Feature Stories
Alone Together
By Frances Bula published Sep 1, 2009
True or false: townhomes are better than high-rises at promoting community
They look so inviting, our little versions of New York brownstones or Baltimore rowhouses: Vancouver’s trademark downtown townhomes, with their front doors opening to the street, their little patios carefully personalized with planters and decorative objets d’art, and their small flights of steps. They transform downtown streets from a dreary Towerville to a spot where Carrie Bradshaw and her friends might hang out.
Lawyer Grace Chen loves her place on Richards Street. As she and her boyfriend have often noticed, they talk to their neighbours much more often than when they lived in apartments. Somehow, says Chen, it’s easier to connect on the street or on their stoops than in a high-rise hallway or elevator. And the whole street feels more connected. On a sunny weekday afternoon recently, rivulets of walkers streamed down her street, one of the prime breeding grounds of the Vancouverist townhouse, some with strollers, some with briefcases, some with grocery bags as they strolled past. It looked like a scene of utopian livability—downtown urbanity as friendly village.
But oh dear, maybe not. These homes, which seem to induce such neighbourliness, are also oddly empty. There are patio chairs but no people, flowers but no children’s toys. Windows facing the sidewalk usually have their curtains drawn. And one urban researcher who’s explored the anthropology of the area suggests that although our townhouses look as though they have the power to generate a noticeable wave of bonding and sociability, they really don’t.
“The townhouses have a positive design impact. And they make the streets feel safe and lived in. But it’s a simulacrum of a neighbourhood,” says Peter Greenwell, a graduate of SFU’s Urban Studies program, who explored residents’ interactions with their Downtown South area and each other. He surveyed them about who they are, what they like about their neighbourhoods, and how much contact they have with the people who live around them. What he found from 22 in-depth interviews (representing about one-sixth of the 133 townhouses in his study) was that they have high incomes, travel, and are well educated. They love the convenience of living close to their work and some of them walk—the move to the inner city really did prompt many of them to give up second cars, and several told him that once the Canada Line opened, they’d give up their remaining vehicle.
