Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Why is the urban scale of Vancouver, Canada being held back?

There has been a tremendous push to stunt or thwart the scale of Vancouver for generations.
https://skyscraperpage.com/cities/?buildingID=921 The Empire Landmark Hotel was the first building in Vancouver to be permitted to reach or exceed 40 floors in 1973. https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=111091599&offset=50


While on the surface a no freeway mandate makes sense for not carving up the city, but the mostly narrow bridges don't have proper bus and HOV lanes.


About Urban Tech Links is an exploration into the urban technology environment as well as some rural and mysterious places. 

This is a general URBAN referencing blog that is not intended to be used for spam purposes.

UTL: 
Cities, people & things in general, all become part of a vast database.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics#History_of_statistical_science
Essentially any technology, idea & concept becomes part of the global data-pool.


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Urban Tech Links .:. UTL

UTL - Personal observations of the urban world from a backwards Vancouver and backwater BC perspective. Indeed, it's always amazing to see what so many other cities can do, simply because they don't have anything like a Vancouver, Victoria & BC mentality to hold them back.

The Greater_Tokyo_Area is the most populated urban region on the planet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_area#Largest_urban_areas ,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_area
https://wikimedia.org/Sand_Island_and_Honolulu.jpg Honolulu hasn't permitted any buildings to be as tall as what is in Miami, LA or SF. Indeed, Honolulu, has avoided having a Singapore or especially a HK size skyline. So far, no building has been allowed to be as tall as the Custom_House_Tower in Boston or the Smith_Tower in Seattle. Indeed, no buildings are even allowed to be as tall as the Los_Angeles_City_Hall at 453 feet or 138m.
https://wikimedia.org/Perth_airport.JPG No building in Vancouver is allowed to be as tall as the 2 tallest in Perth & Calgary.
Honolulu and 
Perth, WA are in such nice climate zones. They are a couple of the most isolated major cities on the planet. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honolulu#Transportation , 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth#Transport
In some ways, Australia has been able to surpass Canada, despite it having a smaller land area & less population than Canada. Unlike Montreal & especially Vancouver, Perth & especially Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane, have allowed several taller buildings than what is allowed in Montreal & Vancouver. 
However, Honolulu's_tallest_buildings still haven't been permitted to even be as tall as the 2 tallest in the Giza_pyramid_complex in Cairo, Egypt. 

Urban Tech Links is a basic blog about referencing tall buildings & urban technology in various cities in general. Thus, it's mostly just a list of various urban and tech links. It's also about comparing various cities & infrastructure.
Some cities like to have narrow bridges, short trains & small buildings, like Vancouver, while many others cities reach for the sky. 
There is a point when a lot of major cities start to permit buildings to be taller than the 2 tallest pyramids in Egypt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids 
Paris & London, NYC & Chicago, Tokyo & Seoul...  

www.infrastructurebc.com

The BC part of Canada has tried to keep its infrastructure as small as possible for as long as possible.
It wasn't until the 1970s when strict & stubborn Vancouver started to allow for some buildings to be almost as tall as the 2 tallest Egyptian pyramids. https://skyscraperpage.com/diagrams/?searchID=105524651&offset=50 

1973 Royal_Centre_(Vancouver) not quite as tall as .:.
1977 Harbour_Centre not counting the flagpole, its still shorter than the original height of the tallest Egyptian pyramid.
2001 One_Wall_Centre, not including its spire, was the first building in Vancouver & BC to be taller than the tallest pyramid in Egypt. 

For most of Vancouver's history, the city refused to permit any building to be taller than the pyramid on top of the 496' Custom_House_Tower in Boston, the 462' Smith_Tower in Seattle, the 453' Los_Angeles_City_Hall. Of course today they are all just like stumps. 481' and 471' are the original heights of the 2 tallest in the Giza_pyramid_complex.
https://wikimedia.org/Pyramids_of_the_Giza_Necropolis.jpg
https://wikimedia.org/Kheops-Pyramid.jpg
"Initially standing at 146.6 metres (481 feet), the Great Pyramid was the world's tallest human-made structure for more than 3,800 years. Over time, most of the smooth white limestone casing was removed, which lowered the pyramid's height to the current 138.5 metres (454.4 ft)" 
HeightOriginal: 146.6 m (481 ft) or 280 cubits
Current: 138.5 m (454 ft)
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza 
HeightCurrently: 136.4 metres (448 ft)
Original: 143.5 m (471 ft; 274 cu)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Khafre

"The 1997 study noted that the opportunities for buildings significantly exceeding existing permitted heights were limited. There were a total of five sites where buildings exceeding the 450 foot height limit are possible and two sites in the northwest corner of the Central Business District where heights up to 400 feet (exceeding the 300 foot limit) could be considered." https://council.vancouver.ca/20030515/pe2.htm

Indeed, it's tough to believe that for the longest time, any building in the BC part of Canada had to be considerably shorter than the Washington_Monument in DC or the Philadelphia_City_Hall.

Then Vancouver wouldn't permit any building to be as tall as the Cairo_Tower. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Tower "At 187 m (614 ft), it was the tallest structure in Egypt for 37 years until 1998..."
2016 was when a Hotel-Condo was allowed to be slightly taller than the Cairo-Tower. 

The Cairo_Flagpole is the world's tallest flagpole, at 201.952 m (662 ft 7 in) tall. No building in Vancouver is allowed to be as tall.
The Living_Shangri-La tower is close, but not quite.
Of course Vancouver, BC & even Canada can't stop Egypt from building big & tall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_and_structures_in_Egypt#Tallest_structures
{The origin of Al-Qahirah is said to come from the appearance of the planet Mars during the foundation of the City of Cairo. The planet Mars, which in Greek was called Ares, was associated with ruin or destruction and was called Al Najm Al Qahir in Arabic. Al Najm Al Qahir is transliterated as "the destroyer star [planet]".} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo#Etymology


https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-cairo-washington-dc Washinton, DC made sure that going into the 20th century, it was going to have mostly low rise buildings like Paris & London or Berlin. However, the Greater Paris Region would eventually allow some tall buildings in certain areas. London even moreso. Yet, Greater London & Metropolitan Paris, certainly have allowed some tall buildings. 

Vancouver has been under a multigenerational set of restrictions as well as a small thinking & planning agenda. Part of this might be attributed to a backwater BC mentality. However, some parts of Greater Vancouver are allowed to build on a grander scale.

Edmonton, Seattle, Portland & eventually Calgary will all have underground train stations longer than what's in Vancouver. Yet, Vancouver could have really benefited from having proper big city long stations. Most of the regions bridges are so narrow that its difficult to have a proper bus lane & HOV lane system. But Vancouver & BC are all about inefficiency. Things might eventually improve if enough people someday start to see the growing gap between what most cities allow vs. stubborn Vancouver.

https://metropolisfilm.fandom.com/wiki/Joh_Frederson

Alphaville is one of the best cautionary stories about the AI run, totalitarian smart-city scenario. 

THX_1138 is the quintessential movie about AI & machines running an underground totalitarian city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX_1138#Plot

Logan's_Run is another interesting totalitarian smart-city movie. 

Blade_Runner is one of the best urban Sci-Fi movies ever made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blade_Runner#Plot

Jacque_Fresco is one of many people throughout history with their own perspectives on civilization. https://www.forbes.com/2007/10/13/jacque-fresco-prediction-tech-future07-cx_1015fresco.html?sh=4107813c607f Some interesting ideas, but perhaps with a utopian angle.


http://www.city-data.com/forum/religion-spirituality/845605-humans-originate-mars.html,
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/marte/esp_marte_14.htm,
http://mars-earth.com/earthpage.htm

http://fusionanomaly.net/orion.html, http://fusionanomaly.net/bladerunner.html,
http://vigilantcitizen.com/hidden-knowledge/connection-between-sirius-and-human-history

More about, UDL: https://jfdatalinks.blogspot.com/search?q=urban

https://www.polygon.com/gaming/2012/9/11/3318910/nasa-scientist-believes-we-could-all-be-in-a-video-game
Civilization_(computer_game)


The Universe seems to be a vast Multi-channel of space & time that originated from a central point of energy. But what or who started this Big_Bang of cosmic information? Its like a cosmic projection program running inside an immense planetarium. The energy of nature or part of a creators plan. Thus either nature or a conscious creator has set up a cosmic matrix of space & time. Humans are just beginning to try to understand how an intelligent force of creation set this all up. Computer models factor into the study of reality & VR helps to illustrate different phases & parts of the universe.
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The Hundredth_monkey_effect isn't supposed to be true, but in backwards Vancouver & backwater BC, it does seem to be happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect#History
Almost everything in Vancouver is like a watered down knockoff. So many people from different backgrounds keep wanting to hold Vancouver back. The NO FUN CITY mentality keeps emerging, but that's just part of the phenomenon.


This reference blog is of a non profit nature.  


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