In a post-viaduct Vancouver, the land around Northeast False Creek could be home to an equestrian facility, a floating village or a solar energy farm.
Those are just some of the 104 possibilities for the area put forward by architects, planners and amateurs who responded to the City of Vancouvers call for inspiring ideas on the future of the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts. Those ideas are now up online for the public to peruse and choose their favourite design ideas.
The city has not yet made a decision on whether the hulking concrete structures should stay or go but has been moving steadily through a three-part process contemplating the future of the failed freeway system. Earlier this year, council directed staff to begin pondering possibilities for the area it calls the citys Eastern Core. With that in mind planning staff put together Re:CONNECT, an ideas competition encouraging urban design aficionados to let their minds run wild.
The citys director of planning, Brent Toderian, says The beauty of a competition like this is around educating the public around the process of should you take the viaducts down or not. If you make that just a technical question you might just get a technical answer. But part of the question is about what this place could be, and can you really make a decision if you should take them down before youve really let your imagination fly around what might be possible.
The 104 submissions collected between Sept. 22 and Nov. 9 came from 13 countries and fell into three categories: Connecting the Core, Visualizing the Viaducts and the Wildcard, which encouraged out-of-the-box thinking on design possibilities. Winners of the ideas competition will not necessarily have their designs implemented, says Toderian, but the exercise goes a long way in stimulating creative city planning and augmenting processes like public consultation and city-led design initiatives.
Voting is open now until Nov. 27 at Vancouver.ca/Reconnect.
Winners will be announced at a celebratory event on Dec. 1.
