A Critique of Vancouver’s ‘Downtown Plan’
This long but well written critique of Vancouver’s Downtown Planning in Canadian Architect is well worth the read. Writer Trevor Boddy comments on Vancouvers habit of replacing office space in the downtown core with condo’s and mentions the alarming fact that one third of Vancouver’s head-office jobs have left Vancouver in the last six years while Calgary has seen an increase of 64 percent. Are we forgetting about jobs in the midst of our condo mania?
“A revealing example is the fate of Rhone and Iredale’s 1969 West Coast Transmission Tower on Georgia Street, recipient of many engineering awards for its Bogue Babicki and Associates-designed cable-hung forms, converted recently into condos and renamed “The Qube.” Many more of downtown’s dwindling stock of towers would have met the same fate, had City Council not slapped a moratorium on such conversions last year. Although hard to grasp for many planners–especially Americans or Canadians in slow-growth cities–too much housing may be killing peninsular downtown Vancouver, especially the mono-form, mono-class, crank-the-handle towers of recent years.”
and what article mentioning condos in Vancouver would be complete without Bob Rennie?
“..Leading this trend is the extremely influential and political condo super-marketer Bob Rennie-topping Vancouver magazine’s 2005 list of most influential Vancouverites. As a society we may come to regret a scene in which 15 percent of the cost of new housing goes to marketing, but only five percent goes to all design fees. With the exception of a token condo tower by Arthur Erickson for Concord Pacific, Vancouver’s finest architects are largely conspicuous by their absence in the downtown boom.”
Boddy has lots of not-so-nice things to say about the state of architecture and design in Vancouver. He refers to the corner of Richards and Nelson streets as “a particularly bleak concentration of the Beasley-era architecture of Vancouverism”, but wraps his critique up with a postive note, well.. positive other than the ’sharp recession’ bit.
“Vancouver will succeed–despite its resolutely lame mass media, the rewarding of its architectural bottom-feeders, its unsettling convergence of developers’ and planners’ pretensions–because of the depth of passion many of us invest in it. We have let the rhetoric of real estate supplant the craft and consciousness of city building, and a sharp recession is what will soon set things right. The bones of a great city are coming into place, and now we need time and public wisdom to put some flesh on it. Love-hate relationships are always signs of a love frustrated, and Vancouver is now ours to make or break.”
There are a lot of good points in this critique from an architectural point of view, ranging from design to planning to jobs - definately worth the read if you have the time.
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August 31st, 2006 at 12:32 pm
I think you’d have to be quite well off or insane to buy in this market. You get very little and pay a ton. The correction is coming and reality should set in. If not then so be it. I, for one, refuse to partake in this insanity.
August 31st, 2006 at 9:47 pm
August 31st, 2006 at 9:58 pm
I know you are, but what am I?
September 1st, 2006 at 10:37 am
I have to agree with the 1st anonymous post as well and wih STUCKINBURNABY. World class? I don’t think so.
September 2nd, 2006 at 1:07 pm
Furthermore, Mr. FuddyBoddy complains about the aesthetics, yet the standard being built to in Vancouver is a sight more attractive than in most other cities. Do the exterior building styles always appeal to fuddy duddy architectural critics? Perhaps not. But they appeal inside & out to most regular folk (the actual users), which is far more important.
September 2nd, 2006 at 2:42 pm
You are right if there was demand for more offices people would build more. But that is not the point. One is it is more profitable to build condos and they are converting office space to condos. People move downtown for lifestyle. and a big part of that is the ability to walk to work. There are so many condos and so few offices now that people are living downtown and commuting to the suburbs. This is a zoning catastrophe. The current situation is not sustainable. and it will only get worse.
September 2nd, 2006 at 2:46 pm
September 2nd, 2006 at 5:38 pm
Have you noticed the rush hour? It’s more like three hours. Many people cannot afford to live in Greater Vancouver and have moved to the Valley and still work in the Greater Vancouver area. It’s a sad reality.
Pleasing architecture as per the users and people? Are you now representing the people or did you go out and take a survey or have you seen results of a local survey? It’s nice of you to do the research to comment on how ‘the people’ do enjoy Vancouver architecture.
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:18 pm
In a few words, Van. architecture (new anyhow) is insipid, lacking in vision, and homogenous.
That’s just my view as one of “the people”.
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:34 pm
September 3rd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
I may be a bit fuddy-duddy - no argument there.
As to comparing our city to Asia, or elsewhere - as my wife is fond of saying -”compare and despair”. But, take a look at the Petrona Towers in Malaysia, Frank Gehry’s collision architecture in Bilbao, Toronto, etc. Dubai has stunning architecture. That tower of $29 million condos in NYC is pretty cool. Barcelona has some beautiful buildings.
Check out this link.
Prince Charles is an architecture fuddy-duddy, I just like something adventurous, artistic and challenging. Vancouver has none (well Arthur Ericson does some reasonable work, I liked his “corkscrew” idea.) The Chan Centre is reasonably interesting as well.
But over-all Vancouver’s architecture is about as innovative and interesting as it’s arts scene.
Everyone has their likes, dislikes and/or ambivalence though.
September 3rd, 2006 at 11:14 pm
Yeah I saw those up close, very cool. KL is an interesting city. East meets West. Rich meets poor. Colonialism meets Islam.
I gotta thing for Flash Gordon style, which is why I like the Petronas. Everything from bus stops to garbage cans have me shoulder check for Emperor Ming. Tokyo also has some Flash Gordon. But more importantly they have the retro 1950’s high tech look. You know the one with square and coloured control buttons with lots of blinking lights. Even the toilets are retro tech cool. That is the best part about visiting Japan IMHO, checking out the different look and style of mundane things.
I also have a thing for Art Deco, so I also dig the Chrysler building. In Vancouver, my favorite building is … the CBC building. Very retro high tech. I haven’t been by in a while, so I don’t know if the TV Towers have changed anything. But I would paint the building glossy black (even those white vent things or whatever they are) and add some Darth Vader detailing for that Dr. Evil’s headquarters look. I also used to dig the Citygate towers when they first came up (in fact I owned a couple of units there). At night the rounded sub penthouses made the building look like the headquarters of some world conquering nefarious corporation. However, with all the new buildings going up, that effect has worn off.
September 3rd, 2006 at 11:17 pm
And I forgot about Gaudi’s work as well. Very cool. Spent a couple of days in Barcelona tracking them all down. And a few nightclubs of course.
September 4th, 2006 at 11:25 am
City of vancouver may 30 2006: “With a full 65 per cent of all trips within downtown now done by walking, it has become the fastest growing way of getting around the downtown. Proportionately, more people in Vancouver walk to get to work than do in such cities as Montreal, Toronto and Portland.”
can’t seem to find up to date stats for downtown jobs:workers, but it seems to be closer to 2:1 at roughly 140K jobs and 72K people (my mistake on 3:1) from the stats i can find; just 10% of those jobs are in food & accomodation though. But in fact, all people should be able to live downtown (to make the community vibrant/sustainable), so I’m not sure why you’re implying these jobs aren’t worthy of being downtown. Although ownership costs are currently high, renting downtown is possible in majority of downtown occupations.
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I simply don’t see a crisis in all these numbers. Real sustainability would be achieving a 1:1 ratio of jobs to population, and we’re nowhere near that yet. Boddy has blown things way out of proportion, perhaps harmfully so if sustainability is a Vancouver wants to work towards.
As for the architecture thing, all the cities listed are either much bigger (or much better financially/politically backed, in the case of Dubai) than Vancouver. But I would say the STANDARD of architecture in Vancouver still matches up well against most other cities. I’m not talking about $29 million+ condos here - I’m talking about what 95% of the buildings look like in a city (those buildings for average people). For example, HK’s concrete monstrosities that are its residences.
Though I agree it’s nice to have a few more stand outs, the standard in Vancouver is quite good indeed. It gives people nice, bright living spaces well-connected with their vibrant setting - architecture that addresses people’s real needs of safety and community, not critics’ needs, which trade-off views and light for more elaborate concrete forms.
September 4th, 2006 at 11:52 am
I have a thing for Art Deco myself. The Chrysler building is one of my faves. I was lucky enough to inherit a lot of my Grandmother’s furniture, which is mostly Art Deco.
…about Gaudi’s
work…
Yes, I was thinking specifically of Gaudi when mentioning Barcelona. My wife and I spent a week there in ‘89, and our “pilgrimage” was all about Gaudi, and Miro. The cathedral is mind-blowing, and will only take another 40 years or so to complete. I would give my eye teeth to live in one of Gaudi’s “melting wedding cake” buildings.
I’m with you on Tokyo too. What a visual and aural riot that is. Did you get into any of the Pochinko parlours? You almost need therapy after that.
Dubai and (to a slightly lesser extent) Abu Dhabi have some incredible edifices. When driving into Dubai, and seeing the “Burj Al Arab” sailing in the bay, I had a sense of wonder and excitement that I have felt in few places. I would love to go back to the UAE and see the Burj Dubai when it is done. WOW!
The souks are a very cool cultural experience too.
September 5th, 2006 at 7:34 am
September 5th, 2006 at 9:04 am
I have a friend at work who is very calm and easy going. No matter how stressful work gets nothing gets him too worked up EXCEPT Arthur Erickson. Just the mere mention of his name sends him into an apoplectic red-face ranting rage. Lots of words like ‘abomination’ and ‘eyesore’ pepper a steady stream of angry ranting about cement filled windows and leaky concrete boxes.
I like to bring the topic up every so often just for fun.