The Death and Life of Vancouver?

While leafing through my much-loved copy of Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) the other day, I wondered what the urban theorist and community organizer would think of the highway projects threatening to dissect Vancouver and destroy rare wetlands where she alive today.

I recently discovered that Jacobs, known for asking city planners and government officials if they were building cities for people or for cars, had a long and complex relationship with the city of Vancouver.

Jacobs first made a name for herself in the early 60s while living in New York. She took a stand against prominent developer Robert Moses who was preparing to build a Lower Manhattan Expressway that would have cut through Greenwich Village and SoHo, in effect severing them from the rest of the city. Moses viewed these areas as slums but Jacobs saw great potential in the now thriving neighbourhoods. She preached neighbourhood revitilization and through public talks, community engagement and a little civil disobedience, managed to get the highway project shelved.

Shortly after her widely-publicized battle with Moses, Jacobs immigrated to Canada so that her sons could escape the draft. She settled in Toronto but Vancouver quickly became a city she loved and praised.

Jacobs was consulted when highways were being built in and around Vancouver in the 60s and she is, at least in part, responsible for the fact that Vancouver has thriving downtown neighbourhoods unbisected by highways.

It didn’t come as a great surprise to me to learn that Jacobs, prior to her death in 2006, had opposed many of the BC Liberals’ urban planning initiatives. She was vocally opposed to the Gateway program, designed to facilitate traffic flow in and out of Vancouver for the 2010 Games.

Jacobs also denounced the construction of the RAV rapid transit line and a four-lane highway to be blasted through the Eagleridge Bluffs in West Vancouver in order to upgrade the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler.

In fact, this was the campaign in which Jacobs was most invested at the time of her death at the age of 89.

In what her son Ned called her “last civic act,” Jacobs issued a statement of support to the people of West Vancouver and in particular, the protestors determined to, in Jacobs’ words, “preserve and protect the magnificent and irreplaceable Eagleridge Bluffs and Larson Creek Wetlands from this destructive, ill-conceived scheme.”

Current Vancouver Director of Planning Larry Beasley has referred to Jacobs as "a spiritual guide." The city of Vancouver recently launched a Jane Jacobs Ideas Day. I have big hopes that Jacobs' ideas for livable cities will continue to act 'spiritually' upon local planners and developers and that this highway madness will be recognized for the killer concrete it really is.


You can find a repository of Jacobs' writing online, courtesy of the Project for Public Spaces and Preservenet. More information about Jacobs' life and ideas can be found here.

The Gateway No Way

I’m intrigued by the activities of a group calling themselves Gateway Sucks. They’ve been hitting the streets lately to talk to locals about the expansion of Highway 1, the congestion 'reducing' project masterminded by Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon (that’s his face on the button, image courtesy of Gateway Sucks).

With virtually no public consultation, Falcon and the Gateway Council (whose Honorary Chair is none other than Federal Minister of International Trade, David Emerson) pushed through the expansion project last spring, at a projected cost of $4.5 billion. The project will include the twinning of the Port Mann Bridge and the expansion of Highway One to eight lanes between Langley and East Vancouver.

Though many urban planners and environmental luminaries have spoken out against the project, Falcon calls it a done deal.

In a recent letter to Emerson, David Suzuki denounced the expansion as “an old-school, 1950s-style urban planning model plopped into 21st century Greater Vancouver.”

What kind of city can we look forward to during and after construction? To be sure, the new highways will carve up the city and suburbs into neat little “geography of nowhere” wastelands, take funding away from the regional transportation system and make Vancouver even more of a car-dependent city than it already is.

Whatever happened to the GVRD’s Liveable Region Strategic Plan? This plan, in development since 1986, has been designed to reduce traffic congestion and would be transit friendly. It would also be comparatively pocketbook friendly too, at an estimated cost of $300 to $500 million.

It seems the GVRD plan got 'falconed'.

What is Gateway Sucks doing about all of this? They’ve been going door-to-door to talk to locals, spreading an impressive petition, and distributing the aforementioned buttons—all with real direct action flair.

Oh, and they’re hosting an anti-Gateway dance party next week, too. After pounding the pavement, every good activist needs to shake a leg.

Greenest Games Ever?

In an editorial published yesterday in The Guardian, Tony Blair spoke proudly about the 2012 London Olympics, with only 2,012 days remaining in the countdown. He claims the UK Games will be "the greenest games ever."

Blair writes that "the 2012 games will be a catalyst for one of the most extensive urban and environmental regeneration programmes ever seen in the UK." He talks of "sustainable building methods" and "reducing the carbon footprint." His masterful use of all the right buzzwords is impressive.

But wait, haven't we heard all this before? The Sydney Games were touted as "the greenest games ever." Then Torino took up the label. Vancouver is next on the list.

Gordon Campbell has been quick to jump aboard the sustainability-speak bandwagon, proclaiming loudly that the Vancouver Games will best all previous Games that have claimed the eco title. Yet shortly after his statements, as many Vancouverites know all too well, Campbell was spearheading the initiative to blast through Eagle Ridge Bluffs to make way for a four-lane highway to Whistler. The Bluffs are arguably the most sensitive wetlands area in the lower Mainland.

Have a look at VANOC's (Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games) 6 sustainability principles. Do these seem entirely obvious to you?

(1) Ecological limits: Society must live within the earth's capacity to sustain life
(2) Interdependence: Economic and social prosperity are dependent upon the natural environment
(3) Long-term view: Today's decisions and action must not compromise the choices available to future generations
(4) Inclusiveness: Participation by all people must be promoted and decisions must be based on input from key stakeholders
(5) Equity: People must be empowered to live in a sustainable way and resources must be used fairly and efficiently to meet basic human needs worldwide
(6) Healthy communities: Community health and quality of life is integral to global sustainability.

Vancouver $20.10

While trolling for anti 2010 web sites, I came across a parody site called Vancouver $20.10 (or, better put, what used to be a site and is now simply an image). The image is of a $20 bill and a dime. Have a look:

http://official2010olympics.com

A little research lead me to discover the site was originally a parody of the official 2010 Games page. It was created shortly after the Olympics committee released the 2010 Olympic logo bearing an image of an inukshuk. The link to the page is currently down but I'll return later today to see if it can be resurrected.

In the meantime, here is the "official" statement from the now defunct page, courtesy of the folks at The News is Now Public (www.nowpublic.com):

Kuhldaa offers the welcome of a nation shaped by its rich, natural and cultural appropriation. Its colours reflect those of both Canada and the host region: the blue waters of our salmon farms, the green forests of our softwood lumber, the red maple leaf of our Canadian identity and the golden sunrises that paint the city skyline and the snow-capped peaks from Vancouver to Whistler. These bright, cheerful colours, along with the playful arrangement of the shapes that make up Kuhldaa, encourage us to overlook the deplorable living conditions, substance abuse issues and unemployment rates of many First Nations in beautiful British Columbia. This tendency to disregard issues occurring within our own country is something all Canadians look forward to sharing with our international visitors.

A clever confluence of design, politics and culture, don't you think?

Could B.C. Place Become the Next Big Owe?

Lately, Montreal’s stade olympique and Vancouver’s B.C. Place have been taking on an uncanny resemblance to one another.

On January 5th, a fierce storm punched a hole in the inflatable roof of B.C. Place. The repairs, which will involve patching over the massive tear in the fabric, have been estimated at $25 million.

The repair job brings to mind the repeated repairs to the roof of Montreal’s Big O stadium, or the Big Owe to which it is more commonly referred. The much-maligned stadium was constructed for the 1976 Summer Olympics Games and played host to the Montreal Expos until 2004, but now is used for little more than monster truck shows.

The Big O was originally forecast in 1970 to cost $120 million but the final tally for the building surpassed $1.47 billion. This bill was finally paid off by the city of Montreal on December 19, 2006, over 30 years after the construction of the monolithic finned monstrosity.

B.C. Place is a more beloved stadium than the Big O ever was (in part, this is because the Big O was largely paid for by a special tax levied on all tobacco sales after 1976…not a popular move in Quebec!). Yet, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games will thrust B.C. Place on to the world stage in a colossal way and projected repairs to the building in advance of the opening ceremonies could soar well into the millions, making the home of the B.C. Lions football team into another financial sinkhole of Olympic proportions.

CBC Story on the B.C. Place Dome Collapse:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/01/05/bc-dome.html?ref=rss

Photo of the B.C. Place Roof:
http://www.nowpublic.com/bc_place_roof_collapse_0