News and Features
Larry Beasley's Simple Plan - continued
By Frances Bula published Dec 1, 2008
Cities all over the world, in love with the image of Vancouver as an urban utopia, are eager to clone it. But as former planner Larry Beasley will tell anyone who’ll listen, it’s not quite that easy.
Also in the audience is Roy Knight, an architecture professor and former dean of architecture in Tennessee and Florida, who came to hear even more about Beasley and Vancouver than he already knows. "To me, it's the model city in North America," says Knight, the picture of a southern academic, with his cream-coloured suit and white hair, as he waits to speak to his urban-planning hero in person for the first time. Knight has been coming to Vancouver every year since 1971, and his students get exposed regularly to his ever-expanding library of Vancouver slides and videos. "There are so many lessons to be learned about how high-intensity can be highly livable. It's dense, but it's adjacent to the waterfront and Stanley Park and there's always breathing room, even around the individual buildings. This mix is extremely rich."
People arrive constantly to study the Vancouver model on the ground. In October alone, groups from Dallas, Denver, and Portland were in town, studying how the city is put together. "You could make a living just showing tour groups around," says development consultant Michael Geller, only half joking. Geller has his own share of Vancouverist fame, having developed Simon Fraser University's UniverCity on Burnaby Mountain.
Once they've seen the reality, fans hire Vancouverists outright. Beasley's former co-planning director, Ann McAfee, consults in Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine, and the Philippines. What people Down Under are fascinated by, says McAfee, is our success in decreasing car traffic while increasing population.
Thom, known here as an architect, has been asked to do planning work everywhere from Tulsa, Oklahoma, to Dalian New Town, China. James Cheng, also regarded here primarily as an architect, is working in Beijing, Shenzen, Calgary, and Edmonton on large mixed-use developments to which clients look for him to bring a Vancouver touch.
