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Location: Victoria History in a nutshell
Discussion: comprehensive planning, planned ambitions: life happens
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Yule |
comprehensive planning, planned ambitions: life happens
Aug 29 2006, 10:29 PM EDT
I want to comment / add more later, but for the meantime -- the Permanent Loan Bldg & the Campbell Bldg were destroyed during a period of ambitious, centrally planned urban thinking (is that even the right word?, thinking?; I guess it is...), which really reinforces, for me, the idea that centralised planning is NOT a good idea. We have councillors at City Hall and we have people in the neighbourhoods who want Centralised Planning Now, who want a Comprehensive Downtown Plan, and who want the Planning Dept to say with certainty what the boundaries of downtown will look like, along with the things within downtown. It's not the case that these people are evil or benighted, they just want rules, and accountability. But I can't help thinking that they're looking for them in the wrong place. "Do A., and B. will happen." Nuh-uh. It just doesn't work that way, not in a living city. Centralised planning and comprehensive plans/ rules choke the living life out of a place: they don't respect the spirit of the place.Which is not to say that developers (who don't necessarily respect any plans/ rules) have the "spirit" of a place close to their hearts, because, let's face it, they have to check in with their wallets (kept in a back pocket, hence the expression "greedy-ass developer"... <joke>). About Victoria's history: Confederation and the completion of the trans-Canada railway did the most to herald the deathknell for a vibrant Victoria, IMO. Once Vancouver had that bloody terminal, ALL the go-getters who knew a thing or two about the blood-sweat-and-tears necessary to building an economy got up and left Victoria. Just take a look at the history of the Chinese and the Jewish communities in Victoria for proof. The Leiser Warehouse (part of the lower Yates redevelopment) and the Leiser family are a case in point, as is the fact that Vic's Chinatown WAS the biggest/ oldest for a while, but was overtaken by Vancouver. My money's on the internet: no RR needed now? 2 out of 2 found this valuable. Do you? |
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Stuart_de_Stael |
1. RE: comprehensive planning, planned ambitions: life happens
Aug 30 2006, 12:24 AM EDT
Yes, the loss of the railway terminus was a crucial blow. Or was it? Let's just say Victoria as the western terminus of the CNR would have been an unimaginably different place.
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Yule |
2. RE: comprehensive planning, planned ambitions: life happens
Aug 30 2006, 1:02 AM EDT
"Yes, the loss of the railway terminus was a crucial blow. Or was it? Let's just say Victoria as the western terminus of the CNR would have been an unimaginably different place."Absolutely and unimaginably different -- for one thing, we'd have to have had a bridge from the start, altering our Island Isolation...! But like some of these other "colonial" places that were isolated from the mainstream for generations, we might, because of new technologies, be able to leapfrog over some of that seemingly necessary industrial development that others had to go through. Maybe. I guess I'm putting quite a bit of faith in internet-based technologies and commerce, as well as in "just-in-time" technology as explained by Neil Gershenfeld, here: http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail782.html ...and similar techno-pollyannaisms. Seriously, though: this is a fabulous and beautiful place to live, and if it can become economically more viable (I think it's still a very fragile place, economically speaking, with a history of burn-and-crash, or slash-and-burn), we could stop being perceived as a retirement enclave, and maybe avoid going the route of being a Disney-esque resort community that doesn't care about real economic activity (aside from tourism and services)... I guess I just think that grown-up cities have a diversified economic base, and that's where Victoria still falls a bit short. There has been a tendency to put all eggs in one basket, and then there's hell to pay when it tears... Do you find this valuable? |
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Stuart_de_Stael |
3. RE: comprehensive planning, planned ambitions: life happens
Sep 2 2006, 3:53 AM EDT
My hazy understanding is that it would have been a terminus in name only, ie: there wouldn't have been a physical connection (bridge) between VI and the mainland. Perhaps it would have been attempted--they didn't have the technology back then that would've told them the water depth in the Georgia Strait makes San Francisco Bay look like a kiddie wading pool. Even today's technology fails to make a fixed link there practical.Had a fixed link been accomplished, it likely would have been much further up the island, which makes for the intriguing possibility of another major Vancouver Island city being somewhere north of Nanaimo and Victoria being -- I don't know what. Certainly, the island would be more diversified. 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
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Yule |
4. RE: comprehensive planning, planned ambitions: life happens
Sep 6 2006, 2:13 PM EDT
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