(1) Test urban design principles, and how they would apply to the historic neighbourhoods.

I also hope that it would the planning paradigm. Thus, I hope that the goal of the charrette would not be to create a neighbourhood “plan” in the sense of a drawing; but a

(2) “Vancouver Historic Neighbourhoods Intensification and Preservation Plan” an urban design plan presenting all the pieces that together make up “good” urbanism.

You know, the stuff we can measure and the stuff that all can agree about. That way, the charrette would be the first stop on the path to building consensus.

Our own seawall pales in comparison because it lacks the volume and speed of traffic, on the one hand, and the volume and speed of people on the other. People stroll the ramblas of Montevideo, or sit along the benches built into its sea wall, recreating the “passeggiata” that we know from Greece, Italy and Spain.

Beginning in the 1950′s, houses along Montevideo’s rambla were bought, and hi-rise slabs went u[. Wall-to-wall stuff. In the so-called Third World, selling condo-views happened three to four decades ahead of Spaxman-Beasley. Which always made the Vancouverism a bit strange for me: why are we in Canada so eager to built that stuff given our riches?

I grew up 2 blocks from the beach and the rambla. The view from our 1940′s, 3-storey, multi-aspect apartment was of the backs of the tall (tower) buildings “walling off” our view of the v=sea side and the beaches. It never bothered me. Our streets were safe for me and my friends could ride our bikes on the sidewalks with abandon, and play soccer on them too—a Uruguayan version of Canadian street hockey.

Twenty years later, and holding degrees in Building Technology and Architecture, I returned to the streets of my childhood. The towers had moved inland, and the results could not have been more demoralizing.

Sidewalks were chocking with parked cars. Views I remembered had gone missing, and shadows fell on places where none existed before. The pedestrian sheds still worked. Places were still the same distance apart. But the sense of place had been altered. The woman that had chased me with the equivalent of a wire hanger in her hand because I had run over her water hose with the rear tire of my tricycle would now be living several storeys above the street. Kids not old enough to ride bikes had better be riding their tricycles in the penned off yards of their kinder gardens or day cares.

Was there more density? I suppose. Tour’s over, back to our own place.

Wouldn’t we do better to intensify the suburbs, and hard-wire the town centers with fast and efficient transportation, than to unleash the land-lift, and tip the playing field to the large corporations? Are we not toying outright with the potential of corrupting our system of governance?

Lewis, very heartened to hear that news!

On the other hand Curitiba Br. has handled its towers very well.

Essentially the city is laid out along five bus transportations corridors . . . high rises, and they are high, line the colour coded bus routes . . . with mixed use, I did not check the functions, in the interstices: very, very clean, very, very nice!

Puerto Madero BA has fixed up the docks, way too expensive for my pocket book, by retrofitting the old dock four level warehouses and replicating their foot print when building anew.

But none of that has to do with HA review area!

PS Bologna has been “Bolshi” for as long as forever. I haven’t been there since 1949 but Vanc. could learn a thing or two . . .

I have no problem with the downtown peninsula, for example, being a “tower zone”.

I still don’t like towers. Not because I object to them “a priori”, but because of what I see built around me… Our development industry, by necessity, dumbs down the product.

And because of what I’ve seen towers do in two south american cities, my home town Montevideo, and the town where a whack of my cousins live, Córdoba, Argentina, over a period that dates back from the 1950′s to present day.

I talked to Michael’s about his idea for the charrette. It is a kind of “conceptual exercise” or exploration of options. I think that could be very good. We could test alternative building products, for example, and have an industry quantity surveyor give us an idea of cost/profit.

Would like to have a transportation engineer on board. These days, we I like to think about “Canadian Quartiers on Rails”.

I understand the S Y-S people do not favour a tower over-look and I would respect their position.

The HAHR study was conceived as a sky-line profile study some months back and is, in my opinion, an infantile debasement of the process (I said so at the time).

Who cares what the sky line looks like from . . . I dunno Grouse Mountain?

Indeed I stand by my ten points: to stigmatise the genré “High-rise” is not urban design it is obsession!

We can do better.

I have known Lewis for a long time and respect his talents and urban design experience but on this thread he is making an ass-hole of himself: towers do add density and can, if well designed and integrated, do so gracefully.

Sin embargo if indeed they compliment and add density to this area, there are some sites that could work.

Some posts back Michael suggested a charrette. If we can pull that off, I’ll be in there with both feet and after that the consensus is no towers in the HAHR I’m cool.

Add to the unbearable southern orientation, the even hotter western orientation, when especially in winter, the low afternoon sun cooks single-aspect dwelling units. Good points.