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PSA 2: Read Vancouver history’s online now with digitized copy of Harland Bartholomew’s book on his plan for the city

April 24th, 2011 · 17 Comments

I’ve been longing to get my own copy of Harland Bartholomew’s 1928 plan for Vancouver ever since I saw it in Andy Yan’s hands. But Yan and his boss, Bing Thom, have done all of us a favour by digitizing this book for the Vancouver Archives as a birthday present for the city. The link is here to look at the plan Barthlomew created. Although not all of it came to pass, he did create a grid that city engineers today like to brag is “very robust” — i.e. it allows drivers to access the city by multiple routes, preventing the kind of major pile-ups common to cities with a few large arterials and not much else. Think Calgary.

As well, he created the foundation for future neighbourhoods by spacing school locations in such a way that communities could build up around them. And much more. But read the book.

Categories: Uncategorized

  • Roger Kemble

    Frances,

    Type in the “h” as in http and up it comes: a slip of the finger no doubt!

    Very interesting . . .

    Thanxqz Andy y Bing . . .

  • Roger Kemble

    Omigawd this isn’t a plan. This is a plat layout for a company town!

    Concentrating on lineal movement where are the neighbourhoods? Mount Pleasant for instance, extant long before my time, but it must have been there.

    Hastings town site re-plotted.

    Hastings town site (plate 13) is recognized as re-planned sweeping accesses, with a measly park to the south, boulevard-ed Boundary Road and a double carriage way coming off Cassiar taking traffic East to, I presume, a burgeoning Burnaby, that, even when I came in 1951, was unworthy of that elevated treatment.

    Re-plotting area Point Grey; surely he wasn’t seriously. Wow I knew Arroyo Seco Canyon, North America’s first auto freeway, heralded the omnipotence of the auto in California but ripping to shreds my favourite area of town, from Trafalgar to Blenheim, was as bad as the blood shed of the actual battle’s name-sakes.

    Mercifully none of this came to be.

    Transit.

    Immediate recommendations. The ultimate programme for a 1m pop. Ultimate! Wow that takes chutzpah, Eighty years later, and we are still barely over half way there.

    Plate 16 looks pretty good. Pity it was abandoned in 1952.

    Population growth charts, plates 17/18 seem to reinforce sprawl and potential real estate speculation. And of course we are not nearly, pop-wise estimated to be reached by 1960, where Bartholomew planned us to be.

    Plate 20 is very interesting describing street car buses and walking times: trams no longer exist and bus time must be way out of kilter but. I assume walking times still apply.

    Referring to “cars” the plan, I assume, has emission free trams in mind. The effects of the auto industry’s perfidious manipulation had yet to impact the city.

    Plate 32 describes how, even in 1927, conspirators were working to shut off the waterfront with an elevated freeway: Bartholomew seemed unabashed.

    I wish there were more photos like page 145. Oh how I remember this scene even in 1951. Such may quell the enthusiasm of the nostalgia buffs.

    Plates 34, 35. 36, 37 describes Vancouver a local administrative center for a resource (huh ho plate 36 brings to mind the R or R no-no!) based economy. Something we have lost by our ephemeral bedazzlement with international/global what-not and which. We’ll be back to a local economy before too long.

    Plate 37 doesn’t even mention out sacrosanct views seeing the waterfront as strictly utilitarian: personally I have no problem with that. Views have skewed planning ever since real estate’s hegemony took over the local planning debate.

    Including economic development, resources etc has everything to do with wealth creation and planning Vancouver but not in the quantifying manner treated in this plan: for instance were does he talk of fractional reserve banking, paper currency, on/off gold standard, speculation etc which he may not have been aware of but was surely eating away at the very foundations of our city as it is today.

    Consequently from page 158, HARBOUR SECTION on, puts the Bartholomew plan way out of its depth. Still . . .

    The plan demonstrates lost opportunities, just the beginning of city suffocated by nearly a century of bad planning, hubris, world class, paradise and ignorance with plenty of blame to go around.

    An interesting artifact of eighty years ago: bemusing yet hardly something to admire today!

  • Andy Yan

    Thanks for the PSA, Frances!

    I should note that the digitization of the Harland Bartholomew Plan (and 20+ of his supplemental documents) has been a great collaboration with the City of Vancouver’s Archives. Surrey City Centre was proposed to be a “New Westminster Major Airport”!

    The Archives is a magnificent, albeit sometimes under appreciated, repository of our collective urban memory (www.vancouver.ca/archives). I hope your readers can pop in for digital visit. Looking at the background documents, it’s amazing at how far we’ve gone from and how far we have to go.

    Presented with the UBC School of Community and Regional Planning, BTA and the Archives are hosting a public symposium on Harland Bartholomew’s legacies and lessons tomorrow (Tues, Apr 26) at UBC Robson, 6:30pm. For details, please go to http://www.bartplan.eventbrite.com

    The Event was full within five days of the first announcement with a 35 person waitlist. However, given an unexpected Game Seven, we might have room. Who would have thought after a three game lead! A lesson in planning, perhaps?

  • gmgw

    Plug: If anyone else, like Frances, longs for their own copy of the Bartholemew Plan (an original hard copy, that is), it’s not that hard to find: MacLeod’s Books, for instance, often has one available. ‘Tain’t cheap, though, which is one reason why an online version is to be welcomed…
    gmgw

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    This does save one a trip to the archives with laptop and scanner in hand. Thanks, all involved!

    The most remarkable thing about the plan is the date: 1928 (just getting going on it, but have studied pages published piece meal elsewhere). Hopefully the symposium will elaborate on the historical nexus to a singular moment in time.

    Bartholomew’s is the planning equivalent to the architecture of the Marine Building. Both of them pushing up against the ticking time-bomb of the NYC stock market crash, that—after a decade of stagnation followed by nearly a decade of war—delivered the carbon-based economy we are now trying to supplant.

    I note already (p. 39) the distinction between “street width” and “roadway”. The former is the distance between facing property lines or Right of Way (R.O.W.)—let’s note in passing that this virulent nomenclature may not have been yet in effect in 1928. The latter is the curb-to-curb distance. The idea of breaking the roadway, or river of traffic, into sections with the use of “tree medians” is not shown among the hierarchy of street types on page 38.

    Bartholomew proffers 9-feet as the sufficient width for a “line” of traffic (a lane) or a streetcar. By today’s standards 12.5-feet is the starting point for road geometry. As a concession, we might consider 11-feet (lanes can tighten at intersections, where the speed is less as traffic signals interrupt the flow of traffic). Either way, the scale of the behemoth grows and grows.

    Bartholomew correctly anticipates that 6 lines of traffic are optimal; and 4 lines the minimum for adequate flow. However, I do not expect to find any discussion as to the effect of that traffic adjacency on fronting properties, human health, or property values.

    Neither Bartholomew then, or ourselves today, give any consideration to the hardship of crossing these 4 and 6 line (lane) arterials by people, never mind folks with physical challenges… including the vicissitudes imposed by just living longer lives.

    The impression that has been left with me, prior to studying the entire document, is that Bartholomew’s plan opened the floodgates to the coming tsunami of the automobile age. The plan showing a grid of greenways (for driving) romanticizes the automobile in exactly the right way. We will all be like the Nazi officers enjoying the urbanism of Paris in their staff cars—top-down—as the ultimate expression of privilege since no one else could afford either the chauffer, or the price of gas.

    If this is indeed the correct interpretation of the plan’s vision for transportation, then today only L. A. re-platted with a grid of freeways pays proper homage to Bartholomew.

    As a final note, I should note that as often as I have heard Batholomew’s plan mentioned, I have heard an accompanying statement or disclaimer to the effect that “the plan was never approved”, or that “he never planned ‘Vancouver'”.

    Apologia from the organic-growth-of-the-city faction no doubt.

    In the decades after 1928, as far as we can see driving, walking, and living in the streets of our city (but not riding trams), only one conclusion can be the plan’s wringing epitaph: the right of way of the individual driving the private car has been guaranteed against any and all other rights or concerns imaginable.

    We are taxpayers in a city that put the automobile first. Damn The Torpedos.

    LNV, corresponding from Century Boulevard, Los Angeles.

  • Gassy Jack’s Ghost

    Thanks Andrew!

    Derek Hayes’ Historical Atlas says this plan was a convergence of two planning movements popular at the time, City Beautiful and City Efficient. In spirit at least, I like that they are not seen a mutually exclusive (as they seem to be now).

    It is a automobile-centric plan, for sure, but it is interesting that they were planning for a million people by 1960, and yet could casually state in the intro:

    “…the absence of skyscrapers will spread business evenly over the area and prevent undue traffic congestion.” P25

    Similarily, the UBC students’ plan for 2 million people can accommodate the influx without adding a single skyscraper outside the downtown core AND add a substantial amount of new green spaces.

    Meanwhile, we are planning for a city of 750,000 by 2040, and our Planners insist we need skyscrapers EVERYWHERE!!??

    So why are the supposed experts, our City Planners, the only ones who still believe in the “density fallacy” and keep pushing for towers in all the neighbourhoods?

    Oh, right….

    Plate 44, p 202, the playgrounds map, is interesting as it shows the City covered in 1/2 mile radius circles (pedestrian “quartiers”) centred on playgrounds. All circles intersect with the proposed expansion of the streetcar network. Substitute playgrounds for compact, integrated neighbourhood centres and you get a more sustainable, efficient, and beautiful (liveable) city?

    Andrew has asked before on this blog, “What kind of city do we want to become?”

    Too bad that when the people who live in those communities answer, they are most often ignored, and towers are rammed down our throats anyway under the greenwash/TOD/EcoDensity guise.

    Maybe the latest planning movement should be called “City Ugly, Inefficient and Unsustainable” rather than Vancouverism?

    Thankfully, we have ocean and mountains to distract us.

  • Roger Kemble

    BARTHOLOMEW again . . .

    “. . . he did create a grid that city engineers today like to brag is “very robust” . . .

    Robust eh!

    “The motor car is a pleasure-giving device of extraordinary value . . . ” (page 207) . . . and then the plan goes on to elaborate for “millions of hours spent by people of all classes . . . “.

    Unfortunately that device of extraordinary pleasure has turned into anything but . . . maybe a bit too robust!

    Around the same time, Germany was building 12,000 kms of autobahns (with WWll in mind I presume) and Corb, later, made the same erroneous assumption at Chandigarh. So too, much, much later: Lewellyn Davis at Milton Keynes: totally oriented auto layouts.

    But I cannot let Bartholomew off the hook. There was plenty of good city building going on: Ebeneza Howard’s Welwyn Garden City, Walter Griffin at Canberra, Clarence Stein at Radburn and Greenbelt, Edwin Lutyens at Hampstead and New Delhi. There is a long list from which Bartholomew could have found inspiration.

    That inspiration, had he noticed, would have imbued his plan with a sense of place.

    When I came to Vancouver in 1951 there were many established, incremental shopping villages: Kerrisdale, Commercial Drive, Marpole etc. They are easy to recognize, even today, by their ancient buildings.

    I can see no reason why the plan did not work to them: the interurban trams did!

    Although parks appear to be singled out as focus points nowhere does the plan recognize the opportunity to slow down lineal movement: indeed it exacerbates it.

    IMO the Bartholomew plan is a missed opportunity that must not, as an image to emulate, be allowed to fester!

    I hope the Robson Square meeting tonight goes one step further than the usual chorus of “ irrational exuberance” at anything that reeks of local planning!

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    “Plate 44, p 202, the playgrounds map, is interesting as it shows the City covered in 1/2 mile radius circles (pedestrian “quartiers”) centred on playgrounds. All circles intersect with the proposed expansion of the streetcar network. Substitute playgrounds for compact, integrated neighbourhood centres and you get a more sustainable, efficient, and beautiful (liveable) city?”

    Ghost 8

    Ghost, you wouldn’t even have to “Substitute playgrounds for compact, integrated neighbourhood centres”. All you would really need is another map showing the centres Roger is speaking about with a 1/4-mile radius circle centred in each.

    In some cases, these 1/4-mile circles might become extruded sausage-like oblongs extending over a mile or so along one of the streetcar corridors that Patrick Condon writes about. We have discussed here the “Green Mile” on Broadway from the Lee Building to the Bowmac sign, as one prominent example.

    The next step/opportunity was missed.

    Those prototype houses for fee-simple rows that we like to list on this blog (in Strathcona, Mt. Pleasant, and on Hemlock & W11th, for example) could have been zoned to add density within easy walking distance of those shopping streets that were, or were soon to be, serviced by smart public transportation.

    Then came the depression Thirties, followed by the WWII Forties. We emerged from that with General Motors, General Electric, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Captains Coke & Pepsi.

    The centrally controlled economy of the war years, the Breton Woods Accord, etc., delivered the centrally planned suburban expansion at the hands of multi-nationals and government agencies—not locally based planning.

    Just to stay on topic, new “centres” developed. But, in the double-speak that dominates commercial and residential hi-stakes development to this day, those “centres” were actually the tools of de-centralization and sprawl.

    The downtowns emptied, making room for Freeways and cheap land assembly to build the central business districts with towers and parking garages and segregation by use. The suburbs would be empty during the day, and the downtowns empty at night. A complete set of infrastructure was built twice over, with predictable results.

    As soon as the densities rose up again, the pressures were insurmountable. Yet, the financing formulae and the political ruts were by then well entrenched.

  • Jim Smerdon

    The most remarkable thing about the 1929 Bartholomew Plan in my opinion is Plate 20. The map ofd drive times from the core is still more accurate than not.

  • MB

    @ Lewis 8:

    “The centrally controlled economy of the war years, the Breton Woods Accord, etc., delivered the centrally planned suburban expansion at the hands of multi-nationals and government agencies—not locally based planning.

    “But, in the double-speak that dominates commercial and residential hi-stakes development to this day, those “centres” were actually the tools of de-centralization and sprawl.

    “The downtowns emptied, making room for Freeways and cheap land assembly to build the central business districts with towers and parking garages and segregation by use. The suburbs would be empty during the day, and the downtowns empty at night. A complete set of infrastructure was built twice over, with predictable results.

    “As soon as the densities rose up again, the pressures were insurmountable. Yet, the financing formulae and the political ruts were by then well entrenched.”
    —————————

    Although the form of development that arose from the advent of sprawl are similar, the differences between the US and Canada are significant and appear to be based mostly on debt and race/class.

    There is also a different timeline related to the extent of sprawl. In the US it appears as much land was developed in sprawl over the past 15 – 20 years as was developed over the previous four centuries (see link below to a post by Chuck Banas on The Urbanophile). Essentially, the developed urban land in the US doubled in less than one generation. I’m not sure you can draw the same conclusion in Canada, and certainly not in Vancouver with its physical constraints (sea, mountains, ALR).

    This is related to the recent financial crisis. The American pattern of development was financed by the Mean Street paper debt machinations we heard about when the US financial sector faced collapse in 2008-09. Now vast tracts of US suburbs, including portions of mega-malls, are foreclosed, vacant and subject to the wear of tumbleweeds.

    Moreover, the flow of public subsidies that were historically used to create sprawl with very high degrees of car-dependency have slowed or stopped in the US (and should be questioned in Canada), and the net result is a mushrooming deficit in maintenance of a vast array of public assets that were designed to serve sprawl. Many, many suburban communities are finding there is an absurd amount of expensive road and utility infrastructure serving small populations, and this leads to the conclusion that priorities are skewed when considering the long-term repair, replacement and debt servicing costs just as high petroleum prices will kill the number one justification for low-density, large-scale, single-use developments.

    What this means is that the US financial crisis is far from over, which will keep their economy (and therein the world economy) dampened, and it seems there will never be enough money to continue to prop up sprawl simply because of its inefficiency. That will no doubt lead to much wailing and gnashing of teeth as more personal and public financing over land development and the upkeep of urban infrastructure falls apart, but also in the long run may lead to viable alternatives, like compact, much more efficient and less costly communities where walking and transit play a big role.

    http://www.urbanophile.com/2011/04/13/the-sprawl-bubble-by-chuck-banas/

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Economics and Finance are primary shapers of “good” urbanism. Your analysis MB speaks clearly to this point.

    Since I still find myself in an L.A. frame of mind, let’s take a trip on Century Boulevard—seconds beyond the airport, it seems, one is in the South Central L.A. The memorable billboards are these:

    – USA home to 5% of the world population; and 25% of the incarcerated population.

    – Tooth ache? Tooth extraction $49.

    – Talk Radio Host Says: “Act Your Wage.”

    Bartholomew’s vision for Vancouver, I believe, accords to the era of building the Boulevards of Los Angeles. In the boom years, these seem to have been overlaid with a grid of freeways. For example, there is a Century Freeway to parallel Century Blvd.; the 405 parallels La Cienega Blvd. for a stretch; etc. While the boulevards followed a grid-plan, the new Freeways more resemble the web of the Roman roads (All roads lead to Rome; All Freeways lead to L.A.). Converging on the centre, they connect to distant lands as can be seen from their names: Pasadena, Hollywood, Ventura, Santa Monica Freeway, etc.

    On Century boulevard the story is very much as you describe it. The conditions of the road are awful. Most fronting properties are single family or duplex—far too low a density to make the neighbourhoods work. And if you veer a block or two off the Boulevard you’re likely to find housing projects where the buildings have “Block Number##” painted on them, driving home the message that we are really warehousing an entire class of people.

    The feeling of driving the boulevards in the poor neighbourhoods of L.A. is “keep the windows up and the doors locked”. The Freeways avoid this problem. Provided you can go fast, a sense of security rises against the idea of being assaulted.

    Either way, the messy proximity of riding public transit with a mixed crowd—Latinos in the 2010 census became the majority for the first time—is avoided.

    In Canada we have to go to Toronto (the 905 area code) to get American-style sprawl. However, while the subsidies of rubber tire highways and sprawl may have eased, as you mention, the political reality before us seems to be well entrenched in the business cycle of sprawl.

    This does impact our city and region.

    The political trend born under Reagan-Thatcher-Mulroney is still very much in place. Less government; more free-market involvement in areas where the market really has no business being in business. Toss in a social engineering experiment or two, and the usual defence that “Vancouver is Different” falls away.

    The naked reallity is that are left to look at the suburbanization of our land as a kind of “first phase” of development laying down much needed infrastructure.

    The “second phase” of development will involve re-development. Residential intensification in select suburban footprints; the implementation of public transpiration (BRT/LRT); and the revitalization of arterials to make them people friendly pretty much sums up for me the work of the decades to come (provided we agree that social housing with supports is included in the trifecta).

  • MB

    @ Lewis 11:

    “Economics and Finance are primary shapers of “good” urbanism.”
    ————————-

    So, apparently, is economic growth as related to resource supply.

    http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/01/02/unconventional_wisdom?page=0,1

  • MB

    What I mean to say is that energy security will, no doubt, have a profound affect on how we design our cities (not to mention growing food and get from A to B).

    Fossil energy prices spiking to outer space will likely force the issue within this decade.

  • Roger Kemble

  • Roger Kemble

    http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/emily-spence/35847/the-economic-and-social-losses-on-the-way

  • Lewis N. Villegas

    Let me pile on to the line thinking you identify MB.

    The right wing economics that argue for “lesser government”, not just continuing growth, also pose a serious a threat to our future. However, here the devil is in the assumptions. Let’s take two from the article you linked.

    (a) “Within this century, environmental and resource constraints will likely bring global economic growth to a halt.”

    I am not an economist. But, it would be fascinating to study the periods in the past when “economic growth [ground] to a halt”. My best guess?

    The Dark Ages. The combination of the consolidation of Roman power in the hands of the fiefdom and the bishop, with an emphasis of keeping serf labour ignorant and immobile, produced great stability for some and an overall pall over the rest of humanity.

    While on one hand, I am not a supporter of “laissez fair”; on the other, I have a healthy respect for the balancing effect of a regulated market economy. It’s a messy business, but it’s the best business we know how to run.

    The hedge against peak oil is precisely the economic incentive to do more with less. If the article you link is taken at face value, oil in Texas in the 1920’s returned 100:1 on investment. Today, Alberta Tar Sands return 4:1. Does the industry having to be 25x more effective mean prices will soon go over the moon?

    You’d think so.However, that would depend on several factors, including the demand for gas and the cost of a gallon of fuel:

    “In 1923, William McMaster, then governor of South Dakota, called the price of gas in his state — 26.6 cents a gallon (equal to about $3.16 today) — “no less than highway robbery.”

    http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_cost_of_gallon_of_gas_in_1920#ixzz1KyoxDmn7

    I’m paying about $4.17 for regular in the urban centres of California in 2011. That’s 1.3x more than in 1923 (not 25x more).

    (b) “conventional wisdom holds that growth can continue forever”

    That would depend on what kind of growth we are measuring. After all, there are different kinds of growth.

    Population growth, for example, goes negative as there is growth in the standard of living. Residential intensification—population growth of the type we like—reduces growth in the use of cars, but increases growth in the use of public transit. That’s a net reduction in carbon footprint not available without growth. Thus, if residential intensification is moving apace with a rising standard of living then we will be seeing reductions in population growth and carbon footprint at the same time.

    On your second post, my remarks are about urbanism as we have it now. Looking forward, of course, things will change.

    Energy security is already factored into President Obama’s “our National security and the security of our interests abroad” or some such phrasing. That’s the usual colonialist line from the U.S. government. Never mind “how we design our cities”. Energy security has pushed the U.S. dollar below the Canadian buck for the first time since the Vietnam War.

    Transportation really is not an issue. Besides the changes that Transit Oriented Planning can make to reduce the reliance on private autos and the use of public transit (when it is thoughtfully executed), we have to factor in the digital revolution that has made it so that the physical relationships between individuals engaged in doing business will be forever changed.

    Likewise, the productivity of the ALR, for example, will be compounded many times over from 1923 to the present day. However, that calculus rarely features in the reporting.

    My sense is that as long as we can secure the integrity of the public organs of our society, and the world community, then we will find ways to overcome the rest.

  • inquirer

    The are some interesting proposed routes that never came to be.

    Three of interest are:

    1, A direct connection from Kingsway to downtown.

    2, The connection from Barnet and Hastings Street to Avalon.

    3, A diagonal route from Cassiar and Adanac to
    Twelfth Avenue. 100-8-72 on Plate 9.