Vancouver's Influence Abroad

While some outsiders have recently offered planning advice to Vancouver, it turns out that tales of our success have managed to travel abroad as well.

For instance, PriceTags recently featured a story about how regional leaders from Atlanta came to Vancouver, to see how our city has handled congestion and growth. Among one accompanying reporter's observations:

Vancouver's strategy of density and transit is a stark contrast to the Atlanta region's road-oriented sprawl.

Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin said walking around downtown Vancouver at all times of day told the story for her. On every street, she says the crowds were a mix of shoppers, tourists, students and workers - all walking.

In an article about Vancouver's 'problem' of attracting too many residents, Governing magazine notes that 'cities in the US struggle to lure as many as 5% of their residents into downtown living...Vancouver is at nearly 20% and gaining. Most US cities 'would love to be in the position Vancouver is now, and worry about the consequences later'.

And lastly, Vancouver's planning success has also made headlines overseas - The Irish Times of Dublin has mentioned us, and it's no small coincidence that among the many requests for his services, one of Larry Beasley's biggest post-Vancouver consulting gigs is in the rapidly-developing city of Abu Dhabi.

But before we get too smug about our accomplishments, it's worth noting that we can still learn from other cities which often do a better job at running other aspects of their urban development (like transit, for example).

As Henry Lee, the new Chairman of the Vancouver Board of Trade put it, we need to consider how projects have been done better in other parts of the world, and see how we can bring them to BC.

Comments

[Toby]

thank you for these articles.

[djmk]

yes, vancouver has done many beautiful things to its downtown, but we still have a downtown eastside to be ashamed of.

i think if more tourists went left instead of right after they get of their cruise ships, the articles above would be quite different. Besides, its hard to geographically compare Atlanta with Vancouver. Atlanta does not have the same constraints as Vancouver, and if you look at the suburbs (ie surrey, delta, richmond) which have to be considered, our beautiful city is no different then theirs (except we have a downtown Disneyland)

nonetheless, thank god vancouver's forefathers had the foresight not tear down strathcona for a freeway