Cities for people

Photo: Tourism Vancouver

Why is Vancouver a livable city?

What makes our public spaces successful?

How can we attract families to live in urban areas?

On this week’s episode of the Parksify Podcast, I had the opportunity to talk to Ash Blankenship and answer some of these questions.

The City of Vancouver made a monumental decision this year to close the 800 block of Robson Street, which runs through Robson Square, Vancouver’s main public plaza in the heart of downtown. With this closure, Robson Square will become downtown Vancouver’s largest public space.

According to the City, “Robson Square complex is the largest public space in downtown Vancouver, aside from the Seawall and Stanley Park. What sets this site apart from these larger public amenities is that it offers an introspective view of the city. Whereas Vancouver has successfully capitalized on its natural beauty and surroundings, Robson Square represents a tremendous opportunity to celebrate Vancouver’s vibrant urbanism.”

To capitalize on this opportunity, the City released the 800 Robson plaza design concept last week, which promises lots of public space goodies: open space connected to retail and bike lanes, moveable seating, landscaping, defined edges, and lighting.

While these features are nice for adults and seniors, there is no mention of playful features that appeal to children. Whenever I take my son downtown, I feel that there is nowhere for him to run, play and have freedom. This seems to be reserved for the city’s parks and playgrounds.

Vox’s Joss Fong put together a beautiful video pairing the images from the Voyager Golden Records (learn more about them here) with words from Carl Sagan and music from Blind Willie Johnson. The first image was a simple “calibrating circle” used in this post’s title.

There’s something powerful about this collection of images – this small attempt to sum up human existence. Carl Sagan said:

The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this ‘bottle’ into the cosmic ‘ocean’ says something very hopeful about life on this planet.