The Carrall St. Canal
The Carrall St. Canal will introduce waterway street reclamation as a tool and catalyst for connectivity and traffic calming to create a distinctively unique urban experience while fully retaining the viaducts. The historic tidal flats of False Creek will be utilized to allow for the canal to infiltrate the city, bringing our celebrated public edge of the seawall into the city - blurring boundaries of habitation, recreation, public life and everyday spectacle.
The Carrall St. Canal will introduce waterway street reclamation as a tool and catalyst for connectivity and traffic calming to create a distinctively unique and magical urban experience for Northeast False Creek, Gastown, Chinatown and Strathcona. The Viaducts will be fully retained and used for their fullest potential to absorb the heavier loads of traffic created by the offset of traffic calming across the downtown neck. The historic tidal flats of False Creek will be utilized to allow for the urban waterways to infiltrate the city binging our celebrated public edge of the Seawall into the City, blurring boundaries of habitation, recreation, public life and everyday spectacle.
The Carral St. Canal will run 13 kilometers distance starting in Crab Park on burrard Inlet where it will enter Alexander St. via tunneling under the rail lines. The canal will then run west to The Carroll St. and Water St. Junction where it will continue to run south along Carrall St. until it reaches False Creek. The canal system will be a locked canal system which will keep the tide at midway between high-tide and low-tide. The topography of the canal route creates a situation where water level will exist between 6 and 7 meters below the street level. This play in elevation allows for a continuous and uninterrupted environment to exist under the street level. The canal will act in itself as a recreational amenity, usable for small boating and kayaking. Bolstered by an uninterrupted promenade the canal will connect seawall users into the heart of Vancouver's old city. Appropriate building basements and foundations will be renovated and re-purposed to house commercial and retail programing to fully accomplish a world of spectacle unique to the City of Vancouver.
(Competitor's presentation panel 01)
The viaducts are dated yet substantial pieces of infrastructure that I will argue be left to be used to the fullest of their built potential. Why not push the boundaries of street reclamation and traffic calming to occupy the city beneath the Viaducts with as much significant civic life as possible. Commuter traffic through the downtown neck would be diverted to the Viaducts and pedestrians, cyclists and transit users could enjoy a newly calmed integrated yet very diverse civic experience.
Carrall St. Canal is designed to promote a varied set of users in a new highly active public realm, not unseeing to the sensitive social facotfs aligned with the area. The canal would populate the spaces for longer periods of the day and night, promoting diversity, not gentrification. This project is founded on recreational amenity, traffic calming, moving towards a progressive diverse dense urban habitation bustling with an exceptional everyday public experience.
(From competitor's text)
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