Transit is a huge part of the success of any great city. Here in Denver we have a great light rail system, an extensive bus system, and there are plenty of transit improvements planned and under construction. So with transit being such a important element of urbanism, it’s something we need to cover here at the DenverInfill Blog. To that end, I’m happy to welcome Ryan Mulligan as the newest DenverInfill Blog contributor. Ryan is a transit planner and rail advocate here in Denver and he’ll be focusing on FasTracks and anything else that’s transit related… although Rick will continue to be the go-to guy for Union Station updates. Welcome, Ryan!
Archive of entries posted on June 2010
Lessons from Vancouver
Recently I had the opportunity to travel to Vancouver, BC as part of the Downtown Denver Partnership‘s urban exploration program. Our group included about 60 downtown leaders and officials, and the purpose of the trip was to learn about different design and policy initiatives used successfully in Vancouver that we could potentially adopt to improve Downtown Denver.
Downtown Vancouver is an amazing place. A city and metro area almost identical in population to Denver, their downtown is covered by (literally) hundreds of residential towers, along with office towers, all the usual civic buildings and cultural amenities, exceptional parks, and substantial retail. Over 90,000 people call Downtown Vancouver home in an area 1.75 miles by 1.0 miles—about the same size as in Denver bounded by the South Platte River to the State Capitol, and Speer Boulevard to Park Avenue. Here’s Downtown Vancouver via GoogleEarth with 3-D Buildings:
How Downtown Vancouver transformed over the course of about 20 years into a dense, residentially oriented and livable downtown was the result of a convergence of many factors, including worldwide exposure from hosting the 1986 World Expo; a flood of investment capital in advance of the 1999 transfer of Hong Kong to China (and, since then, investment capital from throughout the world); a strong pro-environmental and progressive cultural ethic; a vibrant local economy; anticipation over hosting the 2010 Winter Olympics; a geographically constrained urban core; and municipal leadership that’s unapologetically and aggressively pro-urban. Imagine a city Denver’s size with dozens of One Lincoln Parks and Glass Houses coming online every year for over two decades running (with no slowdown in sight). That’s Vancouver.
It’s impossible for me to recount the hundreds of great ideas, key decisions, and influential policies that we learned about on the trip in this blog post, but I’ll share with you a few that really stood out to me:
When asked about the city’s policy and spending priorities within the public realm, the Vancouver planning director said in a very matter-of-fact manner:
1. Pedestrians
2. Bicycles
3. Transit
4. Movement of goods
5. Private automobiles
…in that order, period. And this is not just a planning department priority order, but one shared enthusiastically by Public Works, Parks & Rec, and everyone in the city from the Mayor on down. That priority order permeates everything they do in Vancouver, and it shows. It’s no coincidence that Vancouver routinely ranks as one of the most livable cities in not only North America, but the world. In Denver, we are slowly coming around to those priorities, but we have a long way to go before it becomes an institutionalized way of thinking.
Vancouver requires a lot from their development community. Parks, plazas, promenades, civic projects, transit improvements, schools, day care centers… you name it, if it’s something that adds to the livability of the city, the city requires developers to help pay for these things (what they call the “common wealth”) if the developers are going to be granted a building permit. But in exchange for all of that civic investment, the city rewards the developers with substantial density bonuses and a streamlined review process. The city’s strategy is that a successful project must be a win-win for both the developer and the community. The city will work whatever deal is necessary to make the project profitable for the developer while also making sure the project contributes to the vitality of the city. Now, to be fair, this is a strategy that works because there is such a tremendous demand to build projects in Vancouver, that the city is in a position of calling the shots. But, one of the reasons why demand to invest in Vancouver is so strong is because of the high quality of life that has resulted from all those amenities that were built with help from the development community.
Vancouver is known for its “point” tower: a thin structure rising up from a podium base that extends to the property line. In Vancouver, each tower above the podium must be at least 80 feet from its neighbor. This results in a checkerboard-like distribution of towers across the downtown with plenty of air and sun and nice views in between while, at the sidewalk level, the podium provides a strong street wall punctuated only by the carefully placed public park or plaza. In Vancouver, those tower podiums are usually only two or three stories high and consist of various activities such as retail, lobby functions, offices, or community uses. Parking? It’s all underground. Above-ground structured parking is not allowed.
Towers in Vancouver are not allowed to have a flat boxy top. The developer/architect is required do something interesting at the top. The city doesn’t dictate what the top must look like and it doesn’t have to be fancy, it just can’t be a box.
There are 14 full-service grocery stores in Downtown Vancouver (plus urban versions of Home Depot and many other big-box retailers). Want retail? Need lots of people.
Vancouver is known for its family-friendly downtown. They made the decision that their downtown wasn’t going to be for just young professionals and empty-nesters. Not only do they have an affordable housing requirement (as does Denver), but they also have a family-housing requirement: each development must have a certain number or percentage of three- or four-bedroom units to accommodate families. That, combined with plenty of downtown schools, day care centers, and kid-friendly public spaces, has mostly eliminated the “gotta move to the suburbs after the kids are born” routine that is so typical here in Denver. In fact, the demographic that has been a big part of the city’s population growth has been suburbanites with kids moving into Downtown.
Ground-floor retail is required in buildings only along certain streets (primarily those with transit). Otherwise, the ground floors of buildings must be visually permeable with interesting/engaging designs to the pedestrian, nice landscaping, etc., but retail isn’t forced to be everywhere.
I could go on, but that’s enough for now. Each of these topics have clear applications for Denver. As a result of this trip, I’m even more committed to advocating for more progressive thinking about how Downtown Denver should grow and prosper. Vancouver’s experience can help us get there.
Union Station Update #21
Today’s update is more about the lack of activity than it is about progress. As you can see in the photo below, the bus box hole has been transformed into a reflecting pool for the Four Seasons Hotel. The Kiewit crew is still waiting for the permit to fire up the new dewatering system that will drain the hole so work can resume. There appears to be no more than 15 workers on site this afternoon. Looking at the site from above, it seems that there is about one worker per acre of jobsite. They are rearranging staged materials, smoothing roadways, and fussing with the new dewatering system. It looks pretty much like a ghost town compared to the past few months of nonstop activity with dozens of pieces of equipment scurrying about, moving massive amounts of dirt, and building infrastructure. (For background on the delay, see Update #20).
Today, I uploaded another 13 photos to our Denver Union Station page at JobSiteVistor.com.
I will be vacationing in Alaska until July 5. When I return, I hope work has resumed and there is plenty of progress to report. If not, you will have to tolerate my photos of Denali instead.
Denver Approves New Zoning Code
The Denver City Council just passed, unanimously, the new Denver Zoning Code. I haven’t blogged much about the new zoning code over the past five years because, frankly, I haven’t had the time or the energy to give it the coverage it deserved, with all those infill projects to talk about. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been a strong supporter of the Herculean effort that planning director Peter Park and the Community Planning & Development staff, the Zoning Code Task Force, City Council, and thousands of citizens have undertaken to give Denver a 21st Century zoning code.
Denver’s now-former zoning code had its origins in the 1950s. That code reflected the values at that time which could be generalized in a few words: “make our city as automobile-friendly as possible” and “old and small urbanism is bad, new and big urbanism is good, regardless of location”. The old code didn’t just allow, but encouraged the destruction of historic neighborhoods through incompatible development, required new development to be designed around the automobile, and generally dehumanized our built environment. While our values and our plans eventually changed to reflect the type of city-building that originally gave us the mixed-use, sustainable, pedestrian-oriented places we treasure most, our zoning code was still promoting—dictating even—quite the opposite. Now, the city’s zoning code, which is nothing more than a regulatory tool for implementing our plans and our vision for the city’s future, is in sync with those plans and that vision. This fundamental restructuring of how we regulate our built environment is on par with our investments in DIA or FasTracks: it is profound in the magnitude of its potential to help us achieve exceptional urbanism in Denver.
Like any major effort, the new zoning code is not perfect, and no one is saying that it is. But the city must be commended for being up to the challenge in the first place, and for the extensive outreach and collaborative process they implemented to accomplish the task. Even people who have a particular nit to pick with the new code acknowledge the exhaustive work and open process the city followed to make the new code as good as can be expected at this time. Appropriately, many tweaks to the new code will be made over the coming months and years, but as of June 21, 2010, we now have in place a zoning code that is in harmony with our land use and transportation plans and rooted in the perspective that zoning is not just about land use, but about neighborhood context and building form too. The real test of the new zoning code will obviously come through the private sector attempting to develop new projects under it, so how well it really works remains to be seen. But even a partially flawed new code consistent with our ideals and vision is infinitely better than an old code that was philosophically antithetical to our current city-building values.
In one fell swoop, yet years in the making, the zoning map and the zoning code for the entire City and County of Denver just radically changed. It’s a big deal, and I am proud of our city for achieving it.
