The city of Vancouver (named after explorer George Vancouver) contains about 600,000 people and Greater Vancouver supports a metropolitan area of about two and a half million. It’s ethnically and linguistically diverse, with half of its citizens speaking something other than English as their native language. As with many west coast cities, it was settled relatively recently, in the 1860’s, and incorporated 20 years later. At that point in time, extraction businesses – logging, mining, fishing – were the chief sources of wealth and growth; and forestry remains its major industry today, followed by tourism. The city also supports an active film-making presence. Often movies “set in Seattle” are mostly filmed in Vancouver.
To a much greater degree than its west coast counterparts, Vancouver has chosen to consciously emphasize density and transit – to the extent of not extending any freeways through the city. This density approach has succeeded – Vancouver is now the fourth most dense city in North America. This picture gives a consciously exaggerated sense of the effect of this density. As will become apparent, the planners in Vancouver have been clever about how to keep a dense city livable at the same time.
Also in the late 1950s, city planners began to encourage the building of high-rise residential towers in Vancouver’s West End, subject to strict requirements for setbacks and open space to protect sight lines and preserve green space. The success of these dense but livable neighborhoods led to the redevelopment of urban industrial sites, such as North False Creek and Coal Harbor, beginning in the mid-1980s. The result is a compact urban core that has gained international recognition for its “high amenity and ‘livable’ development”. As can be seen below, one strategy for managing density is to allow buildings to become quite tall but require that they be slender at the same time. This produces the effect – at least from some angles – of keeping visual space around the towers open enough to generally protect views from them. At the same time this approach mostly prevents the “wall of buildings” effect by retaining a view of the sky between buildings for pedestrians on the ground.
Occasionally this spacing provides room for a ‘pop-through’ view of a tower a number of blocks back that would in other cities not be visible.
More recently, the city has been debating “eco-density”—ways in which “density, design, and land use can contribute to environmental sustainability, affordability, and livability. Some of these techniques achieve great results with only modest means, such as this one in the west end where one block of a street has been closed to cars but kept open for pedestrians and bicyclists (and emergency vehicles). This has the effect of slowing everything down for residents and encouraging car drivers to use arterials rather than cut through residential neighborhoods.
This livable development has however also resulted in, as of 2013, the worst traffic congestion in North America. But in contrast to many cities, this has led Vancouver to work towards transit and proximity solutions rather than simply try to solve the congestion with more streets, in this case a downtown example of the city’s growing system of bikeways.
It’s hard not to be impressed with the variety of housing available in downtown Vancouver. The slender tower approach can be seen everywhere, such as here along the harbor near the convention center.
Some of the towers are not actually that slender; but their height keeps the proportions from feeling overly bulky.
And towers with views fit a city on the water particularly well.
But I was equally struck with the variety and scale of some of the mid-rise housing in the west end. To me this scale of development helps to ameliorate the transition from street to skyscraper. In some cases this housing stands on its own; in others it’s mixed with retail uses that reinforce the pedestrian use of larger arterial streets. This older building has survived to provide housing along the greenway – but note that there is a tall tower behind it for density with views.
Here’s an attractive contemporary midrise on a quieter extension of a busy arterial
And here another example of the same pattern but along an arterial with a busy retail presence. It’s definitely a bit of a wedding cake; but as a combination of busy pedestrian retail frontage, comfortable urban housing, and transition to taller towers beyond it works extremely well.
Not all the retail is this well integrated. Some of it in fact doesn’t seem economically viable because it’s so small.
Admittedly this is older ‘survivor’ housing with retail tacked on the front – and towers behind – but it’s hard to see why it hasn’t been replaced, as was the case with this classy Club Monaco on Robson just a few blocks away.
Or even this not so classy Safeway a couple blocks from the Monaco
In all these examples the planning framework holds things together:
- taller housing set behind the lower buildings but able to access views.
- lower scale housing and retail along arterials with lots of pedestrian activity and things to attract that activity such a food and entertainment, here in a sushi bar
Of course every city has its charming exceptions – a few blocks from our hotel I discovered this small coffee shop grandfathered into its residential neighborhood.
Hard to say what the best procedure should be for achieving this sublime level of urban living. Multiplying the exception would commercialize a quiet residential zone. Eliminating the exception would also eliminate desireable variety.
Finally, at the end of the excursion I wanted to include a shot of the condo across from our hotel. In this case more height has been permitted to take advantage of the views of English Bay.
Not bad digs – your own personal tree and a friendly hotel pub right across the street.
Travel Design Impressions 