[caption id="attachment_9641" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Walking the streets of Marpole. Photo courtesy of Ren Thomas."][/caption] [Editor's Note: We are happy to present the first of a three InDepth Features covering a trio of special Jane's Walk neighbourhood tours around Marpole, Grandview-Woodland, and the West End. These were organized as a unique partnership between the City of Vancouver, Museum of Vancouver and Spacing Vancouver, in light of the ongoing Community Plan process currently happening in each important district. This will be followed by podcasts of the tour, if you missed the Walks, and a final dialogue event on June 19th. Stay tuned for more information.] This year, the City of Vancouver will be starting community plans for three neighbourhoods: Marpole, the West End and Grandview-Woodlands. In addition to the usual open houses and community meetings, the City has been using its new Public Engagement Division (within its Communications Department) in innovative outreach. On May 6th the City, Museum of Vancouver, and Spacing Vancouver partnered with local residents and designers to hold walking tours of the three neighbourhoods as part of Jane’s Walk. The Marpole walk was hosted by landscape architect and urban designer Margot Long, and local resident Jo-Anne Pringle. Lil Ronalds, the City planner working on the Marpole plan, and City Councillors Heather Deal and George Affleck also attended. [caption id="attachment_9643" align="alignright" width="360" caption="Some of the residential streets within Marpole have significant tree canopies. Photo courtesy of Ren Thomas."][/caption] One of the oldest neighbourhoods in Vancouver, Marpole is economically and socially diverse. Primarily a residential neighbourhood, it is bounded by 59th Avenue, Ontario Street, the Fraser River and Granville Street. This massive area is intersected by several major arterials—including Oak Street, 70th Avenue, and Marine Drive—which contribute commercial and industrial land uses, but have also led to physical and social barriers within the neighbourhood. The legacy of streetcar routes and a branch rail line from Steveston to Vancouver are also evident in the existing land use and street patterns: the Metro Theatre being the last reminder of a thriving commercial hub generated by the interurban rail line.

Vancouver has a rich history of urban planning and, this spring, the City of Vancouver is launching three new Community Plan processes in Grandview-Woodland, Marpole, and the West End neighbourhoods. A fourth neighbourhood planning program, for the Downtown Eastside, is also currently underway. When completed, these plans will provide clear but flexible frameworks to guide change and development in these established neighbourhoods over the next 20-30 years. As such, it's worth increasing our awareness of the processes currently occurring and what it means for the future of the city. One of the most significant aspects of the Plan is that it is happening in older, settled neighbourhoods facing increased development pressures. The existing community plans for these areas were developed in the 1970s and 80s. Given the dramatic changes in Vancouver since that time, the existing plans clearly do not reflect the communities’ current challenges including issues around affordable housing, demographic changes and land-use. A unique aspect of the new Community Plan is that it combines features of both the Community Visions process—used between 1995 and 2010—and the older Local Area Planning process—used between 1974 and 1995. This combination will facilitate addressing complex issues ranging from community-wide concerns about traffic, safety, and street level issues to sub-area plans relating to changes in land-use, commercial issues, and improvements to the public realm, as a whole.

The Vancouver Dialogues Project is an initiative taken by the City of Vancouver to create a conversation of understanding between Vancouver’s many cultural groups.  The project is focused around First Nations, urban Aboriginals and new immigrants to the region — all of which come from very distinct cultural backgrounds that are very important to Vancouver’s cultural makeup. Distinct and significant as these communities are, they are also in danger of being marginalized or lost. With this in mind, one key issue identified as being a catalysts for the dialogues project was that it can be very difficult for new immigrants to learn about First Nations culture.  This is due to the lack of information readily available, as well as difficulty accessing what already exists. As a result, many new immigrants have very little knowledge of First Nations cultural heritage and its importance to the history of the city, province and country as a whole. The Dialogues project was set up as a way to bring communities together to share and learn from each other, create understanding and strengthen community relations between different groups. This was done using dialogue circles, community research, cultural exchange visits, youth and elder programs as well as legacy projects.  Of these, the most important part was the dialogue circles which had representative members of different communities prepare and participate in respectful sharing and dialogue.  These helped identify areas that were of particular concern and interest to each community and led to meaningful cultural exchanges.

It started in 1973. It happened again in 1990. And now it’s back. The third Greater Vancouver Urban Futures Opinion Survey is online. The Urban Futures Opinion Survey 2012, now available at www.urbanfuturessurvey.com  is the third in a series of geographically-specific research studies that measure the importance of a number of issues to residents across the Lower Mainland. Previous surveys helped inform the creation of the Livable Region Plan and the Choosing our Future program. The 2012 survey will update and enhance the information available about public attitudes and experiences of ...

[caption id="attachment_4300" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="A selected image from the Spacing Vancouver Flickr pool. Image courtesy of Steven Godfrey."][/caption] [If you're reading this before 8pm, polls are open. Still lost or caught by surprise? Check out Spacing Vancouver's recommendation post for more information on how to vote and who to take a closer look at.] The first post of this series went some way to explaining Vancouver's relatively unique electoral system, but before the ballots start going into the box it's useful to go into a little more depth as to how it works - and doesn't work. To begin with, each voter will be presented with a list of 94 candidates across races for the mayoralty, council, parks board, and school board. Without a ward system, every Vancouverite gets one vote for mayor, ten for council, seven for parks board, and nine for school board, for a grand total of 27 votes. Counting votes is rather straight-forward - simply add up the totals and take the top ten, seven, or nine. This is first-past-the-post on a grand scale, with the potential for candidates to squeak through on a plurality twenty-seven times over. To make things simpler yet, most candidates in contention come branded with a particular electoral organization's stamp of approval. In English, Vancouver has entrenched party politics. It also, again relatively unusually, allows non-resident property owners to vote in its elections.

[caption id="attachment_4385" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Top 5: RJ Aquino (COPE), Geoff Meggs (Vision), Sandy Garossino (I), Andrea Reimer (Vision), Ellen Woodsworth (COPE)"][/caption] Spacing Vancouver brings together contributors from all facets of the urban experience - transportation policy wonks and affordable housing activists alike. Our contributors are volunteers, flaneurs, and professionals, with interests as diverse as our city's urban landscape. While we would not presume to tell you how to cast your ballot, you might be feeling lost with only one day left before election day - so we've compiled a list of council candidates that we think deserve a closer look. Check out the City of Vancouver's website for details on how and where you can cast a vote to support our shared urban environment on Saturday, November 19. More than a dozen contributors have pooled their preferences to produce the following list, ordered in rough decending order. All four major slates are represented, as are the lone Green and key independent - and while the vast majority of those who contributed plan to vote for Gregor Robertson to continue as mayor, Randy Helten and Suzanne Anton did register in our poll.

[caption id="attachment_4110" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Separated Bike Lanes: Vision/COPE will expand them, NSV wants consultation, NPA wants moratorium and various "fixes." Photo by Kathleen Corey."][/caption] Transportation, always a major topic during a civic election, has spiked somewhat in the last few days with prompting from public forums and the release of the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition's comprehensive survey. While both forms of information are useful, they allow candidates to shape their message a little too much at times. Given the right audience, the NPA's George Affleck will stick his neck out further than any other candidate in supporting road pricing in the most congested areas of Metro Vancouver. He'll also muse about solutions to bring a second bicycle lane to the Burrard Bridge and suggest that he doesn't have any particular separated bike lane qualms beside business consultation - unfortunately, a rather different tone than his Georgia Straight op-ed. Similarly, after the Green Party's Adriane Carr played to Sunday's audience by claiming that there were no traffic studies or public support to removing the viaducts, she was conspicuously silent at the next night's transportation forum despite ribbing from Vision's Geoff Meggs. Conversely, her explanation of the "bike-free streets" debacle was embarrassingly thorough as she clarified it to bike-free bus lanes - simply suggesting that cyclists and transit vehicles be given their own space would probably be a better phrasing yet. To be fair, she gave what may have been the night's most convincing arguments in favour of bike lane expansion. Meanwhile, at Sunday evening's Last Candidate Standing, the NPA's Sean Bickerton explained his support for transit based density and touted his use of transit. He's favoured removing the viaducts in the past, against what is now party line. At a Tuesday presser, however, he threw cyclists under that proverbial bus by dedicating an entire platform point to their perceived misbehaviour. While drivers and pedestrians are only covered by a vague "share the road" education campaign, Bickerton wants to bring in cyclist licensing while cracking down on sidewalk riding and those without their styrofoam hats (as opposed to a more balanced approach).

[caption id="attachment_4029" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Photo from the original October 15 march by Spacing Vancouver contributor Christopher Porter"][/caption] The City has just posted notices asking Occupy Vancouver campers to pack up and leave, but if last night's Last Candidate Standing event was any indication, OV is not about to disappear quietly. Indeed the event, located on the same block as OV, was subtly occupied in its own way by people of all ages who do not at all resemble their media caricatures. The key topics of the night revolved around financial issues: housing affordability and campaign contributions from developers loomed large. The three finalists pooled their final question time (supposed to be about what big change their vision would lead to in 20 years) into a group speech and moment of silence for Ashlie Gough - then a standing ovation that even the remaining NPA candidates couldn't say no to. Occupy Vancouver is not, strictly speaking, under the umbrella of issues Spacing normally covers - at least not in its critiquing of large scale economic systems and power brokers. Should it somehow survive and develop toward a Freetown Christiania or Black Rock City, our skills will be more at home pretentiously assaying the vernacular tarpaulin architecture, arranged in the organic tradition and trapped in the aesthetic bifurcation between pastiche and bricolage - with a patina of both hope and despair. The encampment has, however, found itself drawn into the local election cycle. This not solely by choice: Occupy Wall Street just happened to spin off into countless other cities just as British Columbia kicked off the only major municipal elections in Canada this year. Unfortunately, using the movement as a political pawn is an infinitely more effective opposition strategy when you're - sorry Randy Helten, Gerry McGuire et al. - the current mayor-in-waiting with only weeks until the polls. Even Rob Ford in Toronto hasn't yet decided on a plan.

[caption id="attachment_3484" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Thank you to Pakalakamino on Flickr for the source photo. "][/caption] A plethora of perambulating peripatetics and other pedestrians descended on Vancouver at the beginning of October to madly rush through 200 presentations from twenty countries in just three short days. It overlapped both CanU, which I wrote about last week, and a Spacing Vancouver contributors meeting at the same time, and my head has only just stopped spinning from the experience. By the second night, as I struggled valiantly with an avalanche of bright pink balloons alongside Spacing's national editor and local podcaster (true story - photo from another group), I felt the pressure of wanting to attend every single session close in with a rosy, claustrophobic haze. The simultaneously happy and sad reality was that it was simply impossible for anyone to take in all the interdisciplinary opportunities on offer - if it were, I'd still be there, two weeks later, trying to get my fill. Presentations in the breakout sessions ranged from the vague-but-feel-good advocacy victory video to data heavy analysis, and the variety was very much appreciated, if it did make for some tough choices. Note to cycling advocates looking forward to Velo-City 2012: practice your power-walking and learn to be in multiple places at once!

[caption id="attachment_3265" align="alignleft" width="600" caption="   Source photos are from the Spacing Vancouver Flickr pool."][/caption] If this article is the first you've heard of the Council for Canadian Urbanism, you're not alone. Its board is a veritable who's who of the field, however, boasting centuries of experience in the public and private sectors - Vancouver's Director of City Planning, Brent Toderian, serves as President and Toronto's Director of Urban Design, Robert Freedman, is Chair. Its relatively low profile is a conscious choice as it builds up its organizational capacity before broadening its base; last weekend's meeting in Vancouver was only its third annual gathering, and the agenda revolved around finalizing a draft charter and setting up working committees. The group is, at this point, essentially invite-only, though they happily opened their doors to Spacing Media. Several keynotes and a variety of panel sessions started off the conference like many others. Among the highlights were Gordon Price's scathing analysis of the suburban predicament - motordom, it seems, is now his preferred term - and Pamela Blais' critique of the misdirected financial incentives that created that result - perverse cities, or pervurbia for short, in her parlance. The weekends' main attraction for Spacing was, however, the insider's view of this nascent alliance of urbanist giants.