Vancouver is called one of the “most livable cities” – kite flyers, sailboaters enjoy English Bay from Spanish Banks – photo Todd WongVancouver vs San Diego? vs Logan Lake?
Vancouverism is an architectural concept for which diversity of use, diversity of space and diversity of people is included.
VANCOUVERISM is a wikipedia entry… and a traveling architectural exhibition to Paris and London.
SAN DIEGOISM is non-existent.
And where the heck is Logan Lake?
Vancouverism is also a touring exhibition to London and Paris. see: http://vancouverism.ca
Last weekend in Vernon, when somebody from Logan Lake found out I was from Vancouver, they complained about how “unfriendly” Vancouver was – especially about parking. I had to ask where Logan was located. Answer: between Kamloops, Merritt and Cache Creek. It is tiny with a population of only 2,100 people. The Metro Vancouver area has a population of 2,116,581. This person complained that mass transit didn't help him when he visited Vancouver, and that there is no freeway.
I pointed out that you cannot apply rural values and issues on a large city and expect similar results. Vancouverites fought against a freeway through Chinatown and Strathcona neighborhoods. I told him that ubanist Jane Jacobs moved from the U.S.A. to Toronto because she declared it “more livable,” and today Jacob's son Ned Jacobs lives in Vancouver's Little Mountain neighborhood for it's livability where he leads an annual Jane's Walk.
Todays' Vancouver Sun newspapers reported on a San Diego news blogger
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Vancouv
San Diego blogger Arthur Saim compares Vancouver to San Diego, and says that Vancouver is “depressing” for him when he thinks about the potentials for San Diego. Many comments on the blog have focussed on the social problems of Vancouver
See original article:
http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-08-03/blog-forum/arthur-salm-th
Here are some links and quotes about Vancouverism:
“Vancouverism is characterized by tall, but widely separated,
slender towers interspersed with low-rise buildings, public spaces,
small parks and pedestrian-friendly streetscapes and facades to
minimize the impact of a high density population.”
-The New York Times, December 28, 2005
The word first entered the argot of American architects and city
planners over the past decade, who began speaking of “Vancouverizing”
their under-populated, un-loved urban cores, seeking inspiration from
Canada’s Pacific portal’s re-development successes. Our city has become
first a verb, and now, an ideology promoting an urbanism of density and
public amenity. Vancouverism at its best brings together a deep respect
for the natural environment with high concentrations of residents.
Within condominium residential towers downtown and courtyard and
boulevard-edging mid-rise buildings elsewhere in the city,
Vancouverites are learning to live tightly together; a healthy,
engaging – even thrilling place.
Not Asia, not Europe, not even North America, but a new kind of city
living with elements from all of these – a hybrid that now demands to
be taken on its own terms. In the language of city-building,
“Vancouverism” is fast replacing “Manhattanism” as the maximum power
setting for shaping the humane mixed-use city, important ideas for a
new era of scarce energy and diminished natural resources.
“Vancouverism is evolving a second and more interesting sense: that
of the latent character, the subjective quirks of urban identity hidden
behind these shiny façades. Call it the theory, or the legacy, or the
idea of Vancouver, but increasingly our writers are producing books
that capture this precious moment of self-knowledge, as this
good-looking adolescent of a city enters a more complicated young
adulthood.
Meredith Quartermain’s new collection of poetry, Vancouver Walking,
deals with this latter sense of Vancouverism, her word-images evoking
our hidden histories and the textures of our streets, especially on the
East Side.
Lance Berelowitz’s Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination
deals with the bricks and mortar and geographies of this town, a
rah-rah appreciation of our downtown and our more officially sanctioned
westerly zones.
Lance Berelowitz is a consultant to the urban development industry
who came to Vancouver from his native South Africa in 1985, after a
decade studying architecture and working in Europe… The first half of Dream
City, in particular has a “Gee whiz, aren’t we bloody marvelous” tone,
no doubt born of these prior commissions. “Vancouver is the poster
child of urbanism in North America” is his opening sentence, and too
much of the book varnishes over that poster with multiple coats of
gloss.