By G.D. Maxwell
By the time I left Myrtle Philip Saturday, midway through the futuristic open house, the parking lot was full. The driveway to the parking lot was full. In North American fashion, several cars were circling the parking lot like hungry wolves, stalking an open space, waiting for someone to leave, preferably someone who’d come early and parked close to the door. Even in a town devoted to activity and fitness there’s something alluring about a parking place close to the door. At least one intrepid soul had tested the climbing and holding ability of his – had to be a guy – SUV, mounting the crumbly shale cliff bordering the parking lot to save himself some steps.
It was gratifying to see so many people giving over part of their Saturday to consider the future. They milled about, pondering the displays of what Whistler might become depending on which path is taken to one of the Five Futures. They clustered in currents and eddies; they mused, debated and argued among themselves. No-growth, full-throttle growth, infill, suburb.
While adults puzzled, children played. Impromptu games were created, rules promulgated, disputes settled. There were running games, games of dexterity, gathering games, stacking and construction games.
And one little girl coloured in a nearly-finished, dog-eared colouring book. She wielded her crayons with abandon, with little heed to complementary colour combinations and no heed whatsoever to the arbitrary design printed on the page. Samurai colouring.
If the adults had been less distracted by the formal displays set up around the gym, they all might have learned something from her.
In contemplating the future – as in colouring – it’s probably best to ignore the lines someone else has drawn and go with your own vision. We might not know much about the future but we do know it is not likely to arrive in neatly-defined little boxes. The future’s undoubtedly going to be as messy as the past.
So maybe the solution is to not think of Whistler’s future as wrapped up in one of five choices but more a blending of the best of five. Maybe even a sequence of events borrowed from different aspects of all five. Think of it as the Chinese Menu Theory of the Future. Something from column A; something from column B; green tea, of course.
But where to start?
Well, how about we start with Paolo Soleri? If you’re unfamiliar with his name, no, Paolo Soleri wasn’t one of the consultants who hopped on the gravy train and spun the Wheel of Future. Soleri is an architect so far removed from the mainstream he makes Gehry’s Guggenheim and Pei’s Pyramide du Louvre look like tract housing.
Soleri’s contribution to Whistler’s future is his concept of arcology, a coherent blending of architecture and ecology. In Soleri’s words, "Arcology advocates cities designed to maximize the interaction and accessibility associated with an urban environment; minimize the use of energy, raw materials and land, reducing waste and environmental pollution; and allow interaction with the surrounding natural environment."
Sounds a bit like Das Natural Step doesn’t it? Except it precedes it by about 40 years. Soleri once boasted that had he designed New York City from scratch, he’d have fit the whole thing into one cubic mile!
Fantasy aside, the core principles of arcology fit in quite neatly with what we’ve been asked to bear in mind during our contemplation of the future. Through the design of highly integrated and compact three-dimensional urban landscapes, arcology miniaturizes the footprint of cities and realizes great conservation of surrounding land and natural resources.
A city built utilizing the principles of arcology would occupy about two per cent of the land gobbled up by a ‘regular’ city of the same population. How? Well, for starters, the concept eliminates cars from urban landscapes. Considering somewhere in the neighbourhood of 60 per cent of urban space is transportation infrastructure, you begin to see what’s happening. In tiny spaces, feet, elevators and escalators replace cars as the mode of daily transportation.
The payoff for this teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy urban footprint is a sub-urban landscape of wilderness and agriculture instead of split-levels, ranchers and freeways.
Soleri’s spent most of his life building a version of his dream – Arcosanti, a community of 5,000 or so – in the middle of the Arizona desert. Naturally, most urban planners think he’s been out in the sun too long.
I’m not suggesting we scrap Whistler and start building skyward but Soleri’s vision and philosophy, the Natural Step, the concept of reducing our footprint and, well, just plain common sense, all suggest an enlightened community builds within its existing boundaries before building far afield. In other words, infill before new, suburban communities, unless we truly believe the Dallas-Phoenix model of urban sprawl represents the true path of righteousness.
If we believe any of the things we’ve been espousing, Whistler ought to pursue infill projects before we ever turn our sights on the Callaghan. We should also lobby Victoria hard to keep other developers – First Nations excluded – out of the Callaghan or to at least protect its touristic values over its housing value.
But we should also focus on the things not included in Whistler: It’s Our Future. Notable by its absence was any discussion of limits to growth. With the exception of Future #1, the exercise reads like a manual to plan the next phase of Whistler’s growth. What, in fact, it ought to be planning is Whistler’s last phase of growth. A phase dedicated to producing a critical mass of non-market housing that will allow the community to remain vital, viable and – I hate to say it – sustainable.
If we’d have done this 10 years ago, Whistler could be a viable community with a cap of 55,500 bed units. Many more of them would have to be non-market but it would work. What we should be focusing on now is how many non-market bed units we need to bring the blend of market and non-market to a level where we can continue to house enough of the people who work here to make sure we continue to… work?
It’s also interesting to note no mention was made of swapping land uses and locations. For example, moving muni works down to the Cheakamus area and using that nicely situated, serviced, flat parcel for infill. Ditto the highways yard. Ditto the ever-popular golf course.
Of course, all this might just be whistling past the graveyard. If Slash Gordon gets his way with Bill 75, all bets are off and we’ll probably all live to see a casino opened in the village. Shame on you Gordo and shame on you Ted. Democracy is a messy, time-consuming way to run a country. But neither the Olympics nor homeland security is a good enough reason to impose your own brand of benevolent dictatorship.
