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I'm so excited to be here in Vancouver
Canada I've been wanting to visit into a
video here for so long why well there's
a lot of City Planning hype surrounding
Vancouver allow me to demonstrate here's
what you get when you search for
Vancouver is the on Google you get
autocompletes like best city in the
world and best place to live and most
livable city to prove this isn't what
Google says about every city here's
where you get when you search for
Memphis the poorest city and the most
dangerous city
ouch nothing but love for Memphis though
sorry to call you out but there is a
difference is I guess what I'm saying
countless articles been written about
how great Vancouver is it's been called
the best city in Canada the most livable
city in North America the greatest city
on earth and tied for the best city in
the Milky Way
probably Vancouver's success is no
accident but a result of decades of
thoughtful planning and design
collectively known as Vancouver ISM what
does Vancouver ISM exactly and can other
cities harness it to dethrone Vancouver
as one of the best places to live in the
world let's take a walk and find out
when you walk around central Vancouver
it really does look and feel unlike any
other city out there but back in the
1980s Vancouver was pretty much just an
ordinary North American city city
leaders and planners consciously changed
the way they plan to design their city
to get this style of urbanism I said
pretty much an ordinary city because
those planners were lucky to inherit a
city with some good bones first of all
the city is situated in just a beautiful
area most cities don't have mountains
and water like this so close second
previous generations made some good
decisions about how to design Vancouver
for example Vancouver has some extremely
narrow residential streets the entire
right-of-way is only 66 feet wide
with about 28 to 36 feet for vehicles
and in the 1970s Vancouver residents
protested the construction of freeways
within the city limits this occurred at
about the same time as San Francisco's
freeway revolts halted construction
there but San Francisco only halted the
construction of the new highways after a
few at
and built this left Vancouver is the
only major North American city without
highways and it made it difficult for
cars to take over so it's a normal city
save for one important abnormality the
lack of highways it's one of the major
reasons Vancouver went down two
different paths planners the 1980s we're
looking at significant growth and
suburbanization with no efficient way of
getting residents to work downtown the
public didn't support new highways and
mass transit was expensive they didn't
have funds to build new lines everywhere
if you can't connect people's home to
work what do you do you put their home
and work in the same place or at least
within cycling walking and transit
distance this is a solution that has a
lot of benefits more trips can be made
by walking and cycling transit becomes
more popular which can be used to
justify greater frequencies and more
lines and even if a resident chooses to
commute by car the trip is shorter
easing congestion there are two major
challenges that needed to be solved to
make this happen
one how to convince people who would
otherwise choose to live in the suburbs
to move to the Central City instead and
to how to revitalize downtown Vancouver
a typical 80s downtown and decline the
solution if you haven't guessed it
already was Vancouver ism I'm back here
in the city beautiful Studios what my
family likes to call the living room
after my trip to Vancouver I have a lot
to say about my visit but I'll start
with the basics what is the definition
of Vancouver ISM there's a lot to say
there's a whole book about Vancouver
isn't and I'm not gonna get to all of
this I'm gonna focus on the most novel
part the urban design and I'm gonna
further narrow the scope the cool urban
design is largely limited to a few areas
of central Vancouver it's mostly in the
False Creek Yaletown and Cole Harbour
areas they were former industrial sites
that were ripe for redevelopment in the
80's 90's and 2000's let me introduce
you to one of the key pieces of
Vancouver ISM the point tower one way of
thinking of the point Tower is a
building with two parts the podium and
the tower it's sort of like you merged a
thin condo tower with a mid-rise
building why would you design a building
like this the condo tower provides
residential density in the unit's
themselves command beautiful views of
the surroundings making them attractive
to those who wouldn't necessarily want
to live in a high-rise normally views
are one thing lots of suburban homes
don't have
the City of Vancouver regulated the size
of the towers and their placement to
preserve view corridors the city even
went so far as to regulate the size and
placement of towers to create an
attractive skyline on purpose they
identified blocks that would be good
places for towers of additional height
punctuating the skyline of relatively
uniform point towers the idea was that
the skyline could be urban design as
public art the mid rise section of the
building is designed to create vibrant
street life the mid rise building is at
a great scale to frame the street in an
attractive way many of the towers are
wrapped with townhouses with doors that
open directly onto the sidewalk this
makes the city feel very human scaled
the condo tower set back from the street
is not as noticeable the townhouse is an
attractive home type for families and
the point towers edit thousands of them
to the downtown housing market the
townhomes are often wrapped around a
parking garage parking garages are
required to be hidden or below ground in
Vancouver these towers stand in contrast
to LA Corbusier's towers in a park that
in reality often turned into towers in a
parking lot they also differ from the
tower and windswept Plaza that was often
built in post-war North American cities
these point towers create vibrant
streets and add significant density
point towers weren't built everywhere
though sometimes the density wasn't
appropriate or needed and just the mid
rise housing was built the Athletes
Village from the 2010 Vancouver Winter
Olympics now just regular housing is a
great example of this I want to pause
this video for one second to tell you
about a great Channel all about the City
of Vancouver so if you're liking this
video I recommend checking out the
channel about here hey Dave hey guys
hope you don't mind me hijacking this
video for just a little bit but yeah
like dave was mentioning I've got a
YouTube channel called about here where
I cover urban planning issues in my city
if you love Dave's you know wonderful
high quality analysis of City issues you
know I hope you don't mind checking out
my channel after this video finish this
video first but then afterwards open
that tab up okay back to our regularly
scheduled video so these point towers
give us residential density and
attractive Street scapes but streets
aren't enough open space for so many
people Vancouver has the stunning
Stanley Park but it's far from much of
the city if the goal is to attract
families there needs to be a large
number of neighborhood parks with
playgrounds
the city offered density bonuses to
developers who set aside parkland where
there was a deficiency basically
developers could build a taller building
in exchange for a park the city also
built water parks community centers in
water's edge exploration areas so kids
wouldn't get bored the city once had a
policy of separating parks from school
yards but there wasn't enough space in
central Vancouver for both they've
changed the policy and now parks do
double duty here's an example of an
elementary school in central Vancouver
next to its parks schoolyard okay so now
we have our point our buildings on
beautiful streets near a diversity of
park amenities let's talk about
transportation for a second it's the
piece that might have impressed me the
most when I was in Vancouver Vancouver
has an extensive network of protected
bicycle lanes and multi-use paths that
make it easy to get places without
worrying about cars
check out this path that goes along the
edge of Falls Creek it has a separate
area for pedestrians in a two way cycle
track the path is so busy this kind of
separation is necessary the path acts
sort of a Main Street to the Falls Creek
area in homes and shops open out onto it
roads here don't generally continue all
the way to the waterfront meaning
residents living in buildings near to
Falls Creek can go for a kilometres
without even encountering a car this
means it's safe for kids to run around
without much supervision when I was
there I noticed groups of ten twelve
fourteen year old kids wandering around
without parents I definitely don't see
this in downtown Sacramento where I live
and I rarely see it in the suburbs
either honestly this commitment to
active transportation is also a
necessity many of the units and
high-rise towers don't have parking
spaces meaning residents have to use
transit bikes are walking to get where
they're going and with tens of thousands
of residential units in downtown there's
just not enough space for everyone to
have one or more cars Vancouver had to
resort to alternatives to create density
without gridlocked traffic today
approximately 50% of trips in Vancouver
are made on transit bike or walking only
a handful of North American cities see
that percentage of non car trips so it's
not hard to see why other cities would
want to emulate Vancouver ISM it's very
market friendly nearly all the projects
are market rate private developments
it's also climate friendly you have
people living in dense urban areas using
active transportation it's popular among
residents to it's really win-win-win but
I don't want to let Vancouver off the
hook that easily there are still plenty
of critiques of banku
and the biggest one is affordability
Vancouver is one the most expensive
metro areas to live in relative to
median incomes one would think that
adding tens of thousands of housing
units downtown would increase supply
enough to neutralize housing prices but
it hasn't the housing affordability
crisis is complicated and not limited to
Vancouver but in some cases Vancouver
ISM exacerbated the problem for example
concord pacific place is one of the
largest masterplan urban communities in
north america built on a former rail
yards it's thousands of units were
marketed simultaneously in Vancouver and
Hong Kong and its first units were sold
out faster to strong interest in Asia
this obviously undercuts the goals of
Vancouver ISM with its promise of
housing potential Vancouver suburban
nights it also points to a larger
problem at Vancouver where wealthy
foreign buyer snatch up all the housing
pricing out the local residents in
response to this problem
Vancouver imposed a 20% tax on foreign
homebuyers the city also recently
introduced a speculation tax on owners
who don't pay income taxes in British
Columbia and don't live in homes they
buy the measures have had some limited
success but it may only be temporary
in the overall issue remains when
Vancouver ISM buildings are built the
market rate units are often affordable
only to out-of-town buyers Vancouver has
built social housing but the number of
units isn't high enough to meet demand
and the rents for the affordable units
are often still too high for those who
need it most
you only have to walk a few blocks from
Falls Creek and Yale town to see the
streets line with Vancouver's homeless a
stark reminder that Vancouver ISM isn't
working for everyone this also
highlights another critique of Vancouver
ISM while most of Vancouver feels like a
normal city charming but a little rough
around the edges and spots the Vancouver
ism districts feel almost unnaturally
clean and well-kept
the prescriptive urban design combined
with a modern architectural aesthetic
makes the whole area feel kind of
monotonous in some ways Vancouver ISM
has achieved the goal of bringing in the
suburbs downtown it's clean safe and
filled with families but it can also be
affluent cookie-cutter and exclusive so
that's Vancouver ISM as someone who
studies urban design my trip to
Vancouver was just amazing the city has
designed entire districts according to
cutting-edge urban design principles and
the result are vibrant public spaces and
beautiful City but
beautiful city for whom like a lot of
cities Vancouver hasn't figured out how
to make a good city a good city for
everyone what we need is a Vancouver ISM
2.01 that focuses on equity for
Vancouver to truly be the best place to
live in the world so I recently did a
viewer survey thanks to all who
participated and when I asked about who
else you all watch on YouTube I saw a
lot of people mentioning creators like
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CGP Grey real engineering and Lindsey
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you