Landscape Makes Vancouver Work

Landscape makes Vancouver work
City planner leaves, confident Vancouver will continue as a livable city
Doug Ward
Vancouver Sun
15 June 2006

The planner considered most responsible for the transformation of Vancouver's inner city says well-designed urban landscaping was crucial to convincing suburbanites to move downtown.

"Everything in the culture told them that the inner city was unsafe, dangerous, dirty. You know, Da Vinci's Inquest," Larry Beasley told a gathering of Canadian landscape architects on Wednesday.

Beasley said the population of downtown Vancouver doubled to about 85,000 people in little over a decade because the city adopted the theme of "quality of life" as the driving force of its planning process.

Vancouver's planning director said livability is increasingly crucial to cities - and is no longer just an esthetic issue - because people and capital have become increasing fluid.

"The world has become footloose, with people and capital moving at will: Business can be done anywhere, other aspects of life are more important than one's livelihood, and where people choose to settle is not tied down the way it [once was]."

Beasley said the traditional urban economy of manufacturing, government or business administration is being replaced or reinforced by the "service city."

These cities are becoming powerful metropoles drawing on "people with wealth, talent and energy" and surrounding them with clusters of support people.

One theory, said Beasley, is that cities will "either become one of these metropoles, enjoying all the fruits and advantages of the modern world and connected in an international network with other such 'alpha' places, or will be relegated to 'drone' status that services others but limits what can be provided for your citizens."

Beasley said this future scenario is a gross generalization, but shows how cities can no longer be "exploited as a commodity or happening by accident."

They must be shaped by good design, said Beasley, noting that famous Brazilian urbanist Jaime Lerner has said, "a city without a design doesn't know where it's going; doesn't know how to grow."

Beasley told the landscape architects their profession must play a more influential role in the development process because it brings a holistic design approach that can "sustainably reconcile settlement and nature."

He said the Vancouver experience shows architectural and landscape solutions allow density to work and that high density generates enough value to prompt developers to spend on quality construction and amenities.

"And the supportive neighbourhood draws all kinds of people back from the suburbs, offering the competitive advantage of a truly urban lifestyle."

Beasley, who leaves his job at the end of August, said the Vancouver approach to urban design will continue after his departure.

"I go out of my job at city hall with the utmost confidence that the trajectory of Vancouver is not going to change.

"But with the utmost anxiety that we not stop where we are but that we continue to move forward."

dward@png.canwest.com

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SUSTAINABLE CITIES VITAL

"You know this struggle for a fulfilling, sustainable city must be one of the most urgent causes of contemporary western culture. It's urgent in reaching the hearts of our citizens, who are becoming more and more discerning and more and more critical and who have higher and higher expectations; and it's urgent in securing the future of our species, since cities right now are despoiling our world even though, next year, we will cross the line where over 50 per cent of humanity lives in urban settlements.

"Quality of life is no longer an esthetic matter, a luxury."

- Larry Beasley, Vancouver planning director>