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TOD is Transit-Oriented Development – a term used more in the States than here. Technically: “… a mixed-use residential and commercial area designed to maximize access to public transport, and often incorporates features to encourage transit ridership.”
Almost everything in Vancouver city is TOD in some sense, given that we were a streetcar city from our origins. But with the arrival of SkyTrain, TOD projects amped up to megaproject scale (for instance, CityGate and Collingwood Village), and, in places like Burnaby, Richmond and Surrey, whole districts and ‘downtowns.’
With both constraints on land and expansion of the rapid-transit system, along with market acceptance of high-density condos and commercial complexes near SkyTrain and Canada Line, we’re seeing TOD on steroids.
And that’s where the fantasy comes in – or should we say, the marketing. Nothing quite conveys developers’ calculations of what appeals to our sensibilities (and if necessary, greed) than the videos they produce to turn pro-formas and floor space into aspirational images not just of a home but of a lifestyle – with transit as the highlight.
Here are three examples – and notice how in each of them transit is the set-up for what follows.
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Here’s Marine Gateway, at the southern end of the Canada Line in Vancouver:
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This one is of MC2, a development just across the intersection at Marine Drive and Cambie:
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But best of all, Civic Plaza – a condo, hotel and commercial development on the new square in Surrey City Centre. This one is futuristic, multi-racial of course, and suggestively erotic. And apparently no one over forty will live in Surrey.
(When at site, click video on upper toolbar.)
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Thanks to Tara Gallen
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That final video is ridiculous. You’re right Gordon, not only are there no over 40 year olds, apparently everyone is rather robotic, and I find everyone a tad too perfect. Also, someone should tell that woman at the end in the red dress that she may be secretly harbouring a drinking problem.
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There is also not a single child in any of these videos. Does this mean that all of our future TODs are just for the young and hip, leaving out anybody over 40 or with a family? I happen to fit into both the latter categories so I guess I’m SOL!
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The marketing is simply focussed on the type of people most likely ready to purchase; highly-educated, high-income professionals. And those – such as empty nesters – that desire to live in a place with people like that, rather than a place of people like themselves. Self-explanatory.
What’s most important is that we do not mock and ridicule other lifestyles in the region, particularly those that are making substantial contributions, such as the creative class. Who, could find fairly effortlessly, a number of distasteful and embarrasing characteristics of other classes. Relax, they are not you, and you, are certainly not them.
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So spooky. That second one: look at all this great urban vitality and grit! Why not live nowhere near it in a glass tower overlooking tracts of single family houses and no street life, unless you count the Cambie stroad!
All the night time views from towers just just remind of so many sad movies with lonely office guys looking out over a cityscape. Desperately grasping sexy greatness, but ending up alone.
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The Marine Gateway development looks to be the closest thing to truly integrated development at a transit station since VanCity at the (Expo) Main Street station and, to a lesser, degree, Bentall towers at the Burrard station, also on the original Expo line. For which I give them credit.
Without looking more closely at the Gateway plans and not knowing how the security and turnstiles will work, I’m not sure if one can access the transit platform directly from the retail component. If it could be done, it would be a good thing.
Most other existing or proposd developments are only associated or proximate developments. There may be a similar integrated development possibility at the Safeway site at Commercial Drive, but it appears the store will stay in place rather than relocating to the east, alas. There is also hope for the long-awaited Broadway line extension to illustate how truly integrated development can happen, especially at key sites like Main Street, Cambie (hello, new City Hall!), Granville and Arbutus.
Otherwise, the monocultural view of childless, coifed, professional 30-somethings in these videos is not only boring and predictable, it is probably ga-ga wishful thinking on the marketers and developers part. May be more realistic to anticipate overworked worker bees in their sweats and flip flops getting take out and heading upstairs for the couch.
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I just made a deposit for a unit at Civic Plaza. No, wait! I’m a happily married man living four minutes from a rail station. The sex appeal almost got me….
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