October 18, 2017

What's Missing from Granville Street?

The Downtown Vancouver BIA would like to know.

Survey here.

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Leave a Reply to Michael MortensenCancel Reply

  1. The survey misses THE key problem today with Granville Street!
    Derelict Storefronts and people sleeping/iving rough
    I can’t believe that taxpayers spent $millions to upgrade Granville public realm only to let it turn in to a giant tragedy of the commons. It’s pretty base.
    We need:
    Portable emergency housing units built on flatbed trucks with toilets and primary social worker contacts.
    Daily urine, feces and garbage removal.
    Landlords who maintain their frontages

    1. Why is sleeping and living rough a problem? Because it occurs at derelict storefronts? Location, location, location as the relators say. It’s a savvy choice for those living on a dime. They are not to blame.
      It is not a giant tragedy of the commons. That tragedy is caused by the natural greed of humans competing for biosphere resources to the point of collapse: over fishing, over grazing, over hunting, the over harvesting of any living thing. The concept does not apply to the observation of people sleeping and living rough on the sidewalk.
      Taxpayers did not spend $millions to upgrade Granville public realm. No, it was City Planners that spent $millions of taxpayer dollars to upgrade Granville public realm and came up short! Why? Because urban design is much more than a beautification project.
      Public space is human space and the design of this space requires compassion and understanding, not just pretty concept illustrations on a blank piece of paper. The world is a real place sometimes filled with the suffering and inadequacies of our fellow human beings. The abandoned live in the abandoned and unwanted spaces of the City, the safe places clearly open to “eyes on the street” as the planners like to say. They are not to blame for being smart about this. Location, location, location.
      The opportunity here is crystal clear; occupy those derelict stores with secure single rooms, homes for the homeless, and all the attendant facilities and support that is required. The city has enormous power to change living conditions for abandoned people by leasing out these abandoned properties.

  2. Closing Riverway Hospital was a mistake. Instead, mental and addiction treatment should be brought into the 21st Century under the healthcare system. Until then, the streets will not change IMO.
    Homes for the homeless MUST come with directly attached health services.
    As for Granville, the definition of “entertainment” needs to be recontoured in the so-called Entertainment District, and perhaps decentralized to other suburban cities where most of the drunken, rowdy masses of young club patrons originate. The city was goaded into zoning dance clubs into a small section of downtown by a slick and very effective business campaign calling Vancouver a No Fun city. Now Friday and Saturday nights on the mall appear to be from a set from the original Bladerunner. No fun indeed.
    The Granville Mall sure isn’t Las Ramblas. I wonder what elements and policies could produce our own version?

  3. What’s missing from Granville Street is any sense of interest for anyone other that those people describe above. The destitute and the raucous.
    On exiting from The Orpheum with friends one evening it looked like we had stumbled into a freak show. People were fighting and the police seemed to be just looking on. The whole atmosphere was tense. Everyone looking around and at everyone else. Young people seemingly drunk or too stoned to function. Sad beggars.
    We got out and will never return.

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