Cascadia Report

Category: Vancouver

  • When congestion is your friend

    Vancouver's congested streets can be maddening — unless, as the blog Hugeasscity notes, you're a pedestrian or bicyclist. But will that frustration translate into momentum for policy change?

    As someone passing through I typically must drive. SkyTrain is great you go where it goes but my recent trips took me to UBC or on detours between Whistler and Seattle, where there aren't feasible transit options. The vast majority of Lower Mainland residents are the in the same situation until land use policy puts more housing within striking distance of transit (or walking or biking).

    Vancouver's clogged street grid doesn't necessarily make the case for congestion pricing, at least off the downtown peninsula. Seattle's hills and water are a much better testing ground for combining a) alternative forms of travel with b) tolling that varies with usage. If the goal is to use congestion pricing to make more efficient use of finite resources, Seattle would be a great place to start.

  • Maybe we’re not so ‘livable’

    Here in Cascadia we're used to hearing that this is among the world's most "livable" places.  It's a squishy, feel-good moniker that obscures our challenges.

    311-cruise-to-tokyo-yokohamaVancouver regularly tops international rankings and Portland is a media darling for its hipster qualities and great refreshments. One shared feature of supposedly "livable" cities is that not many people live in them, notes FT columnist Michael Skapinker.

    See also: Decisions that made a great city

    Less than 2 million people live within the city limits of Vancouver, Portland and Seattle combined (the city of Seattle just topped 600K) and none rank among the top cities based on global business. I'd prefer to encourage more economic and cultural growth within Cascadia's cities since without clear benchmarks it's unclear how much progress we're making.

    None of this takes away from the latest top-cities listings.  Monocle magazine's list of top 25 ranks Vancouver as 14 and includes just one U.S. city (Honolulu at 11). Tokyo (3), Fukuoka (16) and Kyoto (22) make the list — but there's no Osaka, Yokohama or Sendai, which are all just as comfortable. It's editorial whim.

     

  • B.C. may boost exports of trash

    Vancouver wants to dramatically boost its Washington-bound exports of one product it has too much of: trash.

    And why not? Canadians would pay more to cover the cost of sending trash trains to a landfill on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge, helping the economy of rural Klickitat County, according to the Seattle P-I. At the landfill the trash would be turned into sellable energy.

    The shipments would begin just ahead of the supposedly eco-friendly Olympics and, predictably, the idea is already riling residents who live along the prospective route of trash trains. Whistler and Seattle already export their trash elsewhere in the region and other reports suggest there may, in fact, be other B.C. alternatives.

    But the richest part of the P-I article is the appeal to regional sympathy by one of the proponents:

    Marvin Hunt, a councilor in Surrey, B.C., and chairman of the Metro Vancouver Waste Management Committee, said the garbage shipment is just temporary until a new facility is ready in the province.

    “This is the Northwest. We feel like this is all family here in Cascadia,” Hunt said.

    “We have a little problem right now, and when you have a problem, you ask your brothers and sisters to help you out.”

  • Death and life of great cities

    A few weeks ago, during a long weekend in New York, I found myself wandering Manhattan on a Monday. All the usual museums were closed so I tried a small gem of an exhibit on the life and accomplishments of Jane Jacobs.

    Lower East Side NYC; carsareevil.comJacobs is the activist who helped save swaths of Manhattan from freeways and urban renewal through the 1960s. She’s often credited with the basic idea that walkable neighborhoods inhabited by residents are healthier than impersonal housing projects on “super blocks.”

    It’s a great lesson that’s been internalized by planners worldwide. But I couldn’t help think the pendulum has swung too far. Instead of protesting for strong neighborhoods it seems neighborhood activism — often under the guise of Jacobs’ lessons — is simply against development, period.

    This describes Seattle, where investment in new buildings in a close-in neighborhood is scorned. The Seattle P-I wrote in sympathy of neighbors of a University District coffee shop who didn’t want a parking lot developed because a new building would cast shade on a patio! Never mind the benefit of more residents, workers or customers in the neighborhood. Of course, there’s also some backlash to development in Portland and Vancouver.

    Even in New York, the protest and NIMBY movement is strong. I choose to remember the row of old two-story buildings being torn down in favor of the Santiago Calatrava-designed transit hub. Instead of hand-wringing, the New York Post brushed off concerns of the tenants, calling the buildings “scuzzy.”

    So where’s the middle ground? I’d vote for transparent development rules and design review. But most important is leadership that can make a clear case for what the city gains from development.

  • Cascadia as global outsourcing way station

    The Tyee has an interesting article questioning the benefits for the Vancouver area of a new software research center in Richmond, B.C. There are some smart comments too.

    To me, this seems like a trend B.C. should support. Obviously the U.S. and Canada are very different labor markets, especially for skilled technology workers with Asian passports. Even if the new research center doesn’t mean more Canadian hires, every Asian worker will make B.C. more fertile for technology and, over time, pay off by making it a more dynamic business environment.

  • Making a city for residents, not tourists

    I just noticed this article in Vancouver magazine, pointing out the need to make the city serve its residents rather than just tourists, planners and the people who create “most-livable city” lists.

    The writer finds fault with Vancouver’s regional government system (exactly what Seattle lacks):

    One of the biggest obstacles is political: planners are king here because our politicians allow them to be. Our at-large municipal system—unlike the ward system, with defined constituencies, which you find in most major cities—gives a free pass to city councillors. We select our council from a list of 100-plus candidates every three years, and they thank us by answering to “the city at large”—not to the widower in Strathcona trying to save the local seniors’ centre from destruction, not to the South Main sculptor trying to find a spot for his public art, not to the young couple in Yaletown trying to get a playground built near their condo. Such quotidian concerns become the domain of bureaucrats and enforcers, while politicians turn their attention to the “big picture” stuff like EcoDensity, Civil City and the Olympics.

    By contrast, the Seattle area has the worst of both worlds. The Seattle city council is elected city wide (so they’re not accountable to neighborhoods) yet there’s no effective regional government.

  • The Hamptons, Aspen and … Vancouver

    Think the Seattle condo market is going out of hand? Consider Vancouver.

    “I summer in THE HAMPTONS… I winter in ASPEN. My home, THE RITZ-CARLTON, VANCOUVER.” That’s the seductive tag line in a full-page ad on the back of the A-section of Thursday’s Globe and Mail Ontario edition.

    The condos, which run $2.25 million to $10 million, are part of a skyscraper building boom that will give Vancouver a tall skyline. The Web site address says much: vancouversturn.com.

    They’re also part of a trend that has made Vancouver Canada’s priciest housing market. Meanwhile, Toronto — a big presumed audience for the Ritz-Carlton — is a bargain. Ads on bus shelters in downtown Toronto last week promised two-bedroom luxury condos near the financial district starting at $159,000.

  • Ending homeless in Vancouver, Seattle

    Seattle doesn’t have anything like the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver’s slum of addicts and homeless. But judging from the line outside a shelter on Belltown’s 3rd Avenue Sunday, there’s a serious poverty problem.

    So what to do about it?

    We could lament the disconnect between the poor on the streets and the rich inhabitants of new condo towers.

    Prefer solutions? The Tyee ran a list of five ideas suggested recently in British Columbia. The ideas in the comment string seemed more promising (Evo Morales aside).

    Consider instead King County’s plan, which recognizes that money is only part of the solution and chances of upending modern capitalism are slim.

  • Loonie = greenback: Who wins and loses

    Longing for the happy days of bargain meals, rooms and ski slopes in British Columbia? Get over it.

    common loon; netstate.comToday the U.S. and Canadian dollars reached parity for the first time since 1976. The greenback has slid more than 60 percent against the loonie in the last five years and there’s every reason to think the trend will continue.

    It’s already clear that the situation is tricky for anyone who is easily confused by U.S. and Canadian coins. I remember using Queen Elizabeth quarters and bills at Safeway in south Seattle as late as the early ’80s. Those days may be back.

    So who wins? Businesses in the U.S. that cater to Canadian customers. With their increased buying power, more Canadians will be traveling around Cascadia. The Victoria Clipper says traffic from Canada is up 25 percent this year. Things are surely looking up for discount shops and Costco stores just south of the U.S. border.

    Potential losers come to mind more easily:

    — Anyone in Canada who depends on U.S. tourists. On Wednesday organizers of the 2010 Olympics unpersuasively insisted they won’t be hurt because they’ve hedged their budget against currency changes. Too bad U.S. tourists haven’t.

    — Anyone who depends on sales of Canadian lumber — a huge slice of the B.C. economy, in other words. The current slump in demand from U.S. housing combined with the strong loonie will do what years of softwood tariffs couldn’t: protect uncompetitive U.S. lumber producers.

  • The decisions that made a great city

    Vancouver, often named one of the world’s most livable cities, didn’t get that way by accident. It took a series of not-so-obvious decisions.

    metropolitan Vancouver; from royalbcmuseum.bc.caA former British Columbia premier and a longtime urban planner just released a book describing their list of nine key turning points. Apparently their point is that currently planned transportation and development projects in Vancouver now threaten to undo many of those successes.

    There’s little in the book about Vancouver’s “irritating and potentially dangerous sense of self-satisfaction,” according to The Tyee. But the list is still fascinating:

    — Creation of a regional planning board after a 1948 flood forced officials to prepare for potential disasters.

    — The battle in the 1960s against plans to tear down urban neighborhoods and build in-city freeways.

    — Creation in the 1970s of an a regional reserve of agricultural land.

    — Regional planning based on neighborhood “livability” starting in the 1970s.

    — Remaking of the False Creek area after Expo 86.

    — A series of laws in the 1980s and 1990s mandating regional planning.

    — Creation of a regional transportation agency.

    — Shifting power and responsibilities to local government, away from the province.

    Some of the elements of regional planning were also implemented in Portland. Seattle’s list is much shorter, including regional water service decades ago, the package of 1960s reforms that created bus-transit system and cleaned up sewage, and the beginnings of regional transit in the 1990s.

    Across Cascadia, the combining regional planning for infrastructure and local buy-in for neighborhood decisions still seems the best bet for coordinating new growth. It’s worth considering this list of mistakes the book’s authors came up with when asked by the Vancouver Sun:

    1. Lack of authority in the regional government to enforce development near transit.

    2. Slum clearance in the 1950s and 1960s.

    3. Keeping the rural grid pattern south of the Fraser River, which makes density and transit difficult.

    4. Allowing business-park sprawl.

    5. Allowing the proliferation of underground malls that robbed streets of pedestrians.

    6. Getting rid of the region’s interurban rail and streetcars, which destroyed a comprehensive transit system and promoted more car use. The last interurban stopped in 1958.

    7. Not containing the sprawl into farmland sooner.

    8. Failing to consider sooner whether the region needed a vast rail system.