I am not sure that Densification is actually a good thing and here is a short argument to support that. I think there is a few good articles online to support this as well.
There has been this theoretical embrace by urban planners and successive city councils that densification is in itself a good thing.
But I am beginning to think that Vancouver residents have it right by objecting to the density construction in the city centres. Because what I am beginning to think is that it is not the City of Vancouver that has to densify and not just the core; it is the suburbs around it, and that the City of Vancouver should be doing all in its power to cause that suburban densification to happen.
We should consider doing away with the old idea of an increasingly densifying inner city and begin thinking of Metro Vancouver as a steady state entity. Spread the growth around. Spread the transportation and the infrastructure so that not everything is being concentrated in the West side.
Cap Metro’s boundaries to contain sprawl. Make ingress into Vancouver more difficult, not easier. Make ingress into other areas easier and give these areas good fundamentals and reasons for growth of all kinds. Keep the bridge and tunnel bottlenecks as they are. Force the suburbs to urbanize and infill. This will keep people in their areas and will create mico communities instead of flockers who are going to downtown.
Consider: All of our transit problems rest around the idea that too many people are trying to get into the inner city. So, all rapid and mass transit is focused toward Vancouver while, perforce, we beggar transit in the suburbs. It is a never-ending no-win game that keeps the suburbs car-dependent.
We have to begin to blur the difference between urban and suburban, not intensify it. That may be what the residents of Vancouver are, intuitively, trying to tell their council.
Comments(7)