All Quotes & Clips

I'm just wondering though, you study this stuff, you're knowledgeable. I've been to lots of your cities where the streets are pretty narrow but they are car-light and cars travel extremely slowly. They're mostly pedestrian and cycling and transit-oriented.

So I'm wondering, are you suggesting that we continue to think about the use of that street as a car-heavy street and be concerned about that kind of traffic? Or should we be thinking about a very different kind of city as we move forward? As I say, out of exigency really of needing to do that anyway.

to echo your point, Chair, more cars, bigger cars, wrong direction.

We really should be thinking about cities that are people first cities. And I just want to remind all of you that the Vancouver plan actually does that. It has the goal, although it was at the end of last term, it is our direction now to put into a official community plan and the reallocation, for example, of 11% of neighborhood streets to non-car uses was probably one of the most popular things outside of increasing affordable housing was in every neighborhood of Vancouver, but it was really, really popular amongst the 20,000 inputs we had from people in this city to the Vancouver plan.

And I also just want to end on probably getting you all to think about cities that you might've been in where cars don't come first and slow streets are the standard. My most recent visit to Copenhagen, for example, just was astounding to me to see streets where cars really had to creep along because it really, they've designed them that way in terms of the actual surface of the street and the narrowness, but really the putting of cycling, walking, street activities, lots of restaurants. I mean, it just, it was such a comfortable and exciting dynamic community focused place to be in.

So I think, you know, that can, I mean, Vancouver's a great city and we can be even greater in this motion will help make it that way.

The key elements are all ones I align with. Car light, climate smart community, focus on transit, on cycling, on walking paths, rapid transit station at its center.