A particular reference was made about Duthies Books, like this one family-run store was the litmus test for how all things wrong happen to a supposedly perfect urban experiment. Personal nostalgia is often not helpful because times and circumstances change, often for the better, and it can cloud our judgement.

Some of us have had relatives who ran single shop antiquarian bookstores decades ago, and we remember their dismay when Duthies started an expansion campaign that cut into their ability to survive. The tide turned when an even bigger kid arrived on the block and overtook Duthies just as their expansionist debt chickens came home to roost during a time of higher interest rates. It was a case of bad timing as much as anything else.

Many of us have fond memories of the original Duthies at Robson x Hornby (with Bill invariably perched at the upper floor counter handing out intelligent advice to any listener), and miss it dearly, and also miss the last Duthies on Fourth. But its loss wasn’t a sign of some evil international corporate genius rolling across the artisanal Mom & Pop Shop streetscape like Godzilla with half a brain. It was a sign of questionable business judgement that even the best of us suffer from, and the most Left of us have to concede we rely on, albeit with a preference for a smaller scale. Could you even order a book on-line at Duthies?

Moreover, many of us remember that West Fourth was not exactly a prime example of human urbanism brimming with family owned shops and affordable housing. Prior to the last Duthies, the site was a city block sized asphalted car lot previously owned by Chrysler, that bastion of hippy corporatism.

Some of us welcomed the fact that a small local developer built Saltlicks on the car lot and took innovation to a new level with Vancouver’s first large-scale geothermal heating system, something a larger developer wouldnt’t have bothered with because of its high capital cost, which translates into an incremental increase in the unit costs.

However, the result is much, much lower space and water heating costs over the life of the building. The break even point for recovering the costs of the geothermal system was probably reached a decade ago, so other than maintenance, this is likely one of the most efficient and inexpensive buildings to operate in the city. Just ask David Suzuki. If I was looking for a condo, the permanently low heating costs would be a huge selling point.

Moreover, the architects (with input by city planners) created a building scaled quite nicely to the street with a moderately-sized but extremely effective courtyard. Would that Saltlicks (otherwise known as the Capers building) be used as a model for other notable arterials, like Main, Fraser and others.

My point is that businesses like Duthies and Capers (which was locally-owned but is now part of the Whole Foods empire) and the Granville Book Company cannot be effectively used as permanent economic guages for an entire neighbourhood or street. They are only wavelets on the ever-moving sea surface of the marketplace, and part of an ever-changing cityscape. Change is part of living in a city.

Granville Street has always been more intensely zoned and used and abused than Fourth. Lance hits the nail on the head by illuminating the huge block-by-block differences. To use a street as a device to make social commentary is not really fair or valid. If the Entertainment District is cavalierly dismissed as a Public Urinal District, then the day-night, week-weekend, block-by-block and architectural differences are ignored.

Council made a mistake in my opinion by allowing such large and numerous liquor clubs to congregate on one or two blocks, but that doesn’t mean we should stop the conversation about converting Granville to a pedestrian street. It means we need to dilute the flow of vodka and margaritas with more diverse establishments, with great food eaten at very substantial and numerous sidewalk cafes, to increase the number of theatres, to supply more public washrooms (with attendants if necessary), to offer adults as much entertainment choice as adolescents.

Further, one of the most significant historic influences on pedestrian life on Granville was to suck hordes of people underground into Pacific Centre. Perhaps it’s time to daylight this subterranean world to help draw people back to the surface. Perhaps another large glass rotunda is in order, but this time oriented to Granville, like a transparent front door.

Should Granville become 100% pedestrian in future, then the new design will need to change to erase the paraphenalia of vehicles (curbs and gutters, marked lanes). I suggest large sections could be glassed over with beautiful canopies, and that permanent stages be set up for weekly / daily outdoor concerts by professional musicians How about a Busker’s Row? Public art and patterned stone paving would add interest and texture, but elements like these should be seen at more intense and larger scales than we’ve got now.

The fact remains, our public realm has been treated badly, and efforts to humanize our streets have been tepid at best. This be a chance to show how much better it can be.

I would hope the bump outs are treated in a much less utilitarian fashion than Main Street. I can see the busiest bus stops 1/3 to 1/2 a block long with unique and generous rain shelters, stone paving, digital message displays linked to the GPS interspersed with lines of poetry, and pedestals for public art. The public realm really needs a humanizing touch.

The issue of transferring is relative only to the number of bus riders who previously used Granville as a transferring point as opposed to the proportion of riders whose final destination or original point of embarkation is downtown. I suspect the latter outnumber the former by a wide margin, but have no stats to back up my assertion.

Voony has it right: the advent of the Canada Line station on Granville — on top of the pre-existing Granville SkyTrain Station — changes the goal posts by bringing even more pedestrians to the street, and the vast urban experiment of managing crowds during the Olympics emphasizes that the potential for Granville is more complex than previously envisioned.

I think a major study with full public participation on making Granville a pedestrian street is completely warranted.

Robson has been packed as well. Really hard to say which has had more people. Not sure that it really matters.

One thing that I did not not realize is how much better it is walking in the middle of Granville Street as opposed to on the sidewalks until I tried this week. Vancouver has worked hard to preserve the view corridors so people can see the mountains. Only issue is that along streets like Granville, the mountains are really only visible from the middle of the street. If there are buses, only the driver really has a good view and he/she can’t really enjoy it while avoiding pedestrians dashing across the street. If Granville remains a ped street, everyone can enjoy the spectacular view of the mountains and get their iconic pictures of the city. The middle of the street also gets more sun too.

Here are some photos of Granville illustrating the above:
http://gallery.me.com/rac#100092

I don’t doubt that City of Vancouver put lot work toward the redesign of Granville street, and of its positive contribution to the potential success of Granville street but it need to be put in perspective:

In despite of all the effort put on Granville, and other effort to restrict pedestrian activities on Robson (city had fenced the middle of the street to restrain pedestrian activities): the later street has been filled beyond expectation and Translink had to reroute its buses, while that on the former,I didn’t see the crowd fill its allocated space (basically it becomes empty North of Dunsmuir, and South of Smithe is pretty spare)…

So we shouldn’t give more credit that it deserve to some design detail, even if they are contributing to the success, they are probably not catalyzing (so otherwise the numerous of “mall” experimented in America could have been something else that countless failure)…I have the feeling that the big picture is missing here.

I have mentioned addition of building significantly contributing to the urban feel of the street at Robson, but
Grumbelschmoll is certainly on the spot: to make a pedestrian mall a success, you need people in the first place (it is also what I was meaning in my first comment on traffic flow)…and don’t know if readers have noticed, but there is a new transit line called Canada line carrying in the tune of 200,000 riders/day those day, a significant share of it exiting right on Granville, that + the one of Expo/Millenium line…they obviosuly have to go somewhere…

It is true that buses on Howe/Seymour seems to go fast, and from what Lance Berelowitz says the transit user value speed more than the inconvenience of transfer or access. that is not a new finding, tremendous Canada line success is here to validate this, but eventually Translink were underestimating the value of “speed” given by transit rider. May be it will reconsider…

But there is another thing people value: it is readability of transit route:
Worth to repeat: it is simply not good to have a bus route changing according to time of the day or the week, you need to keep it as simple as possible…

So bus routes should be either always on Howe/Seymour or always on Granville, not an combination

That say, it left the business sustainability of a fully pedestrian Granville mall all year around:

Mall owners know how to draw crowd along windows store, by strategically locating pedestrian impediment in the middle of Mall alley: usual motor traffic just do that…but may be there is other alternative…

Also, Lance, in regard of the “archaic law that still requires all restaurants and cafes to erect a physical barrier between sidewalk tables and the rest of the sidewalk” : May I suggest of visiting Toronto, San Diego…even third street in Santa Monica: don’t know if they have the “archaic law”, but restaurant have usually the “physical barrier” … Ok it could be better without but not necessarily…

Your point is …???

Maybe I get it. Hitleristic zoning control. That’s it.

Perhaps you should move to Paris or Venice Ca. and let us go down the toilet with Vancouver in peace.