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What Can Vancouver Learn from Melbourne?

Metro Vancouver is often hailed for its ability to accommodate growth while maintaining a good quality of life for its residents. However, things are far from perfect and the region faces ongoing challenges in creating vibrant, accessible communities and supporting transit, walking and cycling throughout the region.

On October 4, 2011, Rob Adams, the Director of City Design for Melbourne spoke at SFU Vancouver. He shared some of his experiences in leading a stunning transformation in Melbourne. He also offered some ideas about how this success could be applied to development in Metro Vancouver’s key centres.

I hope to write a few posts one some of hs specific points in the near future. In the meantime, here is a video of his remarks. It is well worth the watch if you are at all interested in placemaking.

Creating Places for People — The Melbourne Experience

Q&As

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists [September 17th-23rd]

This week’s news and views for urbanists… (and a few from last week too!)

Photograph courtesy Ian Lockwood, via Atlantic Cities

Debunking the Cul-de-Sac: The design of [North] America’s suburbs has actually made our streets more dangerous. (Atlantic Cities)

5 Things That Inspire Me: During these harsh economic times, planner Melissa Hege looks at 5 things that have inspired her inner planner. (Planetizen)

Five Solutions to the “War on Cars” Madness: Seattle city councillor Sally Bagshaw looks at some actions we can collectively take to promote détente. (The Stranger)

Digital Placemaking–Authentic Civic Engagement: Digital placemaking is the integration of social media into placemaking practices, which are community-centered, encouraging public participation, collaboration, and transparency. (Project for Public Spaces)

Modeling Open Source Cities: Peter Sigrist looks at the open source movement as a promising approach to urban development and governance. (Polis)

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Friday 5: Long Weekend Reading for Urbanists

This week’s news and views for urbanists:

Where is the Center of a City? By blowing Google’s red markers up to “life-size” and physically planting them in real places, German artist Aram Bartholl brings attention to the blurring between real and virtual space. (Architizer)

MIT’s Place Pulse: A “Hot Or Not” For Cities, To Fix Broken Blocks: A website uses crowdsourcing to convert people’s perceptions of streets into a quantitative benchmark for measuring fuzzy qualities like how safe, rich, and unique a city feels. (FastCo Design)

A Vision of How People Should Live, From Desert Revelers to Urbanites: Rod Garrett, who laid out Burning Man, the annual festival of self-expression in Nevada, drew accolades for his approach. (New York Times)

How garage & basement apartments help people, neighborhoods and the environment: One of the best ways to accommodate growth (as we must) without either exacerbating sprawl or disturbing the character of existing communities is by using so-called “accessory units.” (NDRC Switchboard)

Pop-up placemaking and next gen urban neighborhoods: If there ever was a time to experiment with forward-thinking placemaking, the time is now. ‘Pop-up’ placemaking allows just that by enabling allow cities to try out innovative placemaking without much if any taxpayer commitment. (Cooltown Studios)

Hope you have a great long weekend!

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A Place in Mind [Weekend Watch]

Here is a video book trailer for A Place in Mind: The Search for Authenticity by Avi Friedman. A Place in Mind is the result of Avi Friedman’s worldwide search for places where people congregate and feel comfortable. in the book—and this video—he conveys his excitement at discovering authentic, people-friendly places.

Dr. Avi Friedman is a McGill University professor and co-founder of the Affordable Homes Program at McGill’s School of Architecture. Wallpaper Magazine named him one of ten people “most likely to change the way we live.”

The video was produced by Immediate Productions.

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Placemaking: David Engwicht [Weekend Watch]

David Engwicht (author, place maker & resilient city capacity builder) discusses the role of placemaking in contemporary society.

How will you write your self into the story of your space?

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanist [April 16-22nd]

My weekly wrap up of news and views on various aspects of urbanism:

Bicycle Cities: Biking is receiving new attention in the United States as a way to reduce commuter trips by car in urban centers. (Urban Land)

Cities Versus Suburbs Is the Wrong Debate: The debate over urbanism often pits suburbs against urban areas. But the real debate is about walkable areas versus car-dependent ones, according to Christopher Leinberger. (The New Republic)

UN-HABITAT Adopts First-Ever Resolution on Public Spaces: UN-HABITAT (United Nations Human Settlement Programme) recently adopted its first ever resolution on public space, encouraging equity and the development of quality public spaces. (Project for Public Spaces)

Gettin’ Paid: Placemaking and the Importance of Compensation: More times than not, NIMBY opposition stems from a sense that proposed development is not of equal or greater value to what would be lost. (New Urban Network)

Is Your City Too Safe? Risk-averse municipal managers are smothering civic vitality. (The Tyee)

NOTE. There will be no Friday Five next week as I will be en route to Vancouver, and my internet access will be intermittent.

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Best of Yurbanism: Placemaking

The Place Diagram, from the Project for Public Spaces

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m taking a Reading Break this week. In lieu of new content, please enjoy this selection of some of my most read and shared posts on placemaking:

What is Placemaking?

Placemaking is “creating a sense of place and a place of sense”

ABC+D’s of Placemaking

An overview of the intersection of ABCD (Asset Based Community Development) and placemaking.

Placemaking, Public Space and Community Culture

Until a change occurs both in our attitudes AND our infrastructure, a true urban culture will struggle to find a foothold.

The City is My Living Room

Instead of thinking about the # of sq ft you will give up moving from a suburban home, think about the amenities that you will gain.

Streets as Places

The life of any great city occurs on the street.

More of my most popular posts can be found on my Best Of page.

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists [Jan 29th-Feb 4th]

This week’s list looks at how small-scale and informal changes can have large and lasting effects in our cities.

The Interventionist’s Toolkit Our current recession is inspiring its own strategies and tactics: It’s increasingly a catch-all for a host of urban interventions. This is a trend that author Mimi Zeiger describes with a mouthful of a title: Provisional, Opportunistic, Ubiquitous, and Odd Tactics in Guerilla and DIY Practice and Urbanism. (Places.DesignObserver) Here’s more on DIY Urbanism.

2847331730 bb29c4fcbe z Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists [Jan 29th Feb 4th]

Photo credit: dameetch on Flickr

“An Ideal City Doesn’t Exist” David Gouverneur, a PennDesign professor who has made a career out of injecting environmental and social values into the process of placemaking, shares his recipes for healthy cities. (Next American City)

Why America needs to love its cities more Economist EdwardGlaeser discusses his new book Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier, and tells us why he thinks the future of American innovation lies in its urban centers. (Grist)

Design Lessons From India’s Poorest Neighborhoods New York’s Center for Architecture’ exhibit “Jugaad Urbanism: Resourceful Strategies for Indian Cities” showcases local, every-day innovations from urban India. (Fast Company)

How Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper Interventions Can Catalyze City-Wide Renewal: Place-by-place interventions are emerging as a powerful way to create new life for an entire district, especially in cities where great economic hardship encourages innovation and entrepreneurship. (Project for Public Spaces)

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Chris Brogan on Placemaking

One of my favorite non-urbanist bloggers is Chris Brogan. While he blogs mainly about small business strategy and social media, he often uses examples from outside his area of focus to illustrate his points.

Last week was a case in point. In a post on getting his reader to create more welcoming ’places’ on the web, Chris used real places as an example:

YOUR PLACES ARE A RECIPE

Market Street San Francisco. Photo by Chris Brogan on Flickr

When I take people to my small town, I take them by the “yellow place,” my coffee (and ice cream) shop, run by a sweet woman from Italy, who makes great coffee, and who treats my guests very well. If you come to lunch at the Barking Dog or the Ale House, you’ll get a level of service that will leave you impressed and will make me proud for taking you there. And it’s a recipe or a formula:

Ambiance + (Unique) Touch + Personal Service = Memorable (Place). A + T + P = M

Right? That’s why you take me to the places you take me when I visit. Sometimes, it’s one element more than another. When I visited Birmingham, Alabama, I fell in love with the place, but that’s because Merrill Stewart took me around and connected me to amazing people. The “personal service” part was what really hooked me more than the rest of the equation. When I go to somewhere like Cafe Du Monde, it’s more about the unique touch, I guess.

The above formula is a useful shorthand to use in placemaking. It helps focus our thinking on a community’s assets, inspiration, and potential—essential qualities for people who care about the places in their lives.

What are your most liked ’places’ in your hometown or favorite city? What makes them memorable?

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11 Blogs for Urbanists

These 11 blogs will help you keep on top of news and views about various aspects of urbanism and city life in 2011.

By jakobinac (Jakov Vilović) on Flickr

Planetizen.com: An urban planning news website, featuring articles, op-eds, jobs, courses and information for the urban planning, design and development. (@Planetizen)

PriceTags: Gordon Price is a former Vancouver city councillor and the Director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. His blog gives readers an insider’s perspective of urban issues. While it with a focus on Vancouver, he cover topics of interest to anybody interested in urbanism.

Urbanophile: Aaron M. Renn’s blog focusing on helping America’s cities thrive and find success in the 21st century. He offers unique perspectives and innovative strategies for cities and their residents. (@Urbanophile)

Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space: Richard Layman blog on placemaking, historic preservation and urban design. His emphasis in on Washington, DC but his posts contain useful “lessons for all cities.

All About Cities: This blog by Wendy Waters explores the economy, society, communities, people, businesses, organizations, infrastructure, civil society and government of cities—and the tensions and connections between them. I have a natural affinity for Wendy and her writing as she has lived in both Arizona and British Columbia ☺(@Wendy_Waters)

CEO for Cities: A civic laboratory of today’s urban leaders catalyzing a movement to advance the next generation of great American cities. Posts by Carol Colletta (@CColetta) and Julia Klaiber (@JuliaKlaiber).

Creative Class Exchange: Richard Florida and his Creative Class team write about urbanism, economic competitiveness, demographic trends, and cultural and technological innovation. (@Richard_Florida)

Walkable DFW: The ‘thought laboratory’ of Patrick Kennedy, a professional urban planner and designer based in Dallas. The blog explores how bionomics relate to self-organizing, emergent urbanism. (@WalkableDFW)

PSFK: “The go-to source for new ideas for creative business.” While urbanism isn’t this blogs major focus, it regularly touches on several issues related to cities. (@PSFK)

Next American City: A national magazine created for and by a new generation of urban thinkers and leaders. Their Buzz blog features constantly good content on all aspects of urbanism. (@NextAmCity)

The City Fix: A global blog and social network devoted to news, advocacy and “best practice” solutions for sustainable cities around the world. (@TheCityFix)

Do you read any of these blogs? What do you think?

Did I miss one of your favorites? Let me know.

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