Quote:
Originally Posted by LeftCoaster
Also, Chowhound I get the impression you have never been to Pac Spirit. It is very busy and has many trails running through it. As we add more density and development nearby it, the parks need actually increases, not decreases.
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I used to live off Dunbar and went to UBC so a pretty large chunk of my life was in and around the park. It has never even come close to busy compared to Stanley Park or Queen E, especially proportional to its size. This is especially true for the portion of the park around and north of University Boulevard. It's not a good place to socialize with friends, it's not a good place to sit and relax, it's not a good place to soak up some sun, it has no flexibility, it has no options for exercise beyond walking and cycling. It's really not a good city park. Urban forest, sure, but parkspace no.
I actually agree that more park space is needed as density increases, but the usable space within these parks is miniscule compared to the massive size of them. If we want this to be a city park make it a city park. In the meantime it's a lot of deadspace.
Since I'm being strawmanned in this thread, I feel like I have to say that obviously SFHs need to be densified in the CoV and in a perfect world we'd legalise housing options across the regional district. However, in a perfect world the best place for density is also along high capacity transit corridors with nearby services like parks and schools. It's a lot harder to justify the cost of the UBCx line without any activation along this corridor too. Given the Musqueam Development Corp is in full swing with lelem and the University Golf Course will be developed by the end of the century, it's already not as though this area will always remain a forest.
As a further note, the idea that you can't turn residential properties into parkland is plainly wrong. Burnaby and North Vancouver have been doing this for years. It's a bit of a slog because you have to wait out property owners, but it happens.
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