[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.

[caption id="attachment_9358" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Dubai Marina is one of the defining places of its own city, while also being remarkably similar to Vancouver's False Creek. (Image: Dmitry Moiseenko - AirPano.com)"][/caption] On April 19th, developer-designer Stanley Kwok sat down with architecture critic Trevor Boddy as part of the Museum of Vancouver's presentation of the Maraya Project to discuss his perspective on the built landscape—more specifically his two most notable waterfront mega-projects: Vancouver's Concord Pacific in North False Creek and Dubai's Emaar Dubai Marina. Part One of this InDepth Feature, explored the career and political wrangling used by Stanley Kwok to become one of the most influential players in shaping North East False Creek's Concord Pacific—Vancouver's most iconic development model. In this part, we will peer through to the other side of the looking glass at the United Arab Emirates and see, not only how the urban design of Vancouver was emulated in Dubai Marina, but how Vancouver planning and planners became an integral and lasting influence on the new Middle East.

[caption id="attachment_9045" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="Two defining waterfront public spaces from two definitive cities Dubai and Vancouver (image:  Maraya Project)"][/caption] The Museum of Vancouver —through its Maraya Project—provided a rare glimpse of the behind-the-scenes world of international city building reflected over the time and geography of the works of designer-developer Stanley Kwok. Under discussion the evening of April 19 was the products and impacts of his career’s two defining, influential, and strikingly similar waterfront mega-projects: Vancouver’s North False Creek, and Dubai’s Emaar Marina. What started off as a send up to the venerable city builder's life, times and works, with co-presenter and local architecture critic Trevor Boddy, transformed into a discussion of the nature of city building itself and its effect on urban cultures. Kwok’s projects have influenced the development of Vancouver since he emigrated from Shanghai and graduated from architecture at St. George College in Hong Kong. As an architect in Vancouver, Kwok rallied his connections to become one of the guiding forces on the restructuring of the redevelopment of the False Creek rail yards and the redevelopment that would eventually surround BC Place on the northern shores of False Creek.

When journalists toss around mentions of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, they rarely go without immediately noting that it is “Canada’s poorest postal code.” The Downtown Eastside, Canada’s poorest postal code. We’ve all heard that before. If this is all you know of the neighbourhood, then it’s time you picked up a copy of V6A, a compilation of poetry and short stories from former and current residents of the Downtown Eastside - compiled and edited by John Mikhail Asfour and Elee Kraljii Gardiner. “The Downtown Eastside may be one of the most written about neighbourhoods in Canada, but how much of that writing is self-generated?” asks Kraljii Gardiner. The idea for the book came from the Thursday Writing Collective, a series of free, drop-in creative writing classes at Carnegie Community Centre for members of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The Collective is run by Kraljii Gardiner, who was inspired to create V6A after inviting Asfour to one of their weekly meetings. “John had this sparkling enthusiasm. He bonded with everyone at the meeting and told me afterwards that we must do a book,” said Kraljii Gardiner. “It wasn’t long before we were putting the call out to writers who ever had been part of the Downtown Eastside at some point in their lives. That was our only submission criteria.”

[caption id="attachment_9107" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Fraser Street Stories Plaque."][/caption] Guest Feature by Michael Klassen There's evidence that our community connections are made more tenuous by modern urban living. There was a time when the neighbourhood school and local church stitched together the fabric of community. Today, a parent is just as likely to enroll their child out of the local school catchment as in, while our churches struggle to maintain their flocks in an increasingly secular world. It's got so bad that the Vancouver Foundation is funding a study on our isolated lives, and seeking ways to bring us closer. As a volunteer community organizer, I've seen what a struggle it is to get people involved in their own neighbourhoods. In Vancouver's boroughs, there are many obstacles to making a connection with your neighbours – language and cultural barriers, poor urban design and lack of public space, distractions such as TV and internet, and yes, even the lowly remote control garage door opener. It's possible that you could live in our city and never have any human contact with your neighbours. The times demand that we use our imaginations to strengthen communities, like building homes that have a stronger connection with the street. With the internet we're more connected than ever, yet we're arguably more disconnected as communities at the same time. It's likely we spend more face time with our smart phones and computer screens than talking face-to-face with friends or loved ones.

[caption id="attachment_8176" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Photograph by Martin Tessler. Image courtesy of Perkins + Will Vancouver."][/caption] [Editor's note: We are pleased to give Spacing Vancouver reader's a deeper look into Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) at the University of British Columbia - one of the most ambitious sustainable buildings built in the Lower Mainland to-date. The first part of this two-part series, written by long-time Spacing Vancouver contributor Sean Ruthen, was originally published in the March 2012 issue of Canadian Architect. The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) is a new state-of-the-art green building located at the University of British Columbia. This a 5,700-square-metre office building and lecture theatre is remarkable at a number of levels—for just as much as what you don’t see as what you do. Clearly, the photovoltaic arrays, geothermal heat exchanger and heat recovery unit shared with a neighbouring university building are all readily visible, as is as the green roof, the design elements promoting natural ventilation and daylighting, a wood Parallam structure sequestering 600 net tonnes of carbon, rainwater harvesting, on-site solid waste treatment and a living wall on the building’s west façade. What you don’t see however is the 10 years it took to realize the project, during which time the public opinion on climate change evolved from ignorance, to awareness, to ambivalence.

[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.

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.

  “When have you had your most engaged life experience?” asked Janet Moore and Duane Elverum. A rapt audience sat in silence for ten seconds. “No one ever says they had their most engaged experience in a classroom, or at a computer,” Elverum said. “Typically it's when they've been connecting their passion with their work, often it's outside, they're often sharing a struggle with others, working with people to accomplish something they couldn't otherwise.” Two years ago Moore, Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University's Centre for Dialogue, and Elverum, Assistant Professor in design at Emily Carr University, asked this question at a Vancouver Design Nerd Jam in Vancouver. They envisioned a collaboration between the City of Vancouver and postsecondary students, allowing students to work on long-term real-world projects. The idea quickly gained traction at the City, which had just launched its Greenest City 2020 Action Plan. Greenest City Planner Lindsay Cole asked Moore and Elverum to present their idea to the Mayor's panel. With strong support from the Greenest City team, CityStudio was launched in September 2011.

[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.