For many of us, the radiant July weather we have been experiencing lately restores and re-energizes our love of Vancouver. When you are stressed out by traffic gridlock, nothing can soothe you like some quality time on a patio, or finding an occasion to sip rosé while watching an English Bay sunset.
With the increasing access to the outdoors also comes the realization of how poorly we have maintained many of the city’s landscaped areas. Unlike surrounding boroughs such as Burnaby and Richmond, most Vancouver boulevards are barely maintained if at all. Around the city, litter and waist-high weeds clog gardens intended to soften and beautify our surroundings.
It is equally frustrating for municipal staff who are as proud of our city as any of its citizens.
I believe the diminishment of civic pride as a core principle of our municipal government forms the basis of the “existential crisis” planner Patrick Condon recently claimed Vancouver faces. We seem to have stopped caring about the little things that make cities livable.
Furthermore, there is an exasperating narrative about Vancouver propagated by national publications such as Maclean’s magazine that our “civic fabric” has become frayed. I refuse to buy into it, however.
Recently someone asked me what I thought our municipal government was doing well. After a long pause to contemplate the question only one thing came to mind: bike lanes.
More accurately, I think the city government has done a good job of transforming select thoroughfares to increase the “mode share” for cyclists and pedestrians and improve safety. The controversial Point Grey Road greenway comes to mind.
This is a good thing, notwithstanding the hostile reaction from drivers when parking spots or entire streets are closed off to vehicles.
One cannot help but also admire what the city is doing to transform the Arbutus Greenway, a corridor flagged as a broader network of enhanced cycling and pedestrian routes identified by a citizen-led committee in the early 1990s. Another long-planned north-south active transportation corridor running from New Brighton Park to the north arm of the Fraser River is the proposed Eastside Crosscut, which I hope the next council prioritizes.
I have to think long and hard to find other examples, however.
A proposed pedestrian-cyclist greenway along the centre spine of the Granville Street Bridge has looked half-baked since it was first floated a few years ago. Because of the bridge’s offramps, the city’s design has the path running between lanes of automobile traffic on either side, and no clear sightlines to False Creek. For the $25 million the city has budgeted, one would hope we could create something more inspired.
The Vancouver Park Board went to Twitter recently to boast how quickly they replaced a sign stolen for Dude Chilling Park (a.k.a. Guelph Park), seeing it as an opportunity for publicity. The swiftness of the sign replacement by the park board contrasts with the hundreds of boulevard gardens they might groom once per year.
Park board commissioner John Coupar insists he has pressed general manager Malcolm Bromley and other staff over his two terms in office to prioritize maintenance of these public spaces. Ultimately, he blames the inaction on budget cuts to the park board by city council over the past decade.
In my community there is a house where the owner stopped construction about two years ago, leaving an empty eyesore while people dump garbage on the lot. For neighbours who have to look at it daily, it has them asking if the city is doing their part to promote livability.
Looking ahead to the civic election in October, I wonder if upholding our civic pride could become a ballot question. So far none of the declared candidates have made any promises to improve existing city services, or tackle the issue of enhancing our public realm.
We know some of them would sooner yell at Ottawa over oil pipelines than focus on better ways to deliver city services. But we already have had plenty of that, haven’t we?
When I mark my ballot this fall, I will be voting for council and park board candidates who share my civic pride, and will work hard to see those “little things” get done.
mike@mikeklassen.net
