the city of rain

In fact, despite the weather, much of Vancouver’s public space is outdoors.

While the generous coastline, parks, and seawall are heavily utilized and well-appreciated during the summer, they become considerably emptier during the rainy majority of the year.

SALA professor Matthew Soules writes, “On days without rain, Vancouver sidewalks pulse with an energy that is to be expected of its exceptional density, however, the same streets are comparably quiet when it’s raining. In other words, they’re quiet most of the time.”1

The Cult Of The View

Unlike traditional squares or parks in other cities, Vancouver’s public space is pushed to the periphery rather than the city center in order to capitalize on the other defining aspect of Vancouver’s context — the expansive waterfront, and epic mountain view.

The dramatic landscape that surrounds Vancouver is what sets this city apart from other metropolitan areas, and has resulted in what writer and urban planner, Lance Berelowitz refers to as, ‘the cult of the view,’ or a city-wide obsession with Vancouver’s scenic backdrop.1

However, the extent to which the view imperative is protected can be a bit extreme, to the point where much of the urban fabric has been shaped not in response to the actual life within the city, but in service to the image of nature beyond it. This has led the city to create legally mandated ‘view corridors’ which were “established from a somewhat arbitrary set of fixed locations around the city, [and] are intended to ‘protect’ public views of the distant mountain panorama from anything so crude as a building.”2

As a result, the architecture in the downtown core tends to be judged not by its spatial qualities, but by how well it can provide a glimpse of the epic view. The irony that haunts every new tower advertising an enviable peak at the mountains is that a few years later it will be completely obstructed by a newer, taller tower built next door. As the city grows higher and denser in blind pursuit of the view, it inevitably gets in the way of the very thing it wishes to preserve.

Still, there is no arguing that the view is truly exceptional. Regardless of how the city shapes itself to respond to the nature that surrounds it, the view is undoubtedly one of Vancouver’s best public amenities.