Just a few days before July 4th, and ahead of the July 6th IOC decision regarding who gets to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games (NYC is a candidate city, although Paris is the odds-on favourite to win), new plans for the redesigned Freedom Tower have been released to the public.
Including its spire, the Freedom Tower will rise to the symbolic height of 1,776 feet, with 69 storeys of office space set atop a 200 foot protective pedestal. The building itself will top off at 1,368 feet - the same height as 1 World Trade Center.
By comparison, Vancouver's tallest building, the Shangri-La, will be 60 storeys high, topping out at 642 feet.
So what's this got to do with Vancouver? Nothing much, really. Except for the fact that New York is still the great North American metropolis that continues to exercise considerable influence over hinterland cities like our own.
As in the past, highly symbolic projects such as the development of Central Park, the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, or the expansion of New York's highways system have played an enourmous role in influencing most other North American cities' development over subsequent decades.
(The creation of urban parks, the construction of skyscrapers, and suburban development were all touched off by the above examples).
This leads to the following question - what major projects might have a similar influence on Vancouver's character and development in the future? In general, the 2010 Olympic Games have already spurred a great deal of construction - but are there any specific projects that will inspire further development in Vancouver, or become iconic symbols of our city?
Or is Vancouver's nature - the mountains, oceans, forests - a sufficient symbol of our city's character, and of who we are?
And finally, what might Vancouver's influence be on development in other cities - in North America, and around the Pacific Rim? Comments appreciated - please add them below.
New Design is Unveiled for Freedom Tower [NY Times, registration required]
This is a marvelous blog - I hope you keep it up.
Mountains and ocean do seem to be at the heart of the idea of Vancouver. The dense construction downtown only reinforces the strong nature-culture divide in Vancouver. It looks at first like an attempt at Manhattanization, but is really a deliberate attempt to confine the city to as small an area as possible (far beyond the constraints imposed by those natural surroundings). Possibly a laudable goal - but it gives the appearance of a wholehearted acceptance of urbanism, when in fact Vancouver is much more conflicted than that. After all, the spires of Coal Harbour (Shangri-La included) are all about the view of ocean and mountain. "City view" in Vancouver is better than, say, "garden suite," but it's still a euphemism for second-rate.
An off-topic question: Why doesn't Vancouver's attempt to create denser housing include semi-detached houses? I mean the kind where you actually own the land underneath, not some imaginary strata-titled fraction of the land. Duplexes, triplexes, and so on are scarce, and new townhouses are strata-titled, meaning committees and monthly charges. I understand that historically the city was committed to the detached house - but why the stranglehold of the strata title now?
Posted by: interested bystander | Thursday, June 30, 2005 at 06:54 PM