Larry Beasley was speaking at a forum – “Framing a Capital City” – at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. Here’s the Washington Post:
Larry Beasley, a former planning director for Vancouver, B.C., brought this nugget of Canadian wisdom: “The whole world is going mad about security,” which has become, in terms of architecture and planning, the most important force shaping our cities. He lamented the return of above-ground parking garages (to prevent a car bomb from taking out a building placed above underground parking) and the use of huge setbacks (they create dead zones in the urban fabric). Cities that are finally reflecting the virtues of density, mixed-use development and walkable spaces are being shoved in the wrong direction by security-mad bureaucrats.
When Beasley advised the assembled crowd (a mix of students, planners, activists and scholars) that it was time to just say no to more needlessly complex, anti-democratic, isolating, intimidating layers of security, the audience broke out into spontaneous applause. It was a hometown crowd.
