78 replies to this topic

[Phil McAvity]

View cones are the epitome of insanity but i'm not really surprised that 60% of the people here support them since I talk to people all the time in this city that are in dire need of a good mental health professional.

G-Man, why did you ever think there was any need for them?

The only beneficiaries of view cones are the useless, pencil-necked dweebs at City Hall (that we all have to pay for) whose job it is protecting them. I actually e-mailed my father a few years ago when I happened upon a section of the City of Vancouver's website dealing with this stuff. I was in awe of the ridiculousness of it.

Holden, what's your Ph.D. in?

[Caramia]

I consider viewcones a useful planning tool. My degree - urban geography. Seems relevant.

Any tool, used poorly, can make a hell of a mess. Used well, it is, well... useful. A culture that has used viewcones in inspirational ways is China. Faced with density that we can barely even imagine, even back in ancient times, the Chinese created "windows" in their urban landscapes with views to mountains, trees, signature buildings, and other iconic elements. These views extended the spaces they were viewed from, and were thought to produce serenity even within the urban chaos. If you visit a walled Chinese garden you will see this in practice. And, in my experience, it works.

[Phil McAvity]

^They are useful for planning what? How to waste taxpayer's money and time? Serenity comes from within.

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^They are useful for planning what? How to waste taxpayer's money and time? Serenity comes from within.

Serenity may come from within, but bringing it out is easier in certain environments.

I experience and interpret the world more through sound than sight, so I'm not a good person to ask for advice on making an environment look good. I can still recognize and benefit from good visual aesthetics, but nobody smart would let me be in charge of the colour scheme.

Viewcones aren't something I spend a lot of time thinking about. But just because it's less important to me doesn't mean I'm going to disregard the opinions of those to whom it -is- important, or tell them they shouldn't be represented in planning decisions.

[AnonAnnie2]

I consider viewcones a useful planning tool. My degree - urban geography. Seems relevant.

Any tool, used poorly, can make a hell of a mess. Used well, it is, well... useful. A culture that has used viewcones in inspirational ways is China. Faced with density that we can barely even imagine, even back in ancient times, the Chinese created "windows" in their urban landscapes with views to mountains, trees, signature buildings, and other iconic elements. These views extended the spaces they were viewed from, and were thought to produce serenity even within the urban chaos. If you visit a walled Chinese garden you will see this in practice. And, in my experience, it works.

Wow Caramia, very very cool. Do you have any pics that you can share?
Slide Show Caramia's house next Sat. I'll bring the salad! *and wine*..what are you bringing?

[AnonAnnie2]

View cones are the epitome of insanity but i'm not really surprised that 60% of the people here support them since I talk to people all the time in this city that are in dire need of a good mental health professional.

G-Man, why did you ever think there was any need for them?

The only beneficiaries of view cones are the useless, pencil-necked dweebs at City Hall (that we all have to pay for) whose job it is protecting them. I actually e-mailed my father a few years ago when I happened upon a section of the City of Vancouver's website dealing with this stuff. I was in awe of the ridiculousness of it.

Holden, what's your Ph.D. in?

You haven't really explained why you have an issue with view cones? What is it about planning for them or discussing them that causes you angst?

[Holden West]

^Phil thinks, "Bah, if I want to see mountains I'll go to Dallas Rd." In his view, anything that interferes with a person's right to build anything anywhere is moronic, no debate.

Apparently, that great glimpse of the Olympics from Blanshard near Broughton or Vancouver St. near Fort or the Sooke Hills from Fernwood coming into down down Pandora fail to warm his icy heart. How dare nature's trivia impede the march of commerce!

[AnonAnnie2]

that great glimpse of the Olympics from Blanshard near Broughton or Vancouver St. near Fort or the Sooke Hills from Fernwood coming into down down Pandora fail to warm his icy heart. How dare nature's trivia impede the march of commerce!

Ha! I'll be looking for those!!!
(thanks for the tip)

[Phil McAvity]

^Phil thinks, "Bah, if I want to see mountains I'll go to Dallas Rd." In his view, anything that interferes with a person's right to build anything anywhere is moronic, no debate.

Apparently, that great glimpse of the Olympics from Blanshard near Broughton or Vancouver St. near Fort or the Sooke Hills from Fernwood coming into down down Pandora fail to warm his icy heart. How dare nature's trivia impede the march of commerce!

eggzactly!

View cones are just another useless tool which eats up taxpayer's money keeping useless people doing useless things at city hall although my argument isn't based so much on my love of free enterprise as it is on an obscure, antiquated notion called "common sense". The thing is, I ain't all edjumacated and sufistikated like all yooz peepul. There are an infinite number of places to get great views of the Olympic mountains all over the city (especially Dallas Rd.) because the last time I checked, most people aren't catatonic. For some reason, that means I have an "icy heart"! Thanks, but i'll take common sense over idiotic pseudo-compassion any day.

[Caramia]

You've yet to explain how your distaste for viewcones has anything to do with common sense. If you met the planners you have so flippantly deemed useless, you might realize that a) there are some very intelligent and useful people on city staff, and b) a minute amount of their time is spent on viewcones.

At their best, view cones are determined through community mapping and consultation. If asked which views are the most precious in my neighbourhood, I might say, the roof of Craigdarroch Castle which I can see as I walk home up Fort St, or the sight of the trees lining Richmond Road in April with their pink blossoms and dark trunks, or... If the greater percentage of my neighbours agreed, then planners might note that there is a valued view cone there. I could feel assured in knowing that, having given my input, if a rezoning comes up that would destroy either of these two views, it would at least be understood that something of value to my neighbourhood will be affected. Much of the time, a small shift in the massing of a project can preserve that view. Where this is the case, a viewcone has just become a useful planning tool.

[G-Man]

Oh Caramia, when will you learn

[Phil McAvity]

There are an infinite number of places to get great views of the Olympic mountains all over the city (especially Dallas Rd.) because the last time I checked, most people aren't catatonic.

Caramia, if that doesn't strike you as sensible then we have nothing more to talk about.

[Caramia]

Hehe reminds me of all the arguments about the difference between space and place back in grad school.

In one definition, "Space" was the objective, Cartesian reality - coordinates on a grid. Polygons, points and lines. Geography and geometry - but no emotional weight.

"Place," on the other hand, was about spaces that had been imbued with meaning. A place only exists if people assigned value to it. A graveyard, a favourite chair by the fire, a church, a home, the site of a first kiss, the site of a searing humiliation, a city, the sight of the castle on the hill.

So sure, there are many locations in space to see the mountains in Victoria. But there are also a few places where people traditionally stop to enjoy the mountains. And the challenge of planners should be to locate those places, and preserve what makes them special. Including the view of the mountains. You don't have to preserve the infinity of locations. Just the special ones.

In my example, Craigdarroch Castle is our castle on the hill, and the sight of it along the view cones that have been preserved is something that adds a special character to our City, not just for me, but also for thousands of other voting Victorians.

A sense of Place is subjective. The more meaning a particular place - site or sight - has to the citizens of a City, the more important I think it is for planners to respect that element in their planning decisions.

[Phil McAvity]

^further proof of how higher education actually robs people of lucidity. I guess i'm just lucky though because school rarely interfered with my education.

[Caramia]

Hehe, somehow, I didn't think you would get it.

[jklymak]

^ If you are arguing with someone who doesn't believe that government has any right to regulate for the common good then I doubt you will get very far claiming that there is anything worth preserving that can't be quantified with dollars and cents.

To take this argument to the extreme, much of the US property lines go to the mean tide line which means beaches, and all water front views are private. The infinity of mountain views in Victoria would be vastly reduced if our "government" (i.e the citizens of Victoria) didn't step in and protect that land.

Similarly if a building gets built, it impacts the rest of us, and I don't feel that impact can possibly be represented in just by the market place without silly things like zoning and viewcones.

[Caramia]

Well the same thing could be regulated through lawsuits, I suppose.

[aastra]

...the challenge of planners should be to locate those places, and preserve what makes them special. Including the view of the mountains. You don't have to preserve the infinity of locations. Just the special ones.

In some instances the implications of doing nothing are easy to grasp. For example, if somebody wants to build a bunch of 40-story buildings on the lower part of Mount Tolmie, the net result could be the total loss of any and all public views of the city from the top of the hill.

But there tends to be a peculiar sort of selectivity re: view issues and the assessment of views and their uniqueness/value that rubs me the wrong way.

For example, it seems like nobody was particularly concerned about the expansive city view from Tyee Road that newer developments are slowly but surely eliminating.

The case could be made that those views will still exist, but from the public decks on the east side of the various new buildings rather than from the street itself. Is this sufficient? Maybe. I guess we'll have to wait and see. But does officialdom even care? Maybe they shouldn't care? If the view is eliminated from the street, we can always still walk out onto the Bay Street Bridge to see it, right?

Owing to Victoria's topography, city views like the one from Tyee Road are surprisingly scarce. From where else in Victoria proper can you see the old town and the downtown core spread out before you like that? There's certainly no comparable public view on the east or north sides of downtown.

Another example: some people complained that a highrise on the Crystal Court Motel site would mar views of the legislature. I had a big problem with this notion for many reasons. Views from where? A handful of private highrise apartments in James Bay? How come existing significant buildings in the vicinity of the Crystal Court haven't already impaired this view? And so forth...

I'm going to make a wild prediction here that Phil will disagree vehemently about pretty much everything in this post.

[Phil McAvity]

^ Absolutely not! I mean I am disagreeing with you about my disagreeing with you which means I agree with you. I think that's what it means anyway. What i'm saying is, I will really miss the view from Tyee Rd. once Dockside is all done (although with the economy being what it is I expect it will be awhile before the view is completely gone) because it is one of the best views around but it isn't the exact same as the view from the Bay St. bridge, the view from the Bay St. bridge is further northeast than Tyee Rd. I do however agree with you about disagreeing with me (again, this is confusing!) about government's role in protecting these views. Since when has any municipal government ever done anything about protecting views of a city's skyline? When it comes to those views, government is remarkably laissez-faire. The only views i've ever heard municipal government's protecting are views of nature, which for some reason, are sacrosanct.

jklymak, if beachfront property lines in the US extend to the water as you say, then why have I never seen any type of barrier up between beachfront properties down there? Also, how do buildings being built, "impact the rest of us"?

[jklymak]

Also, how do buildings being built, "impact the rest of us"?

Huh?