Transit oriented development in Canada

[BIMBAM]

Originally Posted by dleung

The new stuff at UBC are nice, but being near a bus stop (and far away from the future M-line extension) doesn't make it "transit oriented development".



These two pomo piles aren't any better than the existing ones at Westbrook... there are better examples

It does when rush hour frequency at that bus stop is like one bus every minute because 5 or 6 heavily used bus routes all stop there on their way in and out of campus.

[nname]

Originally Posted by dleung

The new stuff at UBC are nice, but being near a bus stop (and far away from the future M-line extension) doesn't make it "transit oriented development".

You forgot the future 91 B-Line. Does that count?

[ssiguy]

Let's not confuse "transit oriented" with "pedestrian friendly"..............they are two very different things.

One only has to look at Metrotown as an example of that. It has great access to transit and certainly has density, those two very warm and fuzzy catch phrases that policy wonks love to talk about and politicians love to tot regardless of the fact that most wouln't be caught dead taking transit if their lives depended on it.

Metrotown, however, is anything but pedestrian friendly. It's just a bunch of glass buildings surrounding a giant mall that happen to be beside a SkyTrain station. It is a very unappealing, bland, alienating enviornment that looks like Stalin himself had designed it..........functional, liveable yet thorougly unpleasant. Unless you want to go to a mall with the same stores as everyother city on the continent nothing would ever make you actually want to go there. The downtown urban planning bureaucrats may love it on paper but none of them would be caught dead even visiting the place little alone living there because to them it's no more urban than the endless, mindless suburban sprwal of Surrey.

This Coquitlam {and Westbrook} developments are no different.........density around a mall and a transit station. Certainly it helps make transit a true and viable alternative to the car and that is very good but that doesn't mean it's pedestrian friendly.

Tell me, how many of you would rather go for a walk in Scar Town Centre, Laval, Metrotown, or Westbrook as opposed to Commercial, Cabbagetown, St,Denis, or Sunnyside?.............ya, I thought so.

I think this is why I have never been a fan of downtown Vancouver. Tons of density but everything east of Burrard is just glass and steel. Yes it may have retail at the bottom but that doesn't means it's anyless alienating, sterile, or homogenous.

Also with this highrise "McDevelopments", the stores are ussually chains of the same stores you have seen a hundred times and certainly nothing truly interesting, novel, or enticing.

This is where I think Canadian transit development has failed and the American model has outperformed. American developments tend to have interesting architecture, low rises, townhomes, small homes all around pleasant interesting small streets. Canadian transit oriented development seems to be just density beside a transit station and nothing more. The words community and walkable seem to be completely devoid in the conversation. Our developments are, in many ways, more designed by big developers whose overriding concern is getting the maximum density out of the smallest piece of land possible and then sticking in a little parket to make the pictures at the condo sales site nice warm and fuzzy.

[red-paladin]

Have you been to the development at New West station? That's TOD if ever there was one.

[ssiguy]

New West has developed very nicely which is why I didn't mention it.

It certainly had the benefit of being an older established city with many architectural gems and a vibrant streetscene. It also had a variety of income types unlike Metrotown/Coquitlam which is middle-Canada to it's core.

New West has become very transit oriented but more importantly, I think, is pedestrian friendly. There is a humanity that exists in New West that is absent in Mtown/Coq and even the newer areas of downtown Vancouver where steility rules.

One of the many benefits of pedestrian oriented developments is the ability to actually know your neighbours to bring a real sense of community. High rises don't create that at all where you are no less likely to know your neighbours than you are in a McMansion in the exburbs, little alone give a damn about them. This is especially true when buildings are built and bought for by investors as opposed to people who want to make it their long term home and take pride in it and have much more concern for the building and inhabitants than an investor who has never lived in the place or people who rent and move every year.

In smaller more urbane enviornments of the new urbanism in it's truist form, investors are nearly none existent as they ussually don't offer the kind of return they want and are more expensive and bothersome to run.

Canadian cities have certainly done well with transit oriented development but the development of new truly pedestrian development has been near none existent. In the US there seems to be a higher emphasis on creating pedestrian friendly, community building urban spaces and in Canada our transit friendly developments are basically designed and built by developers who's overriding concern is return on investment by filling every potential vacant space and parking lot with as many verticle glass and steel monstrosities as humanly possible.

[Mrs Sauga]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

This is where I think Canadian transit development has failed and the American model has outperformed. American developments tend to have interesting architecture, low rises, townhomes, small homes all around pleasant interesting small streets. Canadian transit oriented development seems to be just density beside a transit station and nothing more. The words community and walkable seem to be completely devoid in the conversation. Our developments are, in many ways, more designed by big developers whose overriding concern is getting the maximum density out of the smallest piece of land possible and then sticking in a little parket to make the pictures at the condo sales site nice warm and fuzzy.

Can you give some examples of these American developments?

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

This is where I think Canadian transit development has failed and the American model has outperformed. American developments tend to have interesting architecture, low rises, townhomes, small homes all around pleasant interesting small streets. Canadian transit oriented development seems to be just density beside a transit station and nothing more. The words community and walkable seem to be completely devoid in the conversation. Our developments are, in many ways, more designed by big developers whose overriding concern is getting the maximum density out of the smallest piece of land possible and then sticking in a little parket to make the pictures at the condo sales site nice warm and fuzzy.

When you say "outperformed" by what criteria are you measuring performance? If it's by transit ridership, I must point out that Canadian cities often have higher ridership per capita than their American counterparts. If it's in terms of quality, I'm not sure you can really weigh providing a small number of people with a homey, "community environment" higher than providing a large number of people with housing that has convenient access to transit and services.

Besides, what you seem to be forgetting (or may not have known in the first place) is that when it comes to high-rises, they may not seem warm and community focused on the ground, but often that's because the community atmosphere is inside. I've lived in a highrise before, and I found the building to be practically like a vertical small town in many ways. There were shared facilities like the lounge, exercise room, mail room/lobby, and everyone came in and out of the common entrance, and often shared an elevator with our neighbours and passed familiar faces in the hallways and often stopped to chat. My mother also lived in a much larger highrise in North York for a couple years and says it was the same.

In some ways I found it a little too close for comfort as I tend to be a fairly private person, but anyone who values a community atmosphere would have loved it there.

I'm not saying every residential highrise is the same, and god knows I haven't lived in all of them, but I can tell you a community atmosphere isn't only present in quaint lowrises.

[memememe76]

Malls exist in the US, I'm pretty sure. It seems Canada is penalized for having our malls next to major transit stops and not in the middle of nowhere.

And besides, you mention Commercial Street as a wonderful pedestrian-friendly area. A Skytrain Station is located there. It's called Commercial Station.

[Chadillaccc]

SUHNAP!

[red-paladin]

The new Station Square will go a long ways towards making the Metrotown area more pedestrian friendly, as it was the concrete auto-centric soul sucking heart of it before.

[vanman]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Westbrook TOD:


100_2539 by Chadillaccc, on Flickr

Looks like a decent sized TOD with loads of potential. I did some digging and found that Westbrook Mall is in the process of redevelopment across the street:

Originally Posted by Tropics

City of Calgary website.





IBI Group http://www.ibigroup.com/Pages/Projec...torId=36ppage=

Great to see another mall retooled because of the introduction of rapid transit!

[Chadillaccc]

Oh no! You called it rapid transit! Let the 12 year old bitchfest commence!

[O-tacular]

Originally Posted by vanman

Looks like a decent sized TOD with loads of potential. I did some digging and found that Westbrook Mall is in the process of redevelopment across the street:



Great to see another mall retooled because of the introduction of rapid transit!

I don't think that's happening any time soon. It will be in the future, but there's loads of free land to build up before that.

[vanman]

Well at least it's in the cards, however long it takes.

[vanman]

Wall Centre Central Park. 3 30 story towers within reasonable walking distance to the Joyce Skytrain station in east Vancouver. It's about 800m away which is probably pushing the limits of TOD but it's still under a 10 minute walk according to google maps. Anyway here are the renders:







http://www.wallcentrecentralpark.com/

[Chadillaccc]

And there is also a possibility to put a Skytrain station at Boundary road So it is definitely a TOD since it is less than a km from an existing one with the possibility of its own station in the future. Looks nice! I used to live in Parkside Manor just on the other side of Central Park, in Burnaby.

[vanman]

Ah yeah that's right, I forgot about that future station. I doubt it will ever come to fruition though. I'm not sure if the expense could ever be justified.

[Riise]

Is that the stadium where the Whitecaps use to play?

[Chadillaccc]

No that is just a local field for school teams and such. The Whitecaps field was way up the road just on the shores of the Burrard inlet on Hastings, in the city of Vancouver, right near Playland (the PNE). The stadium you are referring to is in Burnaby.

[Metro-One]

Yeah, but that is where they use to play before they became MLS.