A few years ago Urban Guru Leon Krier asked this question — “Do we still need Vancouver?” — at CNU XVII Denver. In response, the Next Generation of New Urbanists invited then-new Vancouver planning director Brent Toderian to speak in favor of Vancouver, which is easy to do. For, since the fall of Hong Kong, Vancouver has been reinvented to become one of the world’s most livable cities, and a model for urbanization.
Urban Vancouver.
While Leon emphatically stated “No” in answering his own question, San Diego has answered with a resounding “Yes.” Former Vancouver planning director, Larry Beasley, easily sold his city and its developers to other north American city booster groups, and San Diego smartly bought it. Hook. Line. Sinker. Our downtown redevelopment agency leadership actively pursued Vancouver developers Bosa and Intracorp and changed the local building codes to allow for single-core podium towers with a suburban townhouse wrap on the street.
All the rage, the imported Vancouver model was built very quickly and effectively changed our downtown and its skyline until the economy inadvertently solved for our affordable housing issues. With our downtown development experiencing a dramatic pause (or contemplative lull), it’s now easier to reconsider just what happened to my city, and where do we go next?
So, I’ve concluded that Leon was wrong… as well as right.
He is correct in his assertion that the Vancouver model is really urbanism-lite and a contradiction of both suburban and urban. The single common entry frontages to the towers choke the flow of people like a vertical cul-de-sac. The towers themselves celebrate and elevate a private imperialism of residential glass fishbowls that looms over and dominates the public realm below. And, he is correct to point out that the suburban townhouses that ‘wrap’ were used to ‘hide’ the urbanism of the narrow point tower that woefully undermines urban intensities with luxury, view-oriented condos. The ground floor townhouse wraps also limit access into the urbanized block with their single private stoop entries fronting the majority of the block. A contradiction, the model is simultaneously a little too much and a little too little… but for San Diego, it was just right.
Contrarily, I find Leon incorrect is in his frame of reference. He is correct to assert that urbanism-lite in a European or east coast USA context is a mistake. However, from 1947 to 1997, San Diego effectively emptied out, made illegal, disenfranchised and completely disinvested in our previously vital downtown. It was lost, gone, and could not be (RE)vitalized as all of its vitality was completely sapped. We had to (RE)learn how to build and live downtown. As local Urban Guru Michael J. Stepner, FAIA, FAICP, smartly points out, “When downtown was vibrant in 1940s, we were a city of 250,000 people. Redeveloping downtown today is occurring in the context of a region with 3 million people.”
San Diego emulates the Vancouver Model.
The model smartly assembled building types without the loathed double loaded hallway corridors and essentially lowered the number of overall units per block. Therefore, for San Diego, the Vancouver model was the appropriate block type to vitalize downtown again.
The traditional face of urbanism.
The lessons of the Vancouver model, good and bad, have been studied and learned. Now’s the time for next steps. A more 3-dimensional urbanism, where people connect at the street, and at the 3rd, 6th, and upper floors… and back down to the street. The blocks will be more permeable, translucent, engaged. The street will be the entry, rather than the edge, of the blocks, and we will grow closer to the ground as we need less privatized security and more penetration into where people live, work and play. I now agree with Leon that Vancouver is not the appropriate model to urbanize San Diego’s future (though he visited San Diego in 2009 and surprised me with an appreciation for our towers, finding them playful, even fun, and certainly not as oppressively repetitive as he had seen in Vancouver and on the east coast), but it was a necessary step to encourage generations of people traumatized by the bucolic safety of suburbia to emerge from their paneled dens to walk, talk, shop, and have fun with each other downtown.
–Howard Blackson
Excellent post, Howard… thanks! The picture you’ve painted shows… once again… that urbanism is more complex than most of the other things we deal with on a daily basis because it happens over a long timeframe.
One tangent near the end about caring for lawns… We all have heard ad nauseam how people want maintenance-free stuff. Painting wood once every five years is considered intolerable. Yet how is it that for one element of the American home (the lawn) we’ll willingly spend time, money, and sweat maintaining it EVERY WEEK? And we’ll willingly spend even more money for chemicals and poisons to apply to it several times a year. And if some creature like a mole decides to take up residence there, we’re so infuriated that we kill the little critters. How do you explain that? Are we mad??
Mr. B – first off, it was XNU that brought in Toderian, not NextGen. Shame, shame…
Second, I think (surprise!) it’s more nuanced than this. There is no one Vancouver solution. We often think of the podium block as THE Vancouver solution, but in visiting there, it’s far more complex. That is one model – there are many. The beauty of Vancouver has been in its constant experimentation in high-density, high-quality urbanism. Some of it works really well, and other parts of it are disappointing. But it’s a critical experiment in how to achieve high-density in today’s world, rich with building codes, elevators, and market demands. I know the current era is different, but many of the same technical issues remain.
We all love the 4-8 story urbanism you reference, and I’d love to see more of that built as well, but as New Urbanists we too quickly disregard the Vancouver approach(es).
Your pal – KK
Dear Klink,
First, same-same, only different. Second, agreed. But, I’ll ask again, is it the future?
HB3
Yes, I think that solution should always be in the toolkit. It won’t be as dominant for a while b/c of the banking/housing crises. But, there still will be some areas that have enough money flowing in to consider it.
I’m going to have to drop some XNU knowledge on you, I see.
I don’t think you explained enough about what you mean by “true urbanism.” Are you talking about buildings that are built butted up next to each other without any space in between them?
Barlo, you’ve found me out… as that is to be the topic of my next blog. In short, ‘true urbanism’ is enabling blocks to allow for the complexity of downtown intensities, such as retail shops, industrial shops, manufacturing and sales on-site, housing, offices.(See: http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Green-Economics/2011/1130/The-dangers-of-doing-business-in-the-suburbs).
The Vancouver tower wraps, as applied in the US West, have effectively sealed off the interior of the blocks off to these various users by being mostly safe residential folks. Our next urbanism will build towards more permeable blocks with necessary access to more private spaces by going vertical… in a horizontal fashion (I’ll have to draw it).
In fairness, Van has learned from its own lessons and there is still more to be learned from their ‘latest’ eco-density work there (find former project manager, Neal LaMontagne on twitter, @nlamontagne). Thanks for asking and look for the follow up in the next few weeks.
Looking at the example from San Diego, I don’t see a failure of the Vancouver model, but rather really pathetic architecture at the street level. These liner buildings are hidden behind security walls. This doesn’t relate to the street; it hides from it.