VANCOUVER FINALLY GETS A REAL CENTRAL SQUARE
Healthy democratic societies need a public space, writes Lance Berelowitz.
Vancouver is finally getting the central square it deserves and has long lacked.
The plaza between the Vancouver Art Gallery and Georgia Street has been under construction for almost a year. However, planning for this key public space, which had deteriorated into a clutter of crumbling elements and bark-mulch ground cover, has been ongoing for several years.
When it’s fully completed, Vancouver will get its first truly urban square in many decades (not counting Jack Poole Plaza which, being at the periphery of the city facing out toward the view like so many of Vancouver’s other public spaces, isn’t really an urban square).
This space is different, and significant. For one, it’s contested public space. Its ownership is complex, with the provincial government owning the land and leasing it out to the City of Vancouver, save for a smaller central portion in the middle where the former Centennial Fountain stood until recently. The city in turn leases out space to the art gallery, which occupies a large underground storage vault beneath a good portion of the space, as well as the former provincial courthouse, of course. In fact, the project began as a repair of this vault’s roof, which was leaking, and mushroomed into the project you see today.
Then there are the First Nations who claim ancestral ownership of parts of the city, and the many political groups and alliances of celebrators, protesters and demonstrators who regularly use the space, and the steps of the VAG, to give voice to their issue of choice, exercising their democratic right to public assembly.
It’s this last point that really gets to the importance of this newly redesigned space for the city’s public life. All healthy democracies rely on, and protect, public urban space and citizens’ rights of assembly. This new plaza (It really needs a name; how about a public naming competition?) should become Vancouver’s Trafalgar Square or Place de la République. It has been explicitly designed to be so. This means a space that can be used for a wide range of activities, both programmed and spontaneous. Why does this matter? Vancouver has never really had such a functional central square before.
The redesign (full disclosure: I was part of the design team in the initial stages) had this ambition front and centre. It offers Vancouver a clean, open, hard-surfaced space that supports a range of uses and configurations. The ground plane is now a smooth ‘carpet’ extending from the edge of the gallery to the curbs. Clutter, including that benighted fountain, has been eliminated. In fact, the design process was as much about editing the space as anything else. The centre is clear. This too is a crucial difference from other public spaces in Vancouver, which typically blur the lines between park and plaza.
Getting there wasn’t easy. Many interests intervened along the way, from different levels of government which — perhaps sensing the power of such an open space — wanted more ‘soft’ landscaping, to those seeking to save existing trees, many of which were however in bad shape and whose location was incompatible with a flexible urban space, to various bureaucrats protecting their particular turf (sidewalks managed separately by the Engineering Department; a fire-truck access lane across the plaza; VAG concerns about its control of the space and so on).
Another key missing piece of the design puzzle is the future destiny of the VAG itself, which is still hoping to relocate. Until then, the front door of the former courthouse, which once opened onto those grand steps leading down into the space, remains permanently closed, and square and building are locked in mutually incomprehensible quiescence.
And what if, instead of ignoring the underground vault in which the vast majority of the VAG’s permanent collection is stored, the designers had been allowed to expose this space to public view, through skylights, oculi or transparent flooring of some kind?
Yet another missed opportunity is that despite the design team’s advocacy for a more holistic urban-design approach, the space wasn’t designed out to the faces of the buildings framing it, but instead the surrounding streets are ignored and unchanged. These constraints, and others, have inevitably compromised the design to some extent, although the essence of the design concept is intact.
Finally, programming and maintenance plans, and dedicated budgets to implement them, are crucial to successful public spaces. To its credit, the City of Vancouver has convened what it calls the Block 51 Stewardship Advisory Committee covering the entire Robson Square precinct including this plaza, and is reviewing potential enhanced programming options. The space needs a dedicated team and operating budget. There are lessons to be learned from other cities, as well as from the experiences of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association, which successfully programs several spaces with movable tables, chairs and events.
The opening of this square, for so long ignored, represents a milestone in the emergence of Vancouver as a truly metropolitan urban centre, and the city and its design team are to be commended. The design — generous considering what has been achieved with a modest construction budget (about $7.6 million) — creates an elegant frame for public life. It offers up a compelling invitation to Vancouverites to use it and make it their own.
And those removed trees? Well, there are now more new, healthy trees in the space than there ever were before.
The opening of this square, for so long ignored, represents a milestone in the emergence of Vancouver as a truly metropolitan urban centre, and the city and its design team are to be commended . LANCE BERELOWITZ.