• Home
  • About
  • PDF Archive
  • Comment Policy

Price Tags

~ Perspectives from Vancouver

Price Tags

Category Archives: Urban Design

Friday’s Puzzle Picture

20 Friday Apr 2018

Posted by pricetags in Urban Design

≈ 1 Comment

What’s unusual about this picture?

Urban Omnibus explains:

read on >>

Workshop: SafeGrowth Neighbourhoods – June 8-9

16 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by pricetags in SFU City Program, Urban Design

≈ Leave a comment

From SFU City Program:

This summer, gain actionable insights from experienced practitioners who have played transformative roles in planning safer neighbourhoods. Our first ever workshop on this topic will equip you with crime prevention strategies rooted in environmental design. Learn more below.

SafeGrowth — Safety Planning in the 21st Century Neighbourhood

SafeGrowth is an integrated method for planning safe neighbourhoods. It incorporates neighbourhood governance, sustainability and safety into planning and urban design practice.

In this course, you’ll first learn 1st and 2nd generation CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design). The SafeGrowth approach then expands to include:

  • Neighbourhood wellness and cultural activities to build cohesion
  • Overcoming obstacles to conflict resolution using emotional intelligence
  • SafeGrowth® planning and community accords
  • Co-planning with community groups
  • Tipping point effects, such as land use impacts
  • Assessing risk and computerized mapping for crime patterns
  • Implementation strategies and safety networks
  • Safety audits, asset mapping, lighting and landscape analysis
  • Real-life project application and feedback

 

June 8-9, and July 6-7

SFU Surrey

Instructors: Gregory Saville, Tarah Hodgkinson, Jon Munn

Learn more

The Development of Davie West – 1

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by pricetags in Architecture, Housing, Urban Design, Urban Planning, Urbanism

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Davie West, West End

In 2013, City Council passed this:

This community plan was a response to objections over the development of a few highrises (particularly the ones at Comox and Broughton, and at Bidwell and Davie) under a rental incentive program.  Opponents objected to the spot rezonings without the context of a community plan.  So they got one. Read on >>

Lecture: Geller on Housing in Metro Vancouver – May 10

10 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by pricetags in Architecture, Housing, SFU City Program, Urban Design, Urban Planning

≈ Leave a comment

Looking back, Looking forward: Reflections on Housing Metro Vancouver

While Metro Vancouver has changed dramatically over the past four decades, many concerns of yesteryear are surprisingly similar to those of today—foreign buyers, rental crisis, dwindling land supply, locals-first policies, and disdain for developers. Using his collection of newspaper clippings, in this presentation Michael Geller will offer a different perspective on Metro Vancouver’s housing affordability challenges and some timeless solutions. Read on >>

All-New Plaza of Nations

03 Tuesday Apr 2018

Posted by Ken Ohrn in Public spaces, Urban Design, Urban Planning, Urbanism

≈ 11 Comments

Built as part of Expo 86 in Vancouver, this now-decrepit Plaza and its defunct casino are the subject of a renewal proposal under the Northeast False Creek Plan.

Rezoning Application – 750 Pacific Boulevard (Northeast False Creek Sub-area 6B — Plaza of Nations)

The City of Vancouver has received a development proposal to amend CD-1 (349) (Comprehensive Development) District for Northeast False Creek Sub-area 6B (Plaza of Nations) at 750 Pacific Boulevard. The proposal is to rezone and develop the 10.28-acre site into a mixed-use development based on the Northeast False Creek Plan, including:

* a variety of terracing buildings up to 30 storeys;
* commercial uses;
* residential uses;
* social housing;
* civic facilities, including a community centre, ice rink, music presentation centre and a 69-space childcare facility; and
* a new community plaza and seawall.

Plaza.of.Nations

In case you missed the 3 open house events, you can comment ONLINE.

Things to note:  20% social housing, internal street with “..  parking to support retail”.

Thanks to Frances Bula for the heads up.

Skopje, Rebuilt for Tourists, Not Locals

30 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by Sandy James Planner in Architecture, Infrastructure, Landscape, Public spaces, Urban Design, Urban Planning, Urbanism, Viewpoint

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Building Cities for Tourists-Skopje

 

skopje-boat-on-river-macedonia

As the New York Times reports Skopje Macedonia has been completely transformed from a 1963 earthquake that required the rebuilding of 80 per cent of this city. A thousand people were killed and another 100,000 were left homeless. Even though architect Kenzo Tange, “a pioneer of the 1960’s avant-garde Metabolist movement” was hired to create a redevelopment plan, his vision was never realized, resulting in a mix of brutualist concrete buildings and Soviet-style block housing.

“Hundreds of new sculptures were put up across the city, and many new buildings erected in the center of town. Dozens of false facades were added to Communist-era buildings, while scores of plaques appeared, attesting to events with varying degrees of historical accuracy.”

Ten years ago the party in power decided to rebuild the city in a way that would attract tourists, adding in three pirate ships on the Varda River in the city, installing a 47 foot high statue of Alexander the Great, and creating a decadent house in honour of Mother Teresa. In a country where the average wage is less than $500 a month, the 750 million dollars has transformed the city and not necessarily in a cogent readable way.

7133639-memorial_house_of_mother_teresa_skopje
514ed56b5be4de5df2b25c873ee717bb

“The project cost hundreds of millions more than public projections and has been roundly derided by urban planners and architects, who say it was rushed into reality at the cost of structural integrity and functionality. ”  A new government came into power in early 2017 which has halted all the projects including a London Eye type of Ferris wheel and “recladding of the city’s tallest glass building in a plastic foam and plaster facade intended to make it look neo-Classical”.

Even though temperatures can drop to 30 below zero in winter  on the fahrenheit scale, $600,000 worth of palm trees were installed along the river banks of the city, with only five per cent surviving. While the old traditional bazaar area and its  uneven patterns survived the earthquake, they are perhaps the only truth tellers in this redevelopment story. To become a city, you have to listen to and represent the citizens, their hopes and wishes.  As one local architect ruefully notes that even though the city is bizarre and came at great cost, it is built “so poorly that it is unlikely to last”. 

 

skopje-post-office-architecture

 

 

Sponge Cities

29 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by pricetags in Climate Change, Infrastructure, Landscape, Urban Design, Urban Planning

≈ 2 Comments

From The Guardian:

How does a city cope with extreme weather? These days, urban planning that doesn’t factor in some sort of catastrophic weather event is like trying to build something in a fictional utopia. For Kongjian Yu, one of the world’s leading landscape architects, the answer to coping with extreme weather events actually lies in the past.

Yu is the founder and dean of the school of landscape architecture at Peking University, founding director of architectural firm Turenscape, and famous for being the man who reintroduced ancient Chinese water systems to modern design. In the process he has transformed some of China’s most industrialised cities into standard bearers of green architecture.

Yu’s designs aim to build resilience in cities faced with rising sea levels, droughts, floods and so-called “once in a lifetime” storms. At 53, he is best known for his “sponge cities”, which use soft material and terraces to capture water which can then be extracted for use, rather than the usual concrete and steel materials which do not absorb water.

European methods of designing cities involve drainage pipelines which cannot cope with monsoonal rain. But the Chinese government has now adopted sponge cities as an urban planning and eco-city template. …

Yu, who is based in Beijing, explained the key benefit of sponge cities is the ability to reuse water. “The water captured by the sponge can be used for irrigation, for recharging the aquifer, for cleansing the soil and for productive use,” Yu said.

“In China, we retain storm water and reuse it. Even as individual families and houses, we collect storm water on [the] rooftop and use the balcony to irrigate the vegetable garden.”

When it comes to water, the mottos of the sponge city are: “Retain, adapt, slow down and reuse.”

Sponge city

“One thing I learned is to slow down the process of drainage. All the modern industrial techniques and engineering solution is to drain water away after the flood as fast of possible. So, modern tech is to speed up the drainage but ancient wisdom, which has adapted in the monsoonal season, was to slow down the drainage so the water will not be destructive anymore. By slowing the water it can nurture the habitat and biodiversity.” …

As Yu says, it’s important to “make friends with water”. “We don’t use concrete or hard engineering, we use terraces, learned from ancient peasantry wisdom. We irrigate. Then the city will be floodable and will survive during the flood. We can remove concrete and make a water protection system a living system.”

This Week in Victoria – 3

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by pricetags in Active Transportation, Affordability, Annals of Cycling, Architecture, Bicycling, Housing, Urban Design, Urban Planning

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Victoria

This week, selected items and observations from a short trip to Victoria.

Back in 2016, Dan Ross reported on Victoria’s first protected bike lane on Pandora Street here.  Since then, as reported here, the City has moved towards a complete active transportation network in the core – notably on Fort Street, just now nearing completion.

.

While I didn’t have a chance to get on a bike and explore it all, here are some shots which demonstrate the commitment the City is making:

IMG_6764Pandora at Government

.

Pandora looking west to new Johnson Street Bridge

.

Fort Street lane waiting to open

.

Frontage lane at 525 Superior Street – a new provincial government office building

Inside the building, there are large bike rooms with lockers – but the designers provided parking capacity based on counts of use in other buildings with departments that were consolidated in this new one.  Guess what?  With better facilities, the numbers of cyclists so increased that the architects are trying to figure out to repurpose space for the demand.

Another lesson: this nicely designed bike ramp in the centre of the stairs leading to the bike rooms isn’t used all that much.  There’s a car ramp immediately to the left, and cyclists use it instead of having to dismount and carry their bike up the stair ramp.

 

Hong Kong Reviews Radical Housing Options

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by Sandy James Planner in Affordability, Housing, Infrastructure, Real Estate, Social issues, Urban Design, Urban Planning, Urbanism

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Hong Kong's Radical Housing Options

 

21055782-tong-lau-in-hong-kong

Another city that is really facing the housing squeeze is Hong Kong as reported in this New York Times article that describes five ways to deal with housing shortages. Price Tags Vancouver has already discussed the usage of drain pipe as temporary downtown apartment units in Hong Kong. Besides drain pipe as housing, other ideas such as “the return of the tenements” “building to the sky”, the use of cruise ships and the use of industrial port spaces are also being discussed.

How expensive is Hong Kong?  “A single parking spot sold for $664,000 last year. Apartments only slightly bigger, and in much less desirable parts of town, go for more than $380,000. Living spaces have shrunk so much that a new term has emerged: “nano flat,” for apartments measuring around 200 square feet or less. Many Hong Kongers have been priced out of the housing market, including young people forced to live with their parents. Their discontent is said to have contributed to recent street protests like the 2014 Umbrella Movement.”

While the government has charged a task force with considering potential housing options, the return of “tong lau” the tenements that used to exist before the advent of highrises are making a comeback. Renamed and repurposed as “Bibliotheque” tiny bedroom units of 50 square feet per unit share common bathrooms and kitchens, like a college dormitory. With rents at $450 to $750 a month these mini units attract mainly young residents.

Another idea is buttressing existing residential buildings and going higher, changing buildings from 25 stories to much higher buildings. Seoul Korea has faced similar pressure but bureaucrats note that above 35 stories the quality of life and connections for residents seem to decrease. Repurposing cruise ships for apartments and adding artificial islands off Hong Kong is also under consideration as well as repurposing the Port of Hong Kong’s 900 acres to accommodate hundreds of thousands of people. Hong Kong has already constructed  port residential developments in the Taikoo Shing housing project built on the former Swire Company dockyards. This development on 8. 5 acres has 61 residential towers and houses nearly 37,000 residents according to 2011 figures. But there is a cautionary tale~the median monthly rent in the rental units in Taikoo Shing is $18,000 to $35,000 Hong Kong Dollars  for units that range from 585 square feet to 1,237 square feet.

taikoo-1980s

 

 

Arbutus Greenway Crosses Broadway

28 Wednesday Mar 2018

Posted by Ken Ohrn in Active Transportation, Bicycling, Infrastructure, Public spaces, Transportation, Urban Design, Urban Planning, Walking

≈ 5 Comments

Vancouver’s Arbutus Greenway is now one step closer to being even more delightful and ubiquitous. The controlled crossing at Broadway for people on foot and on bikes is in operation.  With it, the Greenway becomes a more safe, convenient, direct and delightful transportation corridor. And the number of people using it keeps growing, or so it seems to me.

Broadway.Arbutus.Greenway

Click to enlarge

← Older posts
Follow Price Tags on WordPress.com

Categories

Recent Comments

  • Carmen Mills on Friday’s Puzzle Picture
  • Thomas Beyer on Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks
  • Thomas Beyer on Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks
  • Cir on Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks
  • Tessa on Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks
  • Don on Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks
  • Rico on Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks
  • Rico on Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks
  • Rico on Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks
  • Rico on Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks

Top Posts

  • Subway to UBC [Updated]— In Serious Talks
  • Amazon Repurposing Vancouver's Downtown Post Office?
  • Arbutus Greenway -- Concept Design Preview
  • Arbutus Greenway's Design Concept
  • A Modest Proposal: On B.C. real estate and taxation
  • Bridget Burdett~Engineers Building Bridges for Community Health
  • Friday’s Puzzle Picture
  • A Strong 6ix — Pushing for Change on Toronto's City Council
  • Alphabetic Ballot Bias
  • A Road Trip through New York City~1911

Recent Posts

  • The World of *Mageddons
  • Friday’s Puzzle Picture
  • David Bowie in Brooklyn,David Bowie in the Subway Station
  • Friday Funny — the Cycling Realtor
  • Arbutus Greenway — Concept Design Preview

Authors

  • artitectus
    • Item from Ian: Who speaks for those who don’t speak?
    • Item from Ian: Greenest City, Black Water?
    • Item from Ian: Existential Vancouver[ism?]
  • Scot Bathgate
    • Daily Scot – Seattle Congestion Pricing
    • Daily Scot – Cambie Bridge Bike Lane
    • Daily Scot – As seen in the West End
  • Dan Ross
    • Buffalo Riverworks – ideas for Granville Is.
    • Arbutus Greenway – Known Unknowns
    • Policy Theatre
  • jamesavbligh
    • Will the new Housing Vancouver Strategy Improve Affordability?
    • Vancouver Skyline from English Bay
    • “Die Yuppies”
  • Ken Ohrn
    • The World of *Mageddons
    • Friday Funny — the Cycling Realtor
    • Arbutus Greenway — Concept Design Preview
  • Michael Mortensen
    • A Heat Map of Public Transit Use in Vancouver
    • Vancouver Advances PILOT Affordable Home Ownership Program
    • Massey Tunnel Project: Myths and Lies
  • michaelkluckner
    • How did US cities become so segregated?
    • Labour Supply vs. Demand
    • Affordable micro-suite
  • nlamontagne
    • A High Honour
    • Another smart take on the small scale: Ralph Segal on densifying RS-1
    • Beasley on View Corridors
  • npachal
    • The City of Vancouver is not the centre of the region
    • The City of Vancouver is special
    • Light rail is the only way to go in Surrey
  • pricetags
    • Friday’s Puzzle Picture
    • Colours of Spring
    • The Rise of the TSP: “Big Dogs for the Modern City”
  • Sandy James Planner
    • David Bowie in Brooklyn,David Bowie in the Subway Station
    • Amazon Repurposing Vancouver’s Downtown Post Office?
    • DogSpotting Trending at College
  • tanyapazzy
    • Ode to Oberlander
    • Public Art is the @VanRealDeal
    • Save the dates to plan a fabu Jane’s Walk @janeswalk #janeswalkvan
  • Thomas Beyer
    • 2040 Transportation Plan – Update Required ?
    • More on … Massey Bridge
    • More on … Aquifer

Tags

Agriculture Arbutus Corridor Arbutus Greenway Auckland Australia automated vehicles Banks Account Barcelona Bicycle in Popular Culture bicycle traffic Big engineering Bike share Broadway Line Buenos Aries Burnaby Burrard Bridge Burrard Bridge burrard bridge Calgary Car-sharing Cat Box Contest China City as Workout Commercial Drive Comox-Helmcken Greenway Connections Copenhagen Culture Daily Durning Daily Scot Demographics Density Department of Irony Development Downloads from my iPhone Downtown Waterfront Working Group Driverless cars Eco-Density Evergreen Line Food Fraser Institute Happy City Health Jericho Lands Las Vegas Mobi mural Mural festival murals Poll Post-Referendum Reasons for Yes Referendum Editorials Richmond ride-sharing Road pricing and tolls Robson Square Self-driving vehicles Shanghai Sharing the Past Sightline Institute Singapore SpacingVancouver Spain Stanley Park Streetcar Surrey Light Rail Technology This Week Time lapse Toronto Twinning Tweets UBC Uber ULI Urbanarium Vancouver Biennale Vancouver Diary Viaducts Victoria Vivek Walk 21 West End When Bad Things Don't Happen world health organization

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 7,667 other followers

Follow Us

  • Twitter
  • Instagram

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel