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magazine / mj06
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May/June 2006 issue |
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FEATURE
SUSTAINABLE CITIES
Futureville
Vancouver has the fastest-growing downtown
core in North America and is becoming a showcase for the greatest urban experiment
since the 1950s
Excerpt of story by Charles Montgomery
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
CG
In-depth:
Exploring sustainable cities
Check out the newest ideas for integrating urban and natural environments to promote sustainability,
see how pedestrianism may win over gridlock, and find out how to save a dying community.
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It’s evening on Vancouver’s downtown peninsula. The rain drifts in curtains, streams along windshields and storefronts,
cascades from umbrellas, rushes in swaths down the blackened pavement. The 1100 block of Alberni
Street glistens with reflected neon streaks, traffic-light green, bicycle tail lights. The
cars are backed up, idling, steaming — some damn thing is blocking the intersection up
at Bute Street.
If you were behind the wheel on this night, you might feel as though you were living the same
gridlock nightmare experienced by rush-hour commuters this time of day in cities across North
America. You would be wrong. The intersection is congested not by suburb-bound SUVs but by
people on foot, great thick columns of them splashing across the crosswalk like ducks, unconcerned
that you might have a bitter hour to go before you make it home to your supper.
These pedestrians are part of the greatest urban experiment to take place in Canada in half
a century, one that has made Vancouver the envy of city planners across the continent. Within
the five square kilometres that surround this corner, more than 80,000 people are doing what
was once considered unthinkable: living in the downtown core without private backyards, lawns,
two-car garages, basement rec rooms or junk-filled attics; without the sheer square footage
of living space that so many North Americans have come to expect as a birthright. Tens of thousands
of Vancouver’s downtown residents will walk, cycle or take public transit home from work
on this torrential night while their commuter counterparts sit in their cars, drumming dashboards,
cursing the traffic and pondering the cost of gas and the endless parade of big-box outlets,
parking lots and fast-food joints that will mark their path all the way to suburbia.
For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.
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