I have been over to the mainland a few times since April of this year, but I just hadn’t made it into Vancouver since 2019. Luckily, I had a chance to go over a week ago for work and stay downtown. I had some time to walk around and take in the city and see what had changed; what was the same; and see if being away for the last few years made me look at it in a different way. I should say that I have a lot of love for Vancouver. Growing up in the Lower Mainland, downtown Vancouver was the place where my friends and I would go for shopping, food and to have fun. It was Vancouver that really made me love cities and all of the benefits of urban life.

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Having not visited Downtown Vancouver in so long, I expected to see a lot of change. Particularly, I expected to see the scars of the pandemic everywhere, making familiar places seem changed, but it wasn’t like that at all. The time gap did have an impact though, and three things really struck me when I visited. First, I have to say that transit is amazing and until you visit a place that has decent transit, you don’t realise how bad it is in Victoria (I should say that I think the drivers do an amazing job!). Until you are at the point where you don’t have to think about transit, it is not going to be really useful. The second thing that struck me was that such a large portion of the downtown, especially the northern portion around Pacific Centre Mall is almost quiet and empty because it lacks commercial space. And finally, one of the things after my soul that I loved seeing in Vancouver were the food carts. It may have been that I was happy to see them, however it seemed like there were more of them now then in the past.

Transit

I do realise that it is unfair to compare a metro of 2.5 million to one of 400k but I will anyways. Recently, on Twitter I saw some great commuting data from the 2021 census. When it came to getting to work in ways other than a car, Victoria was way out in front. But it could have been better. While walking and cycling are places we do well, we are still well behind in transit use. By contrast, in Vancouver, I am not sure why you would even want to bring a car into downtown. You can bus all over and the the skytrain can get you to quite a few places in and around the city and you can often walk from the station. (I will say that I would love to see a line that heads out to the West End like Denman and Davie. Downtown would be completely covered if it did.) It is such a liberating experience to have rapid transit in a city. You really just need to find a station and you are set on your journey. No need to know bus transfer timing, no weird route changes and no getting stuck in traffic. No matter where I have travelled, places with good rapid transit made my visit better. The very basic bus “rapid transit” we are planning in Victoria doesn’t come close to providing a solution.

Commercial Space

If rapid transit is something that we see in big cities that we wish we had in Victoria, the central business districts of most big North American cities are something to avoid and I will say that Vancouver is not immune to the oppressive canyons of concrete and quartz with nothing for a pedestrian to look at. While Vancouver has some amazing commercials strips, it also has really large amounts of nothingness at the street level. It struck me more this time maybe because I was walking around alone and I was staying right in the middle of the central business district, but really why do so many buildings have either just massive walls of nothing or enormous lobbies with banks? There was just such a huge amount of space with no stores, no restaurants and not even windows often to engage me. This wasn’t due to some large amount commercial vacancy either, it’s just the way it has always been. This is a shared trait across many cities, at least in North America. Build large commercial buildings with maybe a bank and then just have a massive lobby space. Outside the building you will have a ton of windows looking into the lobby space and then just a lot of blank walls that lead your eye up the tower. Perhaps nice from a distance, but for the pedestrian on the street it is boring and I would suggest quite wasteful. I mean wouldn’t it be better for the building owner if there were commercial tenants paying rent?

With a couple of exceptions like the CIBC building, downtown Victoria seems to have avoided having this kind of deadspace in its centre. In fact, I think that we may even be on the cutting edge of office buildings. When you look at the Atrium building or even 750 Pandora, these buildings were built with a plan for ground floor commercial being the face of the building. While Victoria has its commercial strips like Vancouver, it also seems to have more organic commercial zones across the downtown core as well. All of this I think gives our sidewalks a very unique feel. I think we may have gotten lucky that our big growth curve is happening now and not in the 1980s and 90s.

Food Carts

If you have been reading my blog for any amount of time, you likely know that I appreciate food carts and also think that in Victoria we don’t have enough (we may only have three or four?). It seemed to me that since my last trek to Vancouver, they have granted more food cart licenses. I could well be wrong and it was just the prolonged dearth of them here that made me appreciate them more while I was in Vancouver.

Food carts are such a magical addition to city sidewalks and I don’t think that this is appreciated. First, many will say that the food cart patron is choosing that over going to a restaurant and thus costing the brick and mortar owner money. This is just not true. I would suggest that it may cost McDonald's or Burger King customers, but not a regular restaurant because no one is ever in a hurry enough to eat at a food cart or have just enough money for the food at a food cart; is going to change their mind and decide to visit a sit-down place that will cost more money and take longer. I know that there are lots of times that I would consider running out and getting a hotdog when I am at work if it were an option, but instead just stay at my desk and keep working because the other options are simply not fast enough.

Second, food carts are business owners on the street who have a vested interest in the area around their cart being safe and clean. Which means that pedestrians near them will be safer.

Finally, they are meeting places where people congregate which makes them perfect places to meet-up with friends, have a conversation and enjoy some food. I really hope that we are getting close to seeing more in Victoria. As for the seeming increase in Vancouver, let me know in the comments if there has been an increase in them.

It was great to get to visit Vancouver, though it was cold. The temperature got down a fair bit below zero a couple of times. The bonus was that being close to Christmas, the cold temperatures enhanced the light experience as I walked around. I have included a few Christmas light pictures and some random other ones for you. Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season and will be back soon with a new post.