[Editor's Note: We are pleased to present the third and final part of Ian Lowrie's investigation into Vancouver crime patterns.] What makes a street safe? Is it high fences? Street lights? The police? Your trusty iPhone? One or the other, there are certainly streets within which one feels safer walking down than others. As we are well aware, one will even go out of our way at certain times of day to take a route that makes us feel less vulnerable. What kind of streets offer such perceived safety? In the final part of Mapping Vancouver Crime we will follow up on the trends seen in the city and neighbourhood crime maps and take to the streets to explore the spatial details that offer either feelings of security or fear. A considerable amount has been written on the topic and to help relate the discussion to Vancouver I have chosen to look at two residential streets with contrasting spatial organizations: one within the area of Kerrisdale (also highlighted in Part Two), and the other street belonging to the Strathcona neighbourhood.

Spacing magazine presents the CREATIVE MAPPING CONTEST Do you love maps? Are you an illustrator, graphic designer, or visual storyteller? Spacing wants you to submit your original creative maps inspired by a Canadian city. WHAT MAKES A MAP CREATIVE The art of map-making has taken tremendous strides in the digital age. In the last decade, there has been an explosion of maps that are not necessarily meant to be used for directions, but instead are considered works of art and inspired imagination. We want you to create an illustrative map that reflects a Canadian city (or a neighbourhood, community) or is inspired by the urban elements that make up a city (examples: waterfront, transit, cycling, walking, graffiti, parks, architecture, laneways/alleys, streets, traffic, taxis, weather, sewers, infrastructure, etc...). The above map — featured in our current issue — is a good example of creative mapping. DEADLINE: Monday, April 30th, 2012 COST: Free!

[Editor's Note: We are pleased to present the second part of Ian Lowrie's investigation into Vancouver crime patterns. If you missed the first part, you can read it here.] In Part One of Mapping Vancouver Crime, we looked at intensities of crime at the scale of the entire city as well as its relationship to topography and density. The maps are not intended to deduce the most dangerous neighbourhoods of Vancouver but are rather meant to illustrate at different scales where crime is happening in Vancouver and to take a critical look at the built form of those places. In Part Two, we zoom in on some of the most affected areas of the city in search for finer grain spatial trends. The following maps give readers information on commercial and residential break-ins at different scales.

[Editor's Note: The relationship between crime and urban form is an important, but under-discussed, phenomenon. As such, it is our pleasure to give the Spacing Vancouver readers a three-part series by contributor Ian Lowrie who is attempting to looking at Vancouver crime patterns.] Living in Vancouver I always believed the city to be a mostly safe place. Even the “rougher” parts of town never gave me much trouble with a little common sense, and as long as I wasn’t a targeted gang member eating at a downtown steakhouse, I have usually felt safe. This is why I was surprised to see Vancouver ranked so high on Maclean’s magazine round up of the most dangerous Canadian cities. Not only are the highest national crime rates coming from cities in the west of the country, but Vancouver proper is ranked at an intimidating 18, which is well above other major metropolitans like Toronto at 52 and Ottawa at 74. The rankings are based on six criminal offences: aggravated assault, robbery, homicide, breaking and entering, auto theft and sexual assault. I recommend taking a look at Maclean’s interactive crime map of Canada for the full comparison. In 2010 I became interested in mapping Vancouver crime as a means of learning about the spatial qualities that contribute to criminal activity. Admittedly, I began the exercise with the naïve perception that the most dangerous things in this city are loose granola on bike paths and closing Skytrain doors. However, I was quick to learn that behind the Cascadian zeal of group hugs and Ecotopia is a backstory of dark urban crime.

Spacing magazine presents the CREATIVE MAPPING CONTEST Do you love maps? Are you an illustrator, graphic designer, or visual storyteller? Spacing wants you to submit your original creative maps inspired by a Canadian city. WHAT MAKES A MAP CREATIVE The art of map-making has taken tremendous strides in the digital age. In the last decade, there has been an explosion of maps that are not necessarily meant to be used for directions, but instead are considered works of art and inspired imagination. We want you to create an illustrative map that reflects a Canadian city (or a neighbourhood, community) or is inspired by the urban elements that make up a city (examples: waterfront, transit, cycling, walking, graffiti, parks, architecture, laneways/alleys, streets, traffic, taxis, weather, sewers, infrastructure, etc...). The above map — featured in our current issue — is a good example of creative mapping. DEADLINE: Monday, April 30th, 2012

    There were many great election-related maps being released this past week, and on the strength of many that I have created in the past, I decided to reinterpret some of the base data release by the City of Vancouver three-dimensionally as a means of clarifying the information. The graphic here depicts Gregor Robertson voting percentage and its spatial distribution across the city.  Percentage is straightforwardly shown in the vertical scale and is emphasized using a colour saturation/value scale - from the  deepest blue representing the highest voting percentage to a very light blue, referring to the lowest.

Downtown Eastside has come to be known as “Canada’s Poorest Postal Code”.  The area radiating from the intersection at Main and Hastings has gained notoriety as an epicenter of drug use, poverty and mental illness.  This map focuses on a few blocks west of this intersection, on Hastings Street between Cambie and Columbia.  Recently, an influx of investment has driven change in parts of the neighbourhood, the most prominent new development being the new Woodward’s complex, a mixed-use conglomeration of buildings that occupies of the block of Hastings between Cambie and Abbot.  New life is being injected into the community, but is it for the better?  Development and the evolution of the neighborhood are inevitable, but development should not occur at the expense of current occupants.

This fall, Spacing contributor Laura Kozak will be teaching Urban Cartography at Emily Carr University of Art + Design . Learn to critically read and record the underlying geometry, overlapping histories and multiple agendas of the city through practices of mapping,measuring and sketching. Using architectural and cartographic tools and techniques, students in this course will work at multiple and nested scales to understand the metrics behind what makes neighbourhoods different, how we move through the city, and how the built environment has taken shape. The final outcome of the course will ...

[caption id="attachment_1315" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Photo courtesy of Will Keats-Obsorn from the Vancouver Critical Mass flickr pool."][/caption]   When writer and community organizer Chris Carlsson proposed that the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) start a group ride home together on the last Friday of the month, the idea was cautiously embraced by the ad-hoc group of cyclists who would meet at the back of a Chinese restaurant in the early 90s. The SFBC had no interest in sponsoring the event, Carlsson says, but that decision set the course for the spirit of the ride: it would be a spontaneous, unstructured event powered by the collective energy of its participants. On the last Friday of September 1992, a group of 48 cyclists gathered at the foot of Market Street in San Francisco for its first group ride that would become a monthly tradition. Critical Mass was born. The event soon spread to other cities, and the number of participants grew exponentially with each ride.

Walking along Commercial Drive between Graveley St. and Grant St. - one block north of 1st Ave. - one passes a relatively unassuming building. Located on the west side of the street at the corner of the mid-block laneway, it is known for the quality of the Italian food within, much more that the architecture that houses it. Yet, despite all that is unremarkable about the building, the design of the Arriva Ristorante Italiano holds a wisdom that planners and designers can and should learn from - particularly with respect to how a building can meet a laneway with intelligence and dignity.