Vancouver
Melinda and I got back from a few days in Vancouver, and I have to say I'm a little underwhelmed. It is in many ways a great city, but it's de rigeur for Seattleites to go there and come back with an enormous complex about how much better everything is there than here, and against that high expectation it was a little disappointing. I came back rather glad that I live near Vancouver and will probably get a few excuses to visit over the coming year, but also quite happy to live here in Seattle.
Impressive
There were two major things I really did envy about Vancouver: the built and natural environments.
The natural environment is a simple enough issue: Vancouver shares the amazing gifts Seattle gets from its geography, only more so. The mountains are so much closer that they're amazing to behold and the nearest ski area is only half an hour's drive away. The built up area, while not exactly flat, is somewhat less hilly than Seattle, which as a cyclist is a relief. Somehow there seems to be even more shoreline, or perhaps its just that downtown (equivalent to the Pioneer Square-downtown-Belltown-Cap Hill area here) is a peninsula so there's more shoreline right by the areas where tourists naturally spend the most time. And then there's the stroke of luck that is Stanley Park. It has a similar history to Discovery Park (both were military land eventually gifted to their respective cities) but while I adore Discovery Park, Stanley Park has the added bonus of immediately adjoining downtown. I feel like it's as close to as many people (at least relative to city size) as Central Park in NYC, and that's a fantastic resource for a city to have.
The built environment also has a lot to admire. They've managed for the most part to make a downtown that's full of skyscrapers less claustrophobic than Seattle's can be, by allowing fewer of the really tall buildings to grab their entire block, and keeping some random low-rises in amongst the tall buildings, even in the most intensely developed bits of town. There don't seem to be more parks than in Seattle-and certainly not the density of pocket parks that older cities tend to have-but the narrowness of the downtown peninula does a lot to help keep a sense of space, and many miles of waterfront are joined by public bike-and-pedestrian paths [usually separated by a small physical barrier, to the benefit of both groups of users]. And-joy of joys!-rather less of the city is taken up by restricted access highways. It's not so much that this reduces the impact of cars (no shortage of traffic in Vancouver's rush hour...) as that it frees up so much space. There's no Alaskan Way Viaduct separating the downtown office district from its waterfront, no uncrossable Aurora Avenue or I-5 chopping neighbouring blocks into artificially separated districts. In fact, urban space seems to be generally much better used; for instance ground level around the high rise buildings seems to have a much higher density of street-facing businesses, and I saw almost no urban space wasted by surface parking lots.
There were other things too. Even as two people spoiled by Seattle's bounty, we found the food incredible. The population is noticeably more international, multi-linguistic and multi-coloured than here (which probably explains the food and helps with the acceptance of urban density). Public transport seems to work a little better, at least in terms of buses being more frequent and better used outside rush hour.
But not a Jedi yet
And yet, in the face of all of this, some things seemed to be missing. I'll start with a trivial one, because it bothered me a surprising amount: the wonderful food is undercut by an almost complete absence of good beer. Vancouver-brewed beer seems to all taste identical and insipid-just like Brits' inaccurate stereotypes of American beer-and the selection of foreign beers I found was dire (John Smith's, Guinness and Stella Artois - woo fucking hoo). The one place where I found good beer it was from Quebec. Though BC wine is really rather good, and as I type this something occurs to me: is there any region of the world which produces both excellent wine and excellent beer, other than the US West Coast? Maybe I'm just spoilt. And the wine was certainly good enough that having to drink it instead would be no punishment.
But the beer is a pointer to something more significant: we couldn't find much of a bar scene. I realise we may have just been looking in the wrong places (and in that vein I'm rather irritated with both the guidebooks we had - for bars surely it's more useful to direct people to an area than list a small number of individual bars scattered around the city), but we found remarkably few bars, and even fewer that were not of the obnoxious First Ave meat market variety. Even more perplexingly (and this goes against what I had previously heard about the place, making me wonder even more if we were just looking in the wrong places), we found interesting non-chain cafes remarkably scarce. The miles and miles of street-facing businesses in the dense parts of town seemed to consist exclusively of shops and restaurants; no places for people to just socialise, relax and/or work for hours. A severe lack of places for a tourist to peoplewatch and feel the heart and soul of the city, or for locals to work outside the office or socialise outside the home. It left me feeling like I simply couldn't live there - these amenities mean too much me.
Were we missing something? Are there parts of town we should visit to find these things? Even if there are, it's quite odd. Whether it's pubs in London or cafes in Seattle, in the central parts of most big thriving cities one can't stumble a few blocks without tripping over a social gathering space. And yet even Victoria-a fraction of the size and quite sleepy by comparison-seemed to have more than Vancouver. Hell, in Sooke I had an easier time finding places to just sit and relax without a time limit or agenda.
There were other things too, but the others were flaws that Vancouver shares with Seattle. Where Seattle has human misery scattered among the skyscrapers, Vancouver has it concentrated in the downtown Eastside; I'm not convinced one way is better than the other. Rather like Seattle's, Vancouver's vaunted bike infrastructure seems to consist of signs and road markings, except for a flagship trail. For all that the bus system has in its favour, it's still a bus system [skytrain's not comprehensive enough to change that, though it's a start] so it's difficult to understand and gets stuck in traffic. And there's certainly no shortage of traffic - 80% of Vancouverites drive to work, and it shows.
So, while there are definitely things Seattle could learn from Vancouver-building codes, ripping out all the surface parking, ripping out the goddamned viaduct-I didn't leave wishing I could live there. It's just not the heaven it's cracked up to be.
Impressive
There were two major things I really did envy about Vancouver: the built and natural environments.
The natural environment is a simple enough issue: Vancouver shares the amazing gifts Seattle gets from its geography, only more so. The mountains are so much closer that they're amazing to behold and the nearest ski area is only half an hour's drive away. The built up area, while not exactly flat, is somewhat less hilly than Seattle, which as a cyclist is a relief. Somehow there seems to be even more shoreline, or perhaps its just that downtown (equivalent to the Pioneer Square-downtown-Belltown-Cap Hill area here) is a peninsula so there's more shoreline right by the areas where tourists naturally spend the most time. And then there's the stroke of luck that is Stanley Park. It has a similar history to Discovery Park (both were military land eventually gifted to their respective cities) but while I adore Discovery Park, Stanley Park has the added bonus of immediately adjoining downtown. I feel like it's as close to as many people (at least relative to city size) as Central Park in NYC, and that's a fantastic resource for a city to have.
The built environment also has a lot to admire. They've managed for the most part to make a downtown that's full of skyscrapers less claustrophobic than Seattle's can be, by allowing fewer of the really tall buildings to grab their entire block, and keeping some random low-rises in amongst the tall buildings, even in the most intensely developed bits of town. There don't seem to be more parks than in Seattle-and certainly not the density of pocket parks that older cities tend to have-but the narrowness of the downtown peninula does a lot to help keep a sense of space, and many miles of waterfront are joined by public bike-and-pedestrian paths [usually separated by a small physical barrier, to the benefit of both groups of users]. And-joy of joys!-rather less of the city is taken up by restricted access highways. It's not so much that this reduces the impact of cars (no shortage of traffic in Vancouver's rush hour...) as that it frees up so much space. There's no Alaskan Way Viaduct separating the downtown office district from its waterfront, no uncrossable Aurora Avenue or I-5 chopping neighbouring blocks into artificially separated districts. In fact, urban space seems to be generally much better used; for instance ground level around the high rise buildings seems to have a much higher density of street-facing businesses, and I saw almost no urban space wasted by surface parking lots.
There were other things too. Even as two people spoiled by Seattle's bounty, we found the food incredible. The population is noticeably more international, multi-linguistic and multi-coloured than here (which probably explains the food and helps with the acceptance of urban density). Public transport seems to work a little better, at least in terms of buses being more frequent and better used outside rush hour.
But not a Jedi yet
And yet, in the face of all of this, some things seemed to be missing. I'll start with a trivial one, because it bothered me a surprising amount: the wonderful food is undercut by an almost complete absence of good beer. Vancouver-brewed beer seems to all taste identical and insipid-just like Brits' inaccurate stereotypes of American beer-and the selection of foreign beers I found was dire (John Smith's, Guinness and Stella Artois - woo fucking hoo). The one place where I found good beer it was from Quebec. Though BC wine is really rather good, and as I type this something occurs to me: is there any region of the world which produces both excellent wine and excellent beer, other than the US West Coast? Maybe I'm just spoilt. And the wine was certainly good enough that having to drink it instead would be no punishment.
But the beer is a pointer to something more significant: we couldn't find much of a bar scene. I realise we may have just been looking in the wrong places (and in that vein I'm rather irritated with both the guidebooks we had - for bars surely it's more useful to direct people to an area than list a small number of individual bars scattered around the city), but we found remarkably few bars, and even fewer that were not of the obnoxious First Ave meat market variety. Even more perplexingly (and this goes against what I had previously heard about the place, making me wonder even more if we were just looking in the wrong places), we found interesting non-chain cafes remarkably scarce. The miles and miles of street-facing businesses in the dense parts of town seemed to consist exclusively of shops and restaurants; no places for people to just socialise, relax and/or work for hours. A severe lack of places for a tourist to peoplewatch and feel the heart and soul of the city, or for locals to work outside the office or socialise outside the home. It left me feeling like I simply couldn't live there - these amenities mean too much me.
Were we missing something? Are there parts of town we should visit to find these things? Even if there are, it's quite odd. Whether it's pubs in London or cafes in Seattle, in the central parts of most big thriving cities one can't stumble a few blocks without tripping over a social gathering space. And yet even Victoria-a fraction of the size and quite sleepy by comparison-seemed to have more than Vancouver. Hell, in Sooke I had an easier time finding places to just sit and relax without a time limit or agenda.
There were other things too, but the others were flaws that Vancouver shares with Seattle. Where Seattle has human misery scattered among the skyscrapers, Vancouver has it concentrated in the downtown Eastside; I'm not convinced one way is better than the other. Rather like Seattle's, Vancouver's vaunted bike infrastructure seems to consist of signs and road markings, except for a flagship trail. For all that the bus system has in its favour, it's still a bus system [skytrain's not comprehensive enough to change that, though it's a start] so it's difficult to understand and gets stuck in traffic. And there's certainly no shortage of traffic - 80% of Vancouverites drive to work, and it shows.
So, while there are definitely things Seattle could learn from Vancouver-building codes, ripping out all the surface parking, ripping out the goddamned viaduct-I didn't leave wishing I could live there. It's just not the heaven it's cracked up to be.