How to transform city streets — without losing your parking spot. Washington Post Amanda Shendruk August 13, 2024 at 4:30 a.m. City streets share a common blight.....Uninviting, and even harmful, these are the streets many of us live on.  Endless pavement. Little nature. Tiring traffic.       If you live in a big city, you know the challenges: Pollution, traffic, noise and lack of nature can cause both physical and mental stress. For many, it’s just the reality of urban living. But what if it didn’t have to be?.......What if, instead, a road could be a tree-lined pedestrian walkway with benches? An intersection could be a playground. Safer, healthier, less lonely cities — who wouldn’t want that? There’s an obvious problem: More street space for people means less space for vehicles. And in car-centric America, where freedom often depends on access to a vehicle, many wouldn’t want that. Fortunately, there’s a way to have your park — and parking, too. It’s called a superblock — an urban planning concept that is gaining traction throughout Europe. And it’s something urban planners think could work in the United States. First, find a neighborhood. Here’s a small example- (check out the graphics in the artcle), but the idea could be implemented across larger areas.  On the “inner streets” of the neighborhood, city planners limit vehicle speed, prohibit through-traffic and designate portions of road and intersection as pedestrian-first space. Now that most traffic has been pushed to exterior roads, the next step is to make space for nature and community by adding trees, planters, benches and playgrounds.    

Commercial Drive.....Sitting at a small sidewalk table outside Continental Coffee on Commercial Drive, Theodore Abbott says, “I’d call it a great street. And I think we should attach that logo to it.” Abbott, a 26-year-old graduate of Capilano University’s urban geography department, grew up a couple of blocks off Commercial. He is among the many readers who nominated this stretch of road between Venables and 12th. One reason is the street’s long devotion to café society. “That’s what drives the Drive,” Abbott says. Its Italian, Portuguese and other cafés go back decades. Starbucks and McDonald’s both tried years ago to make a go of it on Commercial, and failed. Commercial is successful in part because many of the people who work in its shops can also afford to live in the neighbourhood, he says. That’s not generally the case, he suggested, for people employed downtown or in West Broadway’s retail outlets, who often have to commute from Burnaby or Coquitlam.Around Commercial are many tree-lined streets with a mix of housing, much of it exuding character and heritage. There is also social housing in the form of co-ops, subsidized rentals and residences for seniors and Indigenous people, says Abbott. How long can Commercial remain as it is? Gentrification is coming as more professionals and others move into what has long been a working-class, left-wing community, says Abbott, who has a podcast called on-site Report. The main concern about Commercial for Abbott and many others is three residential towers— of 39 storeys, 34 storeys and 31 storeys — proposed for the dramatically upzoned blocks around the SkyTrain Station at Broadway and Commercial. Grandview-Woodland residents have been pushing for the highrises to be modified to better integrate into the community, particularly to address Metro Vancouver’s devastating housing crisis by providing significant amounts of affordable housing. But they feel city councillors haven’t been listening. The towers might include a small proportion of below-market rentals, Abbott says, but most units will be luxurious. And there is little talk, he adds, of the developers being required to provide parks, schools, community centres or other amenities.“The vibe of Commercial could be impacted negatively with something alien to the community,” says Abbott. “That’s not density. … That’s just congestion.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

More of Vancouver’s ‘best’ streets......Let’s go through some of the runners-up for Vancouver’s best street, according to the many readers who offered their opinions. Perhaps none of these really compare to the magnificent, spellbinding, people-filled streets that Allan Jacobs highlighted in his book. They include Las Ramblas in Barcelona, the Strøget in Copenhagen, Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, and Via dei Guibbonari in Rome. But it would be fair to say these are charming, engaging, low-rise commercial streets that offer residents a sense of community and retail diversity. Many evolved organically over time, without master planning. It’s extremely hard to simply plan a great street, points out reader Wayne Liston. Remember how the city promised 40 years ago it would turn the downtown section of Granville Street into a wonderful way for pedestrians and cars? Few, he says, think it was successful. Planners can learn from the streets featured here, which have prospered and retained their character. They’re memorable and, at their best, you could even say, in the spirit of Jacobs, they’re “as joyful as they are utilitarian.”                                                                                                                        Main Street......The long section of Main Street between Broadway and 33rd is “interesting, fun, and for the most part authentic,” says Blair Redlin. The stretch, which maintains a “mostly human scale,” might even be better than it was two decades ago, he says......there's lots more streets- read on     https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/vancouvers-great-streets-commercial-drive-broadway-robson                                                                                  

Also checkout........On Site Report By Theodore Abbott On Site Report is a podcast about the globalization of cities. In this series we focus on the city of Vancouver and its recent transition from a mid-sized port city to a global metropolis. This civic metamorphosis has resulted in many changes throughout the city, and these changes can be richly understood through an examination of the city's built environment. On-site Report takes place in studio and on location, guiding listeners through a collection of unique sites that tell us something important about the nature of the contemporary urban experience. Hosted by Theodore Abbott. Listen on Spotify   or  https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/onsitereport?fbclid=IwAR2KWcXZC3V2Tz59QwkskGlnsNu0oIdZfFaRea3T9vGms_OgAJHSnsYbVqY//youtube.com/@onsitereport" class="gmail-Link-sc-k8gsk-0 gmail-fdWcnE gmail-sc-brSamD gmail-ChBpU gmail-sc-bdoPik gmail-gUsNdk gmail-jsOutboundLink" rel="noopener noreferrer ugc" target="_blank" title="YouTube" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); align-items: center; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; font-size: 0px;">

Slow water: can we tame urban floods by going with the flow?  As we face increased flooding, China’s sponge cities are taking a new course. But can they steer the country away from concrete megadams? Guardian Erica Gies  Tue 7 Jun 2022  After epic floods in India, South Africa, Germany, New York and Canada killed hundreds in the past year, droughts are now parching landscapes and wilting crops across the western US, the Horn of Africa and Iraq. The responses have included calls for higher levees, bigger drains and longer aqueducts. But these concrete interventions aimed at controlling water are failing. Climate extremes are revealing a hard truth: our development choices – urban sprawl, industrial agriculture and even the concrete infrastructure designed to control water – are exacerbating our problems. Because sooner or later, water always wins. Water might seem malleable and cooperative, willing to flow where we direct it. But as human development expands and the climate changes, water is increasingly swamping cities or dropping to unreachable depths below farms, often making life precarious. Signs of water’s persistence abound. Supposedly vanquished waterways pop up in inconvenient places. Seasonal creeks emerging in basements are evidence that those houses encroach on buried streams, while homes built on wetlands are the first to flood.

The answers that the detectives are finding – in cities, fields, swamps, marshes, floodplains, mountains and forests – are that we should be conserving or repairing natural systems, or mimicking nature to restore some natural functions – and not building more concrete infrastructure. These reparative approaches go by various names: nature-based systems, green infrastructure, low-impact development, water-sensitive urban design. In China, the “sponge cities” initiative aims to make urban regions better able to absorb rainfall and release it when needed. Because these kinds of solutions are based on working with or simulating natural systems, they offer benefits beyond just reducing floods and droughts. They can help us address the dramatic declines of animal species. They can help us adapt to climate change, or even slow its progression. Protecting biodiversity and storing carbon dioxide are not just peripheral effects of solving water problems – they are integral to healthy natural systems. 

So what does water want? In its liquid state, with sufficient quantity or gravity, water can rush across the land in torrential rivers or tumble in awe-inspiring waterfalls. But it is also inclined to linger to a degree that might surprise many of us, because the infrastructure of the modern world has erased so many of water’s slow phases, instead confining it, containing it, or speeding it away. These slow stages are particularly vulnerable to human interference, because they tend to occur in flatter places – once floodplains and wetlands – that we blocked or drained so that we could settle. But when water slows and stalls on land, that’s when the magic happens, providing habitat and food for many forms of life above and below. The key to greater resilience, say the water detectives, is to find ways to let water be water, to reclaim space for it to interact with the land. Innovative water management projects aim to slow water on land in some approximation of natural patterns. For that reason, I’ve come to think of this movement as “Slow Water”. Like the Slow Food movement – founded in Italy in the late 20th century, in opposition to fast food and all its ills – Slow Water approaches are bespoke: they work with local landscapes, climates and cultures rather than try to control or change them.....read on         https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/07/slow-water-urban-floods-drought-china-sponge-cities