Taking Back the Land (CityStudio #2)

I had the privilege to speak about water with Tilo Driessen, a planner with the Vancouver Park Board, after our dialogue session about creating access to open space. Water, by many accounts, has an impact on each of the Greenest City Goals. And while I am patient and aim to learn as much as I can from the cohort to inform my ways of thinking and understanding the challenges and their potential interventions, water will be my focus throughout my work with CityStudio. Water, specifically water conservation as it relates to Goal 8 of the Greenest City goals, was my research focus with the city during my summer employment with them. Water, specifically how it can be embraced by design intervention and used to create healthier, more resilient communities, will be the focus of my eventual thesis. 

Concerning our first goal focus PLAY, when asked, Mr. Driessen explained that Vancouver’s parks currently embody a negative role with water. Due to their consumptive practices, including provisions for summertime irrigation and potable water supply for water features such as fountains and lakes, parks are not particularly seen as positive. They are not equally as positive with their consumptive practices as they are with their abilities to provide amenities benefiting health and healing for the public. How, then, can we expect people to change behavior and adopt water conservation practices if the places we create to help them find respite through the experience of nature practice over-consumptive habits?

Vancouver, like every city, could increase its greening efforts throughout its underutilized and forgotten pockets. Anywhere there is soil, or could receive soil, should also receive plants. We could expound upon this and take back some of the land from cars and decommission roads. Turn double-lanes into single lanes; turn single lanes into multi-modal non-automobile pathways; turn verges and bumpouts into gardens; turn laneways into wildlife habitat and pedestrian “escape routes” to the larger network of city park space. Approximately 30% of Vancouver’s landmass is covered by roads. If Shanghai uses 7.4% of their entire landmass for roads…New York City: 22%…Paris: 25%…Vancouver should be able to work with less and do more with greenspace. 

Before increasing greening efforts, or even while increasing its greening efforts, there is a fantastic opportunity to improve upon Vancouver’s existing green open spaces. This opportunity is through water. Rainwater harvesting, raingardens, integrated stormwater features––any of such elements could be used to turn the negative aspect of our parks into something positive. Such a design intervention would teach creative water use, habitat restoration, and above all, a contagious conservation ethos. 

During the walk the line exercise last week, I learned much more about my neighborhood, Mt. Pleasant. Judging by the ways marginalized spaces were used for growing food, the slogans of bumper stickers on cars, the subject of community event posters on telephone poles, the ways by which the traffic circle islands were planted…all of this, as I was able to more intimately witness during my walk, solidified my belief that this neighborhood is rife with folks ready to aid with the implementation of any these ideas. The key to success will be community engagement. I still have much to learn about this art form.