“If you can develop and design streets so that they are wonderful, fulfilling places to be—community building places, attractive for all people—then we will have successfully designed about one-third of the city.”
So says the Allan Jacobs quote you’ll be greeted with if you go to the homepage of the Granville Street Redesign Project, which reaches completion this month. Now that the Granville Mall has been repaved and planted with trees, right in time for the Olympics, has it transformed into a flourishing centre of community involvement and civic pride? Of course not; it’s the same old shopping and clubbing district, just a bit polished up. You’d find more community cultivating at the bottom of a yogurt container.
Granville isn’t a place to hold inclusive events, nor is it woven from a rich tapestry of people from different backgrounds. It’s woven from a collection of business interests. It’s a place with stores, both large and high-end, with a smattering of fast food joints and “Irish” pubs. It’s a place pumping house at $10 a head, where you and your bros can chase after girls with exposed thongs and tramp stamps. It’s a place where medium-scale plays concerts are performed. But most importantly, it’s a place where you break out your wallet and spend big bucks.
Not everything about the redesign is bad. It’s great news that they tried to retool the street as pedestrian-oriented; very few use cars downtown anymore. But when the $20 million redesign facelift began, the city wasn’t thinking about civic pride or an inclusive community. There was a run-down entertainment district filled with porn shops, and they thought they could raise property values. The porn shops are still there, god bless them, but districts that actually promote community in Vancouver don’t mean a thing to the city. If you want community, build it yourself. It’s at best unnoticed and at worst opposed by the city. As if City Hall ever thought we’d all join hands and start singing along Granville once it had some trees and restricted motor traffic.
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