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Discussion: Human Scale in Vancouver
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Stuart_de_Stael |
Human Scale in Vancouver
Jul 17 2006, 2:14 AM EDT
Skyscraper Page forumer KeyPlan passes along this essay from the Journal of Urban Design: Street-facing Dwelling Units and Livability: The Impacts of Emerging Building Types in Vancouver's High-Density Neighbourhoods (.pdf)http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/pub/RP-2005-02.pdf 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
Yule |
1. RE: Human Scale in Vancouver
Jul 17 2006, 2:29 PM EDT
Yes, it's a very interesting analysis by Elizabeth MacDonald. I plan to add a bibliography page soon and include this as a link. I have a couple of annotations for it, too: it did strike me that it focusses on non-mixed use condominiums, which emphasise "front door" townhouses & residential at street level, and the impact this form has in terms of on "eyes on the street" and livability, as per Jane Jacobs. Here in Victoria, two things are different, perhaps: I don't think we'll have the kind of residential concentration Vancouver neighbourhoods analysed by MacDonald have for quite some time, and most of what's getting built here is infill in the downtown core. I.e., it usually includes some retail component at street level, it's often on a commercial street (unlike False Creek, Arbutus Heights, etc.). But there're definitely plenty of useful observations in MacDonald's paper, applicable (in a smaller scale) to here...One thing that did strike me as hilarious: I have a friend who jokes (acidly) that Victoria has a "Ministry of Perpetual Gardening." It did occur to me that the townhouse residents described by MacDonald must all be official bureaucrats of said ministry... ;-) Do you find this valuable? |
