The future coming for the new north American cities

Five years ago, I wrote that the city of Burnaby (in BC) does not have a downtown or a central human gathering space. It has a few big malls with Metrotown being the biggest mall in BC. Malls are not really gathering places and they do not reflect the culture/identity of the city.

Laura Puttkamer in her perspective about city center says “city center feels like a gathering place for community. It hosts important events. It is where you bring your city visitors with pride (1).

The city center is expected to have a concentration of community activity and a strong flavour of the city. While in Burnaby, like many other cities around, it grew around a concentration of malls.

In the last 10 years the city planning was moving to denser nodes and corridors along the sky-train roots to increase the use of the public transit.

Only in 2017, some leaks about Burnaby future planning said that the Metropolis at Metrotown shopping mall will be redeveloped into downtown Burnaby. The mall is going to evolve from a super-regional mall into a more vibrant mixed-use community over half of a century.

According to the developer, they are in the early stages of consultation and planning for the multi-phase, decades-long vision of demolishing most of the existing indoor mall to create small new blocks with a mix of uses (commercial and residential).  A smaller indoor mall component will be retained near the core of the site, and a performing arts centre will also be located adjacent to SkyTrain’s Metrotown Station. The southward extension of McMurray Street into the Concord site will be the first leg of the extended McMurray Street through the mall (3).

Four redevelopment phases, with each phase its own precinct, are envisioned. Depending on existing tenant leases, the phasing of each precinct will extend from 2021 to 2086.

Some of the key project goals are to create a “totally unique 24-hour downtown” and “an exciting place to live and visit,” as well as a “sustainable downtown” with an “urban centre that rivals Vancouver,”. In that vision, “Metrotown is a centre” and “Vancouver is an urban edge”, according to Graeme Silvera, the vice president of development (2)

“We want to transform that site that invites the community to it and sets more within a neighbourhood fabric than being an insulated, interior-oriented mall that is highly cut off from the neighbourhood surrounding it,” said Kozak the director of planning and building for the City of Burnaby (3).

The first phase, not including, will redevelop much of the parking lots fronting Kingsway.

This will be followed by other phases that redevelop the south part.

Extensive new and additional retail space is planned for the lower levels of the buildings, adding to 1.7 million sq. ft. of new job-supporting office, civic, and education space (3).

The revisioning of the big mall into a community downtown may look like the current Vancouver downtown!

I am looking forward to a walkable, inclusive, and dynamic city in all its sections. I’m hoping to see Brentwood and Lougheed Shopping Centers connected to the new Burnaby downtown though a walkable corridor!

Probably we will see the same transformation happening to other enclosed shopping centers around North America.

References

photo credit goes to dailyhive.com