{"id":11150,"date":"2012-06-08T21:24:12","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T04:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingvancouver.ca\/?p=11150"},"modified":"2013-01-21T07:10:31","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T15:10:31","slug":"unvisioning-the-viaducts-critical-analysis-of-the-concept-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/2012\/06\/08\/unvisioning-the-viaducts-critical-analysis-of-the-concept-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"UnVisioning the Viaducts: Critical Analysis of the Concept Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a>
Rendering of Concept Vision after removal of Viaducts. (Image: City of Vancouver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n

The Creekside Community Centre was packed on Thursday Evening, bustling with conversations between city staff and residents as they observed the Viaducts Proposal. Boards [PDFs<\/a>] showing the newly minted concept are the latest development of the Eastern Core Planning Strategy<\/a>\u00a0and the Northeast False Creek High Level Review<\/a>. One of the more recent inputs has been the Re:CONNECT<\/a> competition, which gave opportunities to inject outside ideas and new strategies to help guide and inform these upcoming planning processes, by asking the leading question: \u201cIs this the best we can do?\u201d. It let the City avoid the risk of politicizing \u201cwhacky\u201d ideas, as removing the Viaducts was seen as for some sometime leading up to today. It seems to have been a worthy gamble, and from my view the new product is worth the trouble.<\/p>\n

This was the Second of three open houses for the newly released Concept Vision of the Viaducts produced in coordination between the City of Vancouver, Perkins+Will<\/a>\u2014prolific local urban design firm\u2014and Phillips Farevaag Smallenberg<\/a>\u2014well-respected local landscape architects. The last is open house is today, Saturday the 9th<\/sup>, 10am -2pm at the Central Branch, Vancouver Public Library. However, there is also still time look at the boards and engage the city with comments online.<\/p>\n

The design concept attempts to rationally remove the Viaducts by moving an expanded two-way Pacific Boulevard to the North side of the SkyTrain alignment and connecting to Prior Street. It also ramps down Georgia Street from Beatty to connect to the boulevard system at that lower level.<\/p>\n

The centre of the site is presented as a large park space that integrates the existing green spaces to a renewed False Creek beach waterfront.\u00a0 Development on either side becomes a contiguous whole, connecting the towers of Concord Pacific around the Stadiums into International Village and patching up Main Street with a high-density public “Hogan’s Alley” mixed-use mid-rise development on the two blocks currently used as the Viaducts\u2019 on-ramp.<\/p>\n

Why is this site so important?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Simply put, there are three major elements on why I think this site and its redevelopment is so important to the City.<\/p>\n

1) This district \u2013along with the False Creek Flats\u2013 is the last significant part of the City\u2019s old industrial Core that has yet to be planned for redevelopment. This will be the last of the great mega-projects that have defined Vancouver\u2019s urban nature since after Expo86. A bar for sustainable thinking in urban design has been set in Southeast False Creek, the project before this, and what ever happens on this site is likely expected to surpass that vision.<\/p>\n

2) This place has a strong history with terms of politics, change and what being a city means. It was the fights against the freeways, here, that was the proving ground for many of Vancouver\u2019s now older generation of progressive politicians. Young advocates<\/a>, working with and as representatives for the Chinatown and Strathcona communities, honed their skills battling to stop the freeway at this location.
\nThe viaducts were to be one part of a multi-wing system, yet still stand as the monument to that group\u2019s success by being their only loss. Having no urban freeway is considered by many to be the defining element that makes Vancouver\u2019s core neighbourhoods livable, vibrant, and urbane. As Gordon Price says, “it is the greatest thing that never happened”, yet this site still stands out as an anti-urban lost space, particularly in the overpowering relic of infrastructure left on the site.<\/p>\n

3) This site has been the dividing wound at the crux between its seven surrounding neighbourhoods, all of which connect to each other at this juncture of the City\u2019s core. Strathcona, Chinatown, GasTown, False Creek North, Southeast False Creek, the Eastern Flats and the Central Business District all have vested interests in\u2014and potential impacts on\u2014 how this site is planned and redevelops. Without urban repair, all seven have struggled to work as a connected system of district neighbourhoods and a number have been literally divided by the infrastructure and emptiness of the site.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Panoramic of the Georgia Viaduct circa 1921. (Photo: City of Vancouver Archives Item #: PAN N221)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A heritage of Viaducts:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As highlighted in Spacing Vancouver’s in-depth 3-part series<\/a>\u00a0last year that examined the history and issues of the Viaducts, there is a long tradition of viaducts flying over these northern shores of False Creek. There was the Georgia-Harris Viaduct that as early as 1915 crossed over the rail tracks, barge slips, and belching industry of the Creek.\u00a0By the late 1960s Vancouver was desperately trying to catch up with the rest of metropolitan North America to fully integrate and modernize the city for the car. The viaducts as we know them were the only successfully installed pieces of a downtown interconnecting freeway system that would have cut through East Vancouver, Chinatown, Gastown, and even Kitsilano.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A snippet of the 1970s Freeway Plan, including the Viaducts at centre. (Image: City of Vancouver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The threat of demolition of Vancouver’s ethnic and historical neighbourhoods\u2014and the actual demolition of the Vancouver’s only Black enclave of Hogan’s Alley<\/a>\u2014proved to be the last straw. Learning from Freeway revolts in other cities \u2014as exemplified in the battles of Jane Jacobs among many\u2014a new wave of urban understanding, public energy, and populist politics blocked any further expansion to the system from the early 1970s onward.<\/p>\n

I have had a focused interest in this urban redevelopment site since my first year of college. As part of an urban geography class that eventually led me down the path to planning and urban design as a career, I studied the structure, history, and urban morphology of the then fallow and desolate Northeast False Creek.<\/p>\n

At the time, it had not transitioned from its post Expo86 existence as a razed parking lot. It still holds that lack of function, but little more than a decade ago, few could see the site\u2019s potential beyond the Molson Indy Track that twisted around the macadam and underneath the concrete pillars of Vancouver\u2019s only successfully installed piece of freeway infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Re:CONNECT Viaducts:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Re:CONNECT Competition had no clear winner, but there were a number of strong Ideas that came out of it. More than half of the competition entrants showed some sort of elevated green space as part of reuse of the infrastructure \u2013\u00e1 la NY\u2019s High Line<\/a>\u2013 but others looked at removal rather than reuse, and these seem to have sparked the interest of the Planning Department.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
-Viaduct=Parks+ was the peoples choice co-winner of the Re:CONNECT competition (Images: City of Vancouver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In particular the \u2013Viaducts=Park+ proposal made by a cooperation of Larry Beasley<\/a>, Jim Green<\/a>, Dialog<\/a>, and PWL<\/a> seems to have provided the rationalizing idea necessary to make a concrete proposal for the removal of all that concrete. Its “bold new concept” to move traffic to the North Side of the SkyTrain guideway in a grand boulevard was reminiscent of the\u00a0Cheonggyecheon<\/a>\u00a0in Seoul and\u00a0Embarcadero<\/a>\u00a0in San Francisco. In a similar move, the Downtown is connected to this boulevard via a ramped down Georgia Street, which would then terminate at False Creek, thereby allowing it to be an integral part of the renewed network below.<\/p>\n

Despite being my favorite proposal, certain problematic issues still existed. Specifically, it proposed an interesting and commendable building type of wide sloping towers with green roofs, but placed them in a row equivalently blocking the northern from southern sections of the site and dividing neighbouring districts, in the way that the Viaducts did.<\/p>\n

In a similar, well-intentioned fashion, some of the \u201cPark\u201d concept went too far. Vancouver, and False Creek in particular, has an abundance of green spaces. What is often lacking is effective programming for many these spaces. Where the on-ramp sections of the Viaduct currently divide Main Street, the entrants proposed a Park Space that would connect into Strathcona. Although this\u00a0 park would retain the wound of the Hogan\u2019s Alley demolition, it would also maintain a conceptual barrier separating the North and South sides of Main Street. Extensive and ill-defined spaces, would also be hard to program despite providing effective urban habitat. It is the challenge still facing in the newest proposal.<\/p>\n

Structural Elements of the New Vision:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Illustrative Concept Plan for the Viaducts Area as of June 5th 2012. Red is newly proposed development parcels; Pink is recently proposed and approved development parcels. (Image: City of Vancouver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


\n<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The proposed concept plan has a number of strong elements that seem to be simple answers to the design problem that planners and designers have struggled with for decades. The general overview of the design seems to function as an agglomeration of a number of previous thoughts and principles brought forward in the several past planning processes and concepts.<\/p>\n

Reconnecting Urban Fabric and Streets:<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
New network of proposed connections and streets. (Image: City of Vancouver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The design proposal focuses on the sloped Georgia Street terminus that connects to a renewed multiway Pacific Boulevard on the northern side of the SkyTrain guideway. The new boulevard connects other streets and pedestrian paths through the sites with intersections and at-grade crossings. A streetcar alignment\u2014approved in the 2005 Downtown Transportation Plan<\/a>\u2014is also included and runs to the south side of the new boulevard.<\/p>\n

Georgia Street\u2019s descent from the escarpment allows the ceremonial street to run from \u201cwater to water\u201d with a marking fountain at its end to match that of Lost Lagoon. There have been a number of proposals over the years for a \u201cGeorgia Steps<\/a>\u201d that would act as both pedestrian access and public space in the sun. With the removal of the Viaducts, this plan continues that thinking, but also adds a High Line-like remnant to connect both sides of the Rogers Arena with an elevated public space.<\/p>\n

A new shorter elevated cycling ramp climbs up to this Space, crossing over Abbott and the SkyTrain at Stadium to connect to the Dunsmuir separated bike lane.<\/p>\n

One of the few elements in the design that makes a significant alteration without changing the use is a re-alignment and removal of the s-curve of Carrall Street. The change make the design more rational in plan, but also seems to remove it as a vehicular connection. If the rights-of-way are carefully managed, this could be a strong way to make a strong north-south park spine, but there is a risk it could lead to a street grid that continues to divide the neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Pedestrian and cycling connections abound in the new Plan, including a new ramp to Dunsmuir. (Image: City of Vancouver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nonetheless, the central theme of this plan\u2014from the boards and the design actions\u2014is connections. Pedestrian movement is clear in the plan and appears to be supported by other modes. Connectivity between buildings and between spaces are considered as much as connections between major elements of the road network.<\/p>\n

A Grand Waterfront Park:<\/em><\/p>\n

The central defining use in the proposal is a grand Park that incorporates Andy Livingstone Park and Creekside Park, and centres both of them into a central urban Waterfront Park. A green space at the eastern end of the concord site has been in the books since the 1980s. \u201cCapping\u201d sites with a park was deemed the easier, cheaper, and safer way than remediating those soils below the site that were made toxic by the industrial activity there over the previous century.<\/p>\n

This large park draws public space from the shore\u2014shown with public piers and beaches\u2014deep into the urban fabric. Enough so, that it feels to have a direct boundary along, or direct connection into, each of the seven surrounding neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n

As mentioned earlier, one of the risks of a park of this size will be the difficulty in developing activity programming and interest in its spaces. The design has focused a set of \u201crooms\u201d extending from the central Carrall Street spine, where different active and passive programming spaces can be experienced as independent moments and distinct elements of the park. The park is still large, however, so it will take skill to organize it in such a way that people develop a sense of value towards the place. The newly created urban farm<\/a> under the viaduct could potentially have new life with a permanent home in the more marginal expanses of this green space.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A major urban park sits at the centre of the design with tower and podium development beside. (Image: City of Vancouver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New Land – New Developments:<\/em><\/p>\n

The concept plan also clusters together new development areas at the edges of the plan, where neighbouring development types are utilized and extended. This might be seen as both a critique and commendation. There are few surprises here, save for the lack of something new or bold, beyond the re-oriented fabric of the area.<\/p>\n

To the west of the Park, a continuation of Vancouverist podium towers wrapping around the stadium. These are buildings we have come to expect from the north shore of False Creek. Aside from the removal of the viaducts, little has been done to alter the recommendations from the North-East False Creek High Level Review, ultimately allowing more room to fit more of these types of high-rise developments.<\/p>\n

Conceptually, it completes the Concord Pacific site as a single developed and imageable whole. It pushes no new boundaries, but seems to be the developer’s ‘sugar’\u2014giving Concord relatively ‘safe’ and sellable building types\u2014to take with the ‘medicine’ of the drastic shift to the ground-plane and and still to be negotiated investment in amenities.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A repaired Main St and Hogan's Alley with mid-rise and mixed-use including retail and oriented towards the 'lane'. (Image: City of Vancouver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the eastern side of the Park is a renewed Hogan\u2019s Alley. The two blocks of the on-ramp to the Viaducts are returned to be building parcels that relatively match the surrounding density of their neighbouring blocks. The cluster of mid-rise buildings and squat towers helps to repair main street by continuing activity along it and hold one or two pleasant surprises.<\/p>\n

For example, in reaction to the original Hogan\u2019s Alley neighbourhood that was destroyed by the Viaducts’ construction, the new proposal incorporates a retail lane that increases pedestrian and cultural connections. The vibrancy in this mixed-use lane proposal evokes active retail lanes pedestrian market developments not found much in Canada, but increasingly successful in Australia<\/a> and Europe. There could be some very interesting and creative development opportunities by respecting the site’s past and responding to the traditional structures that make Chinatown so unique.<\/p>\n

A Dead ‘Simple’ and Elegant Solution<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

When a solution to a complicated problem seems simple, even too easy, it is the best praise that a designer can give. It means the idea will probably work, that there is elegance to the plan, and that many actors \u2013once seeing it\u2013 might likely come to a similar conclusion. Big hurdles of design logic must be, and were, traversed to get to this stage.<\/p>\n

Now is the time when the proposal is being brought to the public. Those at the meeting seemed to react to the designs with positive trepidation, as they appreciated the overall thought of integrated and completed neighbourhoods, but still needed to be eased into the idea that removing such an large piece of infrastructure won\u2019t lead to traffic nightmares or \u201cruin\u201d their adjacent communities. Engineers were doing their best to show that even the conservative estimates, where no increased rate of transit usage was registered, showed that the single boulevard road would function well where four one-way streets did previously.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Engineering schematics of possible new street alignments superimposed on an aerial photo of the site. (Image: City of Vancouver)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The path of planning is still fraught with peril, as implementing the concepts, and negotiating with stakeholders will define the next stages. The troubles of the Olympic Village show where politics, markets, and marketing, can trample a path towards success. This is not an Official Development Plan; it is a concept… and concepts by nature are there to inspire conversation about what can and should happen.<\/p>\n

Yet, a good and tangible set of planning ideas do shine through, and my hope is the next stages will further elegantly massage it into realizable and naturally vibrant place that we will all share with pride as Vancouverites.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Brendan Hurley<\/strong>\u00a0is a local urban designer who focuses on planning for adaptive neighbourhood change. His recent work has been internationally focused, but is strongly rooted in his native Vancouver. Living and working out of the heart of downtown, he remains keenly focused on the region\u2019s development and history. Brendan is a regular contributor to Spacing Vancouver, but also consults as director of the\u00a0UrbanCondition<\/a>\u00a0design collective.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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The Creekside Community Centre was packed on Thursday Evening, bustling with conversations between city staff and residents as they observed the Viaducts Proposal. Boards [PDFs] showing the newly minted concept are the latest development of the Eastern Core Planning Strategy\u00a0and the Northeast False Creek High Level Review. One of the more recent inputs has beenContinue reading “UnVisioning the Viaducts: Critical Analysis of the Concept Plan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6058,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11232],"tags":[464,498,553,519,1299,398,292,382,624,381,214,384],"class_list":["post-11150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-bike-lanes","tag-chinatown","tag-eastern-core","tag-false-creek","tag-gordon-price","tag-indepth-features","tag-public-space-2","tag-reconnect","tag-southeast-false-creek","tag-urban-design-x","tag-vancouver-2","tag-viaducts"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nUnVisioning the Viaducts: Critical Analysis of the Concept Plan - Spacing Vancouver<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/vancouver\/2012\/06\/08\/unvisioning-the-viaducts-critical-analysis-of-the-concept-plan\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"UnVisioning the Viaducts: Critical Analysis of the Concept Plan - Spacing Vancouver\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Creekside Community Centre was packed on Thursday Evening, bustling with conversations between city staff and residents as they observed the Viaducts Proposal. 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