton Business Improvement Association.

On the streets, there weren’t to many people wandering around, and I imagined many of the residents of the city now avoid the downtown area for their shopping needs preferring the big box shops we’d passed by. Transit was basic to say the least and considering the sprawl of large single level houses out into the hills, it’d be almost impossible to provide decent service. As a result people drive – everywhere.

The thought made me sad. It also made me lonely, as I glanced around it was difficult finding many people (oh so vital for most communities) on the streets.

The next day, we set out on our bikes for OK Falls. Along we went, hugging the side of Skaha Lake and passing dozens of for sale signs. It seemed at time that half the Okanagan was for sale – thousands of retirees who were retirees no more following the market’s collapse and were desperately trying to sell back their dream homes in the face of market cataclysm.

When we arrived at OK Falls, we got yet another treat of just how important decent urban planning is to making a town desirable. Unlike other small towns I’ve driven through, which lay in far less gorgeous a location, OK Falls had no centre. In the mad rush to cash in on development, RV parks and gated villas were given run of the beach area. A few blocks back, on what seemed to pass for main street, the few shops stood depressed and devoid of any particularly welcoming vibe.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to watch tumbleweeds pass by the deserted, dusty streets.

Contrast this with Naramata, another small town on another lake (Okanagan Lake rather than Skaha) and you see the opposite. Even in a depressed fall economy, Naramata had a core at the bottom of the hill and seemed quaint rather than desolate. The shops there were well maintained and the streets were surrounded by dozens of pretty and smaller homes and cottages. Unlike OK Falls, there was no highway running through the town.

OK Falls Aint Ok.

Later in the trip we visited both Oliver and Kelowna. Both cities had a far denser main street/downtown areas and with that density and local business feeling came much more economic and social activity. Kids riding bikes, people sipping coffee or wine at local cafes, and general businesses setting up shop all build community.

It became increasingly clear that although all of these things seem possible in a district surrounded by dozens of  wineries, which draw millions of tourist dollars each summer, they can be undermined by poor urban planning.

These days, the more I travel and see other ways cities and towns have developed, the more conscious and thankful I am for the wise planners up in City Hall. Way to go folks. Way to keep Vancouver from being a really big version of  Penticton.

Granville Street Redesign

When this website was but a nascent blog, I lamented Vancouver’s lack of a public square. A year later, as condo towers continue to spring up all around us, and the pressure to expand transportation infrastructure remains unabated, the need to carve out and protect public spaces is more necessary than ever.  Through the course of its development, Vancouver seems to have missed out on some great opportunities create public spaces. Downtown building density makes it difficult to congregate before and after concerts and films. Outside our stadiums, celebrating a sports victory takes place along the sidewalks of Yaletown or in areas adjacent to glassy towers.  Robson square, while great from a design standpoint (Kudos Arthur Erikson), fails as a public gathering site, in my view. Its basement-like quality leaves it ignored and under-used. Why go there, when the sunlit steps of the VAG beckon above?

It’s not all bad – Vancouver does hold plenty examples of embracing public space in all kinds of creative ways. We just need to do more.

For example, the Olympics have helped turn things around. The task of “hosting the world” in 136 days (and counting), has pumped creativity and dollars in dusting off two of our most important public spaces:

• Recently capped withsnazzy glass domes this year to the tune of $1.6 million, Robson Square will enjoy a place in the limelight this February as a central media hub. Time will tell if this will give the square a new lease on life. Perhaps the lit-up glass domes, will act as a lure for more impromptu gatherings than the square currently sees. I sure hope so.

• The near-completed redesignof Granville Street into a majestic promenade promised to inject new life into the city’s central artery, having languished in seedy obscurity for too long.

On a less glitzy but no less important scale, grassroots efforts at promoting all kinds of varied public space deserve a place in the spotlight as well.As described in a recent post, entitled Getting to know your Community Art, Kurt Heinrich describes how the  Commercial Drive community is using its walls as a backdrop for wonderful community art. I also love how, in neighbourhoods across the city, busy residents take part in creative gardening and often artistic gardening, transforming traffic intersection into sites of public, green pride.

The advocacy effort for Vancouver public spaces received a huge boost last Tuesday with the exciting launch of PubliCity, a newly minted magazine put out by theVancouver Public Space Network (VPSN)The VPSN is a grassroots collective that engages in advocacy, outreach and education on public space issues in and around Vancouver. Efforts include combating advertising ‘creep’ in public spaces, promoting creative, community friendly urban design, monitoring private security activities downtown and looking at ways to re-green forgotten spaces and alleys of the city. PubliCity will provide a great vehicle for creating awareness of these issues and inspiring democratic debate about how best to promote, create and use public space in all its forms.

It goes without saying, that without public space, community can and will not flourish.

There are a bunch of neighbourhoods in Vancouver that eke vibrant and distinct community. Commercial Drive, Chinatown, Main Street, Kits along the Broadway Corridor, Fraser’s Punjabi Market, the West End’s Davie Village, and Hastings and Nanaimo to name just a few. What makes these areas so interesting and vibrant is the dozens of small retail shops, restaurants, groceries, cafes, bookstores, and bars that line the streets.

In these neighbourhoods people walk to pick up their groceries and the sidewalks tend to be jammed with all sorts of different folks.

I always knew I liked these places because they created an intimate community of urban dwellers. But recently, I discovered another thing that’s neat about these neighborhood shopping areas. They’re also doing their part to fight climate change.

Here’s the reasoning:

According to a number of recent studies, in the late 1970s, the average household drove 1,200 miles a year for shopping. That figure has skyrocketed to about 3,600 miles today. When you need to drive to the big mega-mart or Safeway dozens of kilometers away to buy some groceries, milk, laundry detergent or bread few times a week, it tends to add up over a lifetime. Add to this the general trend of people seeking less and less dense neighbourhoods and your commuting time to the local grocery chain grows exponentially.

But  a of that is starting to change as many young couples begin to embrace a more dense urban lifestyle (sans the backyard and sandbox). When people live closer together, that means more small businesses and stores can be supported. In addition, according to many academics who study travel behavior,  people who live near small stores walk more for errands and, when they do drive, their trips are shorter. More surprising is that small retailers influence how likely people are to take public transit to work. All that walking and cycling can add up to significant emission reductions in the long term.

Intrigued by all this? Check out a more detailed analysis in this great article at Grist. And in the meantime, the next time you decide to cycle over to your local store instead of hitting up the big uber-grocery-mart, give yourself a pat on the back. Your building community and helping the environment, all at the same time.