On a recent trip to Vancouver and the Rockies, I fell in love with Canada, its compact urban centres, wide-open spaces and large-scale mountainous landscapes.
How many cities do you know where you could be skiing or hiking in the mountains in the morning, sailing at the beach in the afternoon and experiencing first-rate food and nightlife in a bustling metropolis in the evening? As if that’s not enough, Vancouver also takes its coffee drinking very seriously and both the city and its residents see the importance of grinding their own beans to improve the taste. That sounds spot on to me.
Vancouver always rates highly in Monocle magazine’s annual survey of the top 25 liveable cities but has recently slipped down the rankings somewhat due to ever-increasing house prices and the impact of congestion.
Creating liveable places is the key driver of our design work at Node. As such, I wanted to find out for myself why Vancouver is widely considered to be such a liveable city and what we can learn from it.
Vancouver has a city population of 667 000 people with 2.5 million living in the metropolitan area. Public transport from the airport is good and a large sea taxi can take you to the North shore. You can also get a seaplane from the Coal Harbour to Victoria on Vancouver Island, the capital of British Columbia, just five minutes from the central business district.
Other key assets the city has is a first rate university and Stanley Park: a large urban park/ wilderness right on the edge of the city which caters for all recreational needs.
Key to the experience of the place is the local people, who are very friendly and welcoming which adds significantly to the sense of enjoyment when visiting. The population is also diverse with a large number of Chinese and Japanese immigrants, which adds to the cultural mix, the vibe of the city and of course – the options for eating out!
The city includes a number of green squares and spaces and the use of roof gardens linked to schools could be clearly seen from our central hotel.
The city structure is legible and easy to navigate, being based on a simple grid system with a number of distinctive districts within the city centre including the West End, Gas town and China town which are all worth visiting. A diversity of districts also means diversity of architecture with certain parts of the city low rise with traditional Vancouver wooden chalet dwellings and other parts looking more like New York.
Colour in the street scene can be seen in some of the rainbow pedestrian crossings that have been implemented in the West End which helps promote a more pedestrian friendly environment whilst providing tangible presence for the LGBT community.
No city is perfect. Like many large cities, homelessness is a key issue that Vancouver needs to address, alongside the congestion caused by the need to cross numerous stretches of open sea and river estuaries. Greater public transport infrastructure spending would help to alleviate this issue, as would the pricing of tolls on some of the crossing points. Public transport did have something that we don’t have in the UK: innovative bus stops and bike racks on the front of buses.
So what has Vancouver taught me about creating liveable cities?
My top five lessons:
- Embrace diversity and density
- Provide high quality open spaces
- Do things differently: as shown in their approach to pedestrian crossings
- Think about different modes of transport
- Have a policy to help homelessness in the city
Finally, Happy Birthday Canada as it approaches its 150th Birthday as a country! It is well worth a visit.
