From Michael Alexander:
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Dear friend of a vibrant Vancouver,
In February, the Mayor and Council will consider the next major step for creating a new neighbourhood at the top of False Creek to replace the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts.
This is a city building moment, like those that transformed the downtown peninsula.
I hope you will join me in supporting the Mayor’s leadership on this initiative. Below is a letter that would do that.
You have two opportunities:
• Mail me – malexander@pobox.com – with your name and email address, and I will add your endorsement to the letter to Mayor and Council.
• If your prefer to support in your own words, please send your email to mayorandcouncil@vancouver.ca
Please feel free to forward this email to like-minded friends and colleagues.
Thank you for your interest,
Michael Alexander
Urbanist
malexander@pobox.com
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Dear Mayor and Council,
It’s time for Vancouver to make a bold and visionary move to transform the north shore of False Creek.
It’s time for council to approve the replacement of the obsolete and underutilized Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts, as proposed to council last July, with a new surface roadway system at the heart of a new, sustainable neighbourhood linking Yaletown and the downtown core with Chinatown, Strathcona and the new community emerging around the Olympic Village.
The benefits to the city and its citizens are enormous, replacing the wasteland beneath and around the elevated structures with:
- new housing for thousands of families;
- new acres of parks and recreational facilities, including some that have been promised for two decades;
- reconnected neighbourhoods — Chinatown, CityGate, Strathcona, Grandview-Woodland — with access to new community amenities;
- vastly improved pedestrian and cycling routes, with better connections to greenways, transit, neighbourhoods and downtown;
- a logical and elegant surface road network that helps calm traffic on neighbourhood connector streets, and improves goods movement from the industrial flats to downtown and Clark Drive;
- environmental restoration of a significant portion of False Creek’s shoreline, and opportunities to restore natural elements to city life;
- an efficient and green neighbourhood connected to district energy facilities;
- locations for new cultural facilities, and public art.
What other opportunity since development of the False Creek lands offers so many benefits, with so much public approval?
It’s time to act. Please support Viaducts replacement.
Yours sincerely,
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TO ADD YOUR NAME TO THIS LETTER, PLEASE MAIL TO malexander@pobox.com, AND TYPE YOUR NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS. IF YOU WISH, ADD YOUR PROFESSIONAL IDENTIFICATION.
PLEASE FORWARD TO LIKE-MINDED FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES.
Michael – As a long term resident, in fact, a pioneer, of International Village just off your cropped pic, I am terrified of what it will mean to the traffic impacts and livability of surface streets if both viaducts were to be demolished. This sounds very much like a solution in search of a problem to me.
I have a gut feeling that to afford to do so a whole lotta new development would need to be approved to pay for it. Why not have Concord and Aquilini live within their already overly generous 20 year buildout and then see where we are with the sate of and need for the viaducts, hmm? They are very expensive pieces of infrastructure and replacing things like them that don’t require it is a ridiculous expenditure of tax dollars and local adverse impacts.
I’d much rather my ax dollars go toward, say, seismic upgrading of old schools and other bridges that really need the attention.
Furthermore, where would you like to dump the contaminated rubble?
Anybody who thinks the Dunsmuir Viaduct is underused has obviously never been on it. Also, will Mr. Alexander be writing to the hundreds of residents of Spectrum to take credit for the noise generated by trucks etc. as they grind along the grade up the escarpement into downtown?