SFU City

Call for Contributors
Spring 2007

Are you fascinated by cities?

If so, re:place magazine would like your contribution.

re:place is a emerging magazine dedicated to public space and urbanism in Vancouver and the GVRD. We are a non-profit organization made up of urban enthusiasts dedicated to the holistic discussion of urban issues. Our goals are to educate citizens about the workings of the public realm, to encourage interaction and engagement in cities, and to explore the ever-changing dynamic of Greater Vancouver.

re:place will provide a forum for discussion in two formats: web and print. The first print issue is scheduled to be published in fall 2007 while we intend the website to go live within in the upcoming summer.

re:place is looking for contributors who share an interest in urbanism and the public realm. We need writers, photographers, illustrators and bloggers.

If you are interested in contributing articles (short or feature), photographs, illustrations, or if you would like to be a blogger, please send an email to amanda@regardingplace.com. Please include a bit of information about yourself, what public space issues are you particularly interested in, and how you would like to contribute.

If you have a story idea to pitch, please send us a brief outline of your piece and a sample of your writing.

The re:place editorial staff will review all submissions and will contact you shortly thereafter in order to confirm whether the idea fits within the scope of our upcoming print issue or web dialogue.

If your piece is chosen for inclusion, you will be required to submit a manuscript draft (please see our submission guidelines) and we will work with you to create the final article. However, all final editorial decisions are to be made by the editor.

We look forward to hearing from you!

re:place Magazine
www.regardingplace.com
contributors@regardingplace.com

A few weeks ago, a delegation from Atlanta came to visit. Atlanta LINK - 117 leaders in business and government - had a chance to listen to study our city and, more importantly, just walk around.

Here’s what the reporter accompanying them saw:

In Vancouver, civic leaders see a livable city

By Maria Saporta

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 05/28/07

Vancouver, British Columbia — To metro Atlantans, congestion is a dirty word.

But when a delegation of 117 regional leaders recently visited this Canadian city, they were introduced to a whole new concept.

Congestion is our friend,” said Larry Beasley, former city planning director for Vancouver, who has been recognized worldwide as helping create a new urban model. “Density is good.”

Metro leaders were exposed to a vastly different approach to growth and development during the 11th annual LINK trip, organized by the Atlanta Regional Commission, short for “Leadership, Innovation, Networking, Knowledge.”

Vancouver’s strategy of density and transit is a stark contrast to the Atlanta region’s road-oriented sprawl.

(more…)

It took an outsider from Boston to tell a Vancouver audience that the City of Vancouver itself has won an award named after one of the world’s great urbanists, Kevin Lynch.

Alan Berger, the speaker at the VIA Architecture on Urban Design last night, mentioned in passing that the City had received the award at MIT last week. (Actually, it was Ray Spaxman, Ann McAfee and Larry Beasley who were there to take the honours. You can see the ceremony and remarks here.) That was news to the assembled crowd, consisting of many of the city’s architects and planners.

No coverage in the local media, of course - at least that I saw.

While this is a big deal, Berger, a Harvard Design School associate professor and author of Drosscape, warned us that the Vancouver Style - unique to this place, its circumstances and its times - should “remain a secret.” The worst thing that could happen, in his opinion, is for the point-and-podium style to be picked up or exported to places where it was not appropriate or would be badly done.

Come hear Alan Berger, author of Drosscape, this Wednesday, May 23 (7 pm at SFU Harbour Centre) at the VIA Architecture Lecture on Urban Design.

Planetizen chose Drosscape as one of the Top Ten Planning Books of 2007:

Drosscape is a fascinating visual examination of the modern built environment. Chock-full of photographs, maps and charts, the book exposes readers to the ‘wastelands’ of ten different American cities -– from older industrial areas in the urban core to modern complexes on the metropolitan fringe. While the book takes a mostly negative view of sprawl, it serves not as a condemnation per se, but as fertilizer for the germination of ideas regarding the productive reuse of these underutilized and spoiled landscapes.

Berger, an Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, scans the globe with camera and insights into contemporary development—your guide to a vast, largely ignored field of waste landscapes and to the new chaotic urban landscapes in the emerging world. Expect a radical reconceptualization of your thinking.

Reservations required: Email cs_hc@sfu.ca or call 604.291.5100

For those who attended the the Congestion Pricing Lecture, you can find the video here referred to by Lee Munnich.  It gives an overview of the MnPass program:

From the Daley Urban Forum:

Jacobs, they said, would have found much to like — the rumbling “L” as the symbol of a mass-transit city, the vibrant interplay between Wrigley Field and its neighborhood and the disappearance of the Robert Taylor Homes, once the world’s largest housing project. But she would have turned her thumbs down on such things as the bland new housing of University Village, the sea of parking lots surrounding the United Center and U.S. Cellular Field and the lack of community participation — so far, at least — in Chicago’s plans to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Story here.

Congestion charging is emerging as the No. 1 issue in transportation planning.  Come and hear the latest: May 16, 7 pm, SFU Harbour Centre.  Call for reservations 604-291-5100. 

For those who attened the dynamic lecture by Philip Mangano (executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness), you would have heard reference to an article by Malcolm Gladwell - Million Dollar Murray.

Sue Noga, a planning consultant with the GVRD’s Regional Steering Committee on Homelessness, was good enough to provide a link to the article - here.  And while you’re at it, check out th host site, www.stophomelessness.ca

Alan Berger, this year’s speaker for the VIA Architecture Urban Design Lecture, has won the Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize for Landscape Reclamation and the Pontine Marshes.

The Trustees of the American Academy in Rome provide awardees with a stipend, a study or studio, and room and board for a period of six months to two years.

Berger’s Rome Prize Fellowship research extends his work on reclaiming despoiled and derelict places for productive reuse by examining the role of design and landscape in the reclamation of Rome’s environs. The Pontine Marshes will serve as the point of departure for this research.

The Pontine Marshes are located southeast of Rome and comprise an area 780 sq. km. (approximately 300 sq. miles).  As early as 312 B.C., attempts to drain the marshes were made when the Via Appia was constructed through them.  Mussolini, who realized that the Marshes were a vast landscape resource for Rome, successfully drained the marshes by 1935. Today the Marshes contain myriad land uses and more than 500,000 permanent residents. The Fellowship work will critically analyze the reclamation of The Pontine Marshes landscape as significant in the development of Rome itself, and contribute a chapter to Berger’s book-length manuscript on the implementation of landscape reclamation in urbanized regions.

• Additional information about Alan Berger

The VIA Lecture will be on Wednesday, May 23, 7–8:30 pm, at SFU Harbour Centre.  Email cs_hc@sfu.ca or call 604.291.5100 to register.

The SFU City Program has just added TWO new lectures to our Spring schedule:

Congestion Pricing: An alternative to highway expansion in the region?

Wednesday, May 16, 7-8:30 pm
Venue: SFU Harbour Centre, 515 W.Hastings Street, Vancouver
Admission free, but reservations are required.
Email cs_hc@sfu.ca or Call 604.291.5100

Other cities in Europe, Asia and North America are increasingly turning to various forms of road and congestion pricing to reduce crippling levels of traffic congestion. Find out how metropolitan areas around the world are using road pricing as an alternative to the traditional approach of simply expanding road networks to meet demand. Speaker: Lee Munnich, University of Minnesota, leading expert on congestion pricing. Co-sponsored by Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (BEST) and by the SFU City Program.

Transportation: On the right track for EcoDensity

Thursday, May 24, 2007, 7-9 pm
Venue: SFU Harbour Centre, Room 1400, 515 W.Hastings Street, Vancouver
Free event. Reservations required: 604.873.7707 or ecodensity@vancouver.ca

Join us for a panel discussion with Dr. Larry Frank, architect Peter Busby and transportation engineer Lon LaClaire. Dr. Frank, the Bombardier Chair holder in Sustainable Transportation at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning, specializes in the interaction between land use, travel behaviour, air quality and health. Mr. Busby will comment on the relationship between parking and the development and financing of higher density housing and Mr. LaClaire will focus on density and transit. Co-sponsored by the City of Vancouver and the City Program at Simon Fraser University.

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