Pandemic puts focus on outdoor space
In a city where many now have no land of their own, staff say a strategy is urgently needed
The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of public spaces in city life around the world, including Vancouver, which this week considers a strategy for improving and adding patios, parklets and plazas.
Vancouver staff are seeking council’s approval this week for a downtown public-space strategy, which has been in development for years “but now takes on new relevance and urgency in this period of crisis and the period of recovery,” this week’s staff report says.
It’s an important issue in a city like Vancouver where a large and growing portion of the population doesn’t have the luxury of a private backyard. The pandemic has only emphasized the importance of these places: Last week, Google released data, obtained through tracking people’s cellphones, showing British Columbians were spending 125 per cent more time recently in parks, plazas and public gardens.
The 76-page strategy before council Tuesday recommends acquiring and repurposing more land for public spaces, making the temporary plaza on Bute Street off Robson a permanent fixture, and creating a new public space underneath the north end of the Granville Bridge — in the area where the controversial spinning chandelier public art piece was unveiled last year.
The strategy also addresses another long-running, if slightly less glamorous, issue: what Andy Yan calls “the right to pee.”
Vancouver’s lack of public bathrooms has long been flagged as a problem of equity and fairness. In a thesis on the subject for her masters of architecture degree last year, UBC graduate Emily Scoular investigated the “seat-to-buttratio” of several cities, highlighting Vancouver’s scarcity of public washrooms relative to the population, compared with Portland, Paris, Tokyo and the apparently toilet-rich environment of Zurich. Vancouver’s Downtown core in particular, Scoular reported, had an “outrageously” poor ratio, “relative to both local and global standards.”
So Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University, said this week he was glad to see the public space strategy calls for the development of a “public washroom strategy” supporting safe and accessible public restrooms, in co-ordination with the Park Board and Vancouver Coastal Health.
But, as always, it comes down to a question of money.
“It’s good to see they are talking about the issue of public restrooms, but what happens when it comes to the question of who’s going to fund it?” Yan asked, saying the same question applies to the need for the pricey maintenance of plazas or any public space. “How do you maintain it?”
Charles Gauthier, president of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, says Downtown’s lack of public toilets has long been “a bone of contention” for his group, and pointed to an interesting example out of Germany.
More than 200 German municipalities use a program called “Nette Toilette,” which means “Nice Toilet,” through which local governments pay monthly fees between 30 and 100 euros to private businesses that agree to make their washrooms available to the public. It appears to work efficiently. City Lab has reported that the amount German cities spent on Nette
Toilette networks was a fraction of what it would cost for the city to maintain its own public washrooms.
Vancouver staff were directed to create the downtown public space strategy back in 2017 under the previous council, and while it focuses on the Downtown peninsula, it’s intended to influence public realm planning city-wide. Following years of public engagement and work, the report arrives at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic is prompting Vancouver and other cities to rethink the use of public outdoor space.
Last week, Vancouver launched a program allowing restaurants to expand their indoor seating onto public street, parking and sidewalk space near their premises. The city received 46 applications in the first four days and issued 14 permits, with more expected soon.
Gauthier applauded that, saying it could be “key for the economic survival of a lot of restaurants and coffee shops” to provide more outdoor seating at a time when they’re required to reduce their indoor seating capacity to comply with COVID-19 protocols.
His group has also been working on a plan to install tables and chairs in the plaza on the north side of the Vancouver Art Gallery, where people can bring takeout food from nearby restaurants, Gauthier said, which they hope to open this month.
Gauthier had hoped people would also be allowed to enjoy a glass of wine in the plaza, but that appears to have been dashed, at least for now, after council rejected Green Coun. Pete Fry’s motion last week to allow alcohol consumption in certain public places. That effort failed after the four councillors from the Non-Partisan Association and COPE Coun. Jean Swanson voted against it, citing public health concerns about increased alcohol consumption.
Still, Gauthier said, he’ll keep pushing the city to loosen up its drinking rules.
“It’s something we’ve heard loud and clear,” Gauthier said. “People want to see a liberalization of our liquor laws to include items like this. So it’s something we’re still going to push for.”