URBAN SCALE DESIGN The City of Vancouver has a reputation for being one of the world’s most livable cities. Why has this city proven to be so successful? Many other cities may feel so inclined to mimic Vancouver development plans. To their dismay; this initiative would most likely be unsuccessful. Vancouver has evolved over the years and through this growth, city planners have kept livability at the top of the agenda. There is not one aspect of Vancouver that can be singled out as the catalyst for its success. Physical, political, social, and cultural contexts are small attributes that contribute to the identity of Vancouver as a whole. Context cannot be mimicked and is relative to place and time. The Athens Charter attempted to create a recipe for a successful city. The ingredients of this were centered on efficiency and the mobility of the vehicle; critics stated that these guidelines were of inhuman-scale. After 1956, when a team gathered at Harvard University to discuss the future of cities, the term Urban Design was coined and the Athens Charter proven obsolete. A new discourse encouraged livable cities with an increase of civic buildings that would encourage people to stay in the city outside the hours of 9am-5pm. The City of Vancouver has strict design guidelines presented in planning documents and zoning bylaws which allow for a walkable and livable city. Library Square was designed and built based on a combination of local design traditions and international expertise. Although facing criticism, Library Square has proven to be an example of the successful marriage between urban design and architecture. 418
Library Square was built in 1995, the tail end of the reaction to CIAM. Having evolved through 39 years of moving toward better cities, this project signifies many post-CIAM objectives. In an essay entitled The Emergence of Urban Design in the Breakup of CIAM by architectural/ urban design historian and architect Eric Mumford, he discusses the reactions to CIAM and the beginnings of urban design. Mumford quotes the thoughts of city planner and Dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Josep Luis Sert who presents the challenges for the architect: “the carrying out of large civic complexes: the integration of city-planning, architecture, and landscape architecture; the building of a complete environment` in existing urban centres``1. By integrating fields of design, the goal is to bring more people into the city. Prior to the end of CIAM, many American cities were viewed as dangerous and overcrowded. City centres were places where, according to Sert as cited by Mumford (2009), ``the children get run over, the grown-ups get drunk- a place you should leave as soon as you finish your
Figure 1 -(Above) Radiating levels of context. Figure 2 - (Right) Site plan with traffic flow.