In central Vancouver, modernism and New Urbanism mesh
PHILIP LANGDON
Probably the most stunning new sky-line in North America is that of downtown Vancouver, British Columbia. In the past decade, a succession of “point towers” — high-rises with thin profiles, filled mostly with rental and for-sale apartments — has shot up within walking distance of the Canadian city’s center.
Many new urbanists have an aversion to towers, seeing them as expressions of all that was anti-urban and inhumane in the ideas of early modernists like LeCorbusier. But towers may be indispensable in a region like greater Vancouver, where the population swelled by 24 percent between 1991 and 2001, putting increased pressure on a limited land supply. Since the 2001 census, the metropolitan population has surpassed 2 million, and it is expected to continue growing quickly.
The downtown core of Vancouver, which has gained roughly 38,000 residents in the past 12 years, has become an ambitious test of whether high-rise construction, architectural modernism, and new urban planning can all coalesce in a pleasing form. If this experiment succeeds — and so far, the results are encouraging — Vancouver could be North America’s biggest demonstration of New Urbanism’s ability to adopt a distinctly modern architectural expression.
To understand how Vancouver managed this unusual combination, consider the following:
• Population within the 44.3-square-mile city grew by 16 percent from 1991 to 2001, to 546,000. The city, in the past two decades, has emphatically reversed the population decline that began in the early 1970s.
• Vancouver gained many immigrants from Hong Kong, Singapore, and other cities where tall buildings are the norm and where people are accustomed to living close together.
• The region is hemmed in between the Pacific Ocean to the west, mountains to the north and east, and the US border to the south, limiting its ability to sprawl. Provincial decisions to preserve much of the region’s farmland forever are further restricting peripheral development.
• Land costs are high, giving developers an incentive to squeeze as much building space onto a site as possible. The metropolitan area is 50 percent more densely populated than metropolitan Portland and
During a downturn in the office market in the 1980s, Vancouver changed its zoning to encourage residential development surrounding the central business district. The city also seized the opportunity to redevelop twoformer rail yards — along False Creek just south of downtown, and along Coal Harbor on downtown’s northern edge — as mixed-use areas containing thousands of units of housing.
“We have the fastest-growing residential downtown in North America,” says Larry Beasley, co-director of planning for the city. “In the heart of our downtown we have about 78,000 people.” Vancouver never allowed freeways within the city limits, so as traffic tie-ups in the region have grown, many people — including families with children — have concluded that it makes sense to live in or near downtown, where they can walk or bike to work or use the extensive system of buses, ferries, and SkyTrains. “Congestion is our friend,” says Gordon Price, a city councilor from 1986 to 2002.
The complete article is available in the December 2003 issue of New Urban News. Subscribe or order the individual issue.