An Intracity Canal for Vancouver

With limited budgets and the large scale of sea-level rise challenges facing cities, it’s time to think about design solutions that address many problems at once. Streets provide an amazing opportunity for this because they are owned by cities (which makes it easier to implement changes), and they are significant public spaces for community use (in Vancouver, about 30% of land are streets).

Could an intracity canal be designed as part of a street to connect buildings, mitigate sea-level rise, and bring needed public space to neighbourhoods across   Crab Park, Strathcona, Gastown, the Downtown East Side, Chinatown, and False Creek?

In the Studio, participants looked at how to plan around a proposed intracity canal with surrounding land uses, and then developed a series of street cross section drawings to show how conditions along the canal are meeting multiple goals.  Through this exercise, we considered what’s important to keep in the surrounding neighbourhoods. 

Moving into the Arts Umbrella model-making studios, participants designed a new canal facing, net-zero, mixed-use building that responded to its context.