CanU 2020
Virtual Tour - Vancouver
Each year, the CanU host city offers a number of tours to give attendees an on-the-ground experience of the evolving urban environment. This year, with the help of Vancouver videographer & CBC contributor, Uytae Lee, you have the chance to ‘walk’ Vancouver with four local hosts.
The Legacy Tours
Guides
Larry Beasley
Downtown South
Scot Hein
Olympic Village
Neighbourhood
Sketches
Guides
Alicia Medina
Mount Pleasant
Chris Cheung
Chinatown
The Legacy Tours
These tours showcase two of the communities that have been central to Vancouver’s reputation for livability. Downtown South and the Olympic Village are both master-planned communities that transformed industrial waterfront properties on False Creek. Both are the result of effective collaboration between the City and the design and development community.
Downtown South
Join Larry Beasley as he guides a walk through the Downtown South neighbourhood - the high density mixed use neighbourhood that took earlier successes of Vancouver’s innovative South False Creek community to a new level of urban living. A resident himself, Beasley offers both a professional and personal perspective of the many attributes and some of the missed opportunities in this now mature neighbourhood.
Olympic Village
Walk the Olympic Village with Scot Hein, the former Senior Urban Designer at the City of Vancouver who played a pivotal role in the visioning, design and delivery of this unique neighbourhood. Listen in as he describes the people and processes that helped to realize this community. And see the many urban design and sustainability strategies that were introduced to create this LEED Platinum Development.
The Olympic Village Tour
is sponsored by
Neighbourhood Sketches
This year CanU asks two young urbanism voices to share personal observations on Vancouver neighbourhoods with which they have a special bond.
Mount Pleasant
Take a stroll with Alicia Medina,
architect & entrepreneur, as she shares her insights on an inner-city industrial area rapidly & organically transforming into a unique new district. Living and working in this neighbourhood, Medina offers a close-up of the eclectic uses, original housing stock and contemporary businesses being woven into the industrial fabric.
Chinatown
Meet up with Chris Cheung, urban affairs journalist for the Tyee, a community paper, as he shares his observations on Chinatown. Through personal experiences he offers observations on what aging in place means to the long time residents of this older inner-city neighbourhood. See the rich street life, the older but flexible multi-family housing stock and other urban amenities that support life in a naturally-occurring retirement
