I live downtown and consider myself lucky I only have to commute to north Burnaby to my light “industrial” engineering job – ironically in product development with technology to reduce pollution. Almost every employee at my office lives in Vancouver or North Van. We can’t locate in Vancouver if we tried (our business doesn’t make noise or odours but does require actual manufacturing space and machinery – surely the neighbours could find something to complain about.)
The note about 4x the transit use is generated by commercial development is telling. It would sure be visionary to actually put some jobs around rapid transit nodes or I suppose we could just scrap the idea of people working in vancouver and go all condo resort.

As you mention in your article, soon buyers would be complaining about garbage trucks and noise, and next thing you know the trucks are driving 25 km out of the city to some under used piece of land.

If you look at downtown, the city is making a big mistake in allowing too many condos in the downtown core. It has inflated the price of office space in downtown 10 fold. Now there are only banks and lawyer firms in the downtown core. Residential development needs to happen in the biggest, most valuable and most under utilized section of Vancouver – DTES. But the city and government are afraid to tackle this issue.

I worked in a Surrey industrial park for 4 years, coming from the Westend. And each year the reverse rush hour was getting longer and longer. Our transportation network is not built for suburban industrial parks. If you try taking the bus or skytrain eastward, your travel time doubles once you leave the city – not too mention the carbon footprint because people get tired of waiting an hour for a bus in Surrey and finally just drive their car.

Twenty to thirty years ago the industrial zones were well defined in Vancouver. Most operations moved from Burrard Inlet to remaining spaces on the Fraser River. Now the Fraser River will be the next zone of development. But where are those idustries supposed to go. And I know that condos may look better than industry. But the last time I checked, no one could aford a condo without a job.

Point: residential next to industrial within the context of “Mixed use means mixed use and the only restrictions should be incremental scale, design, transmissions of odors, noise and toxicity.”

Then, mira, no one has to drive, bus of bike to work . . . Colin says its okay nad he should know . . .

It makes about as much sense as proposing to put a condo tower next to the Sun Yat-Sen gardens.

There are only certain types of industrial that will work with a residential mix – Seagram’s and Labatt’s in Waterloo were one of those. No, the neighbours didn’t mind – we hardly knew they were there because they were quiet and contained. Of course, being the old brick and stone factories they were, they were also much more beautiful to look at than most anything industrial built today.

Very interesting note that offices generate 4 times the transit rides – I don’t think many people know that…I sure didn’t.

Brent, probably not a smart move to bring up Formshift.

As for the DENCITY “Wild card”!

By any stretch it did not meet the basic competition requirements: i.e. C of V’s Eco-density requirements and climate change policy. Not to split hairs but wasn’t that what the comp was all about?

This is not about picky – picky this is about the fundamental understanding of mixed use and environmental good manners within that context.

DENCITY wasn’t the only disappointment!

Indeed if anything good came out of the competition it exposed the prevailing lack of understand, extant in the local design/planning fraternity, of what those requirements stand for: an opportunity to learn. Don’t miss it . . .

As for PCI. Their proposal seems not to understand the dichotomous nature of integrated mixed-use relationships. We are still taking one isolated function here . . . another there.

So Colin tells us, ” I grew up in the centre of Waterloo, Ontario, where large factories for Seagrams, Labatt and Globe Furniture (all now gone) were all within a stone’s throw of our homes, and never a concern.” I’ll bet his neighours thought otherwise.

Mixed use means mixed use and the only restrictions should be incremental scale, design, transmissions of odors, noise and toxicity.

Perhaps VPD has yet to arrive at that level of sophistication . . .

Maybe having skytrain stations on the waterfront is just the modern way to bring together different modes of transportation so that they become the transportation hubs of the future.

Certainly, Richmond may hold that kind of promise with water, the airport, skytrain and roads all in rather close proximity. Fast ferry to the island anyone?