Tag Archives: Vision

OPEN HOUSE 2012: The Video

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For those who couldn’t attend, here’s two nights of recording combined into an eight minute clip:

Little Mountain Open House Jan 26 & 28 2012 from David Vaisbord on Vimeo.

Don’t forget to send your feedback to the city on line until FEBRUARY 10, 2012.
Check the Little Mountain site at Vancouver Planning for images of information boards presented at the Open Houses. Click on THIS LINK to got to ONLINE SURVEY.

Canal St East side - Little Mountain models

Canal St West side - Little Mountain models

A Tower Concentration in proposed development

Note: Click on the images to enlarge; then, click on “Full Size is 1440×1080” caption to go to maximum dimensions.

Little Mountain development at 37th and Ontario

Little Mountain development at 33rd and Ontario

Important to remember that an estimated 700 cars per hour will exit and enter from the site at rush hours, the traffic you see in this photo is the average flow at approx. 2am Sunday nights. A neighbour who works in childcare asked me yesterday, if the amenities, such as daycare, for preschool and after-school care especially, are in place for a development of this size? As a member of the Advisory Committee who has been to every meeting, I answered no. She has promised to attend a meeting.

Here’s a brief quote, as we contemplate the future of Vancouver, from a sociologist, named Robert Park:

“The city is man’s most consistent and, on the whole, his most successful
attempt to remake the world he lives in, more after his heart’s desire. The
city is the world which man created; it is the world in which he is
therefore condemned to live. Thus indirectly, without a clear sense of the
nature of his task, in remaking the city, man has remade himself.”

If you want to know more about cities and neoliberalism here’s a link to an interesting talk given by economist David Harvey in 2007 titled:
Neoliberalism and the City.

The Little Mountain Project

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Little Mountain Redevelopment: Meeting #1 // The Stanley King Experience

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Meeting #1
The Stanley King Experience
Originally Experienced: Feb 3, 2010

In the words of the immortal Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein ll: “Let’s start at the very beginning, it’s a very good place to start…”

In recent meetings of the Advisory Committee I’ve heard a tone that mixes exhaustion and authority in the voice of architect James Cheng, when he proclaims that: “We’ve been meeting for a year and half…!” And he’s right. The community knows that – they’ve attended all of them, unpaid. The community also attended both Open Houses in June of this year, and the reaction to the density models was unanimously negative. I’ll link to the charts in the next posting. But let’s get back to the beginning…

In February of 2010, the community of Little Mountain came out on mass, put aside preconceptions or prejudices, and 3 hours of their time to engage in a workshop led by Stanley King. The ideas generated were fresh and inspiring. 20% of those ideas were incorporated into the architects current (July 2011) plans. The other 80% vanished. What was the point of that exercise?

WHERE CAN YOU FIND THE RESULTS OF THAT MEETING?
Right Here. I’ve provided a link to the City of Vancouver website: Little Mountain Site Design Workshop hosted by Stanley King
You just won’t see most of these images and comments mentioned anywhere else. That’s why I’ve subtitled the short clip “the feel-good exercise”.

The exercise was one of documenting “community values” which were to become the “performance criteria” of the developer’s vision as reflected through the work of the architect. Stanley King urged us to: Look at OUR drawings, compare them to the ones James Cheng is NOW showing us and ask, “how did he incorporate our drawings into his housing plan?”

To take one example: Where are the community gardens? Even the Olympic Village now has a community garden.

Below, is the 2 short minute clip. You can access the longer 20 minute version of Meeting #1 by clicking on this link.

Little Mountain Redevelopment: Meeting #1 The Stanley King Experience! from David Vaisbord on Vimeo.

Best,
David Vaisbord
Filmmaker
Little Mountain Housing

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Little Mountain Density Models: The Movie!

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OK.

Here are the density models you’ve asked for. I’ve shot the 7 density models in sequence, from 7 different angles. After watching this video 7 times you’ll be ready to fill out the survey you received at one of the Open Houses or found HERE, on line. And check out all of the photographs of Open House Presentation Materials also. Just make sure that the City of Vancouver Major Projects Planning dept. gets it by July 25th!

DID ANYONE NOTICE, that there’s something seriously wrong about the scale of the trees on the model? I mean, how many trees along 33rd Avenue are 8 stories tall? An error of this kind, makes the size of the buildings appear much smaller.

Also, David Chudnovsky has informed us that the planning department’s PDF is non-interactive. Check out his comments on this blog. I discovered that it’s also non-printable. I suggest, that you email The City and ask them to repost the survey as an 8.5 x 11 inch document, so that’s print, scan and fax ready by standard business machines.

UPDATE!
Ben Johnson has posted an 8X10 PDF on their site, that functions adequately, though it does cut a few pages in half. But I think that you can figure it out.
Get those surveys in.

Best,
David V

7 models, 7 angles, 7 minutes.

Little Mountain Redevelopment: Density Models – The Movie! from David Vaisbord on Vimeo.

Little Mountain Housing – New computer simulation from David Vaisbord on Vimeo.

You probably watched this computer simulation of a walk through the site. Here it is again.

ACTUALLY, to Click on “FOLLOW ME” (at the top-right of this web-page) does not automatically keep you informed of new postings. You need to set up RSS (Really Simple Syndication) on your own computer. Click on this link for a YouTube video about it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
The beginning of the video is sort of hokey, but it more or less explains why and how it exists, and why you should have it. Setting up something like Google Reader is simple and free. There are dozens of info sites on RSS feeds on the web.

David Vaisbord

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