This thesis examines how planners negotiate urban design by examining a case
study of a development project that was planned for the waterfront of Vancouver, British
Columbia in the 1990s. This project, called Portside, was to be situated on land owned
by the federal government, adjacent to the downtown of the City of Vancouver but not
under their jurisdiction.
The literatures in urban design and negotiation theory are iteratively searched to
find where there is overlap between theoretical writing on related subjects and
communicative or collaborative planning. Qualitative methodologies were used in
researching this subject with emphasis on interviews of representatives of those parties
involved in negotiations. The questions asked in the interviews mirror the progression of
ideas in the theoretical underpinnings of the paper and form the framework around
which the results are organized. The statements of the interview subjects form the basis
of the about what works in negotiating urban design.
High quality urban design is the result of a high quality design process-one that
uses effective negotiation techniques and a mixed bag of practical planning tools. The
theory of communicative planning acknowledges the importance of negotiation skills
and multiple approaches to overcoming obstacles such as those found in the case
study.
The importance of visual communication skills, team cooperation, anticipation of
problem areas, and flexibility within bureaucratic frameworks for planning professionals
are underlined as a result of examining this development project. It is apparent that
negotiating urban design happens often in Vancouver. It is also apparent that
practitioners are unclear as to how they reach agreement in areas that can be
subjective and unquantifiable, only that agreement is usually reached. The literature of
communicative planning supplies suggestions as to how "messy" problems, such as
negotiating urban design in a multi-stakeholder context, can be successfully overcome.
And the techniques put forward in the theory are apparent in practice in this case.
A high-quality communicative planning process, one that made good use of best
negotiative practices coupled with effective design-specific communication, led to highquality
urban design for this project. These methods were applied largely unconsciously
by the participants as part of a mixed bag of practical planning tools.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/11635 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Billington, Stephen |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds