#WalkBikePlaces Conference in Vancouver

Logo credit Pro Walk Pro Bike Pro Place.

A few weeks ago, I attended Pro Walk, Pro Bike, Pro Place, an urban design and active transportation conference, to present a joint panel session about MARTA Army's TimelyTrip crowdfunding phase I did with IOBY and Transit Center. This conference takes place every two years, and this year it was held in Vancouver, Canada.

It was my first time in Vancouver. I heard about its claim to be the world's greenest city, but wow is what I said once there! The scenery is just gorgeous. Weather has been quite warm and dry as well, and I met quite a few nice people.

Vancouver/Squamish - Sea to Sky Gondola

Vancouver - Sunset on English Bay

Over the weekend before the conference, I went on a tour of that included the Britannia Mining Museum, the Sea to Sky gondola, Shannon Falls, and Horseshoe Bay. Again the views were amazing. I spent evenings at the English Bay in the West End district, and sunsets on the ocean are worth their gold!

Vancouver - City view

What is the first thing you do at a conference in Vancouver? Get the Mobi bike share pass (included in registration) then get on a "mobile workshop" using one of the many bike lanes/paths! Again, the views are impressive. On that tour, local urbanists explained how the city plans to improve land use and activate the space in less-favored areas and turn them into [land use] "innovation" districts.

#WalkBikePlaces - Project management for tactical urbanism

As far as the conference was concerned, close to 800 attendees, mostly from North America, crowded over fifty sessions on topics ranging from transit, walking, and placemaking. The venue was the Sheraton Wall Center in Downtown Vancouver. I liked the keynote speeches on making cities happy with Charles Montgomery and healthy with the city's health officials. Who knew that health, happiness and urban design were linked together? One of my favorite sessions was on tactical urbanism, where the panel described how they applied modern, fast and incremental project management methodologies (Lean Startup anyone?) to achieve quick sidewalks and street improvements.

#WalkBikePlaces - MARTA Army 1-year launch

During the joint IOBY/MARTA Army/Transit Center panel session, David Weinberger presented IOBY's crowdfunding platform that I initially used. I presented the making of MARTA Army's TimelyTrip initiative. I passed around one of our laminated signs to the audience. Last but not least, Kirk Hovenkotter presented Transit Center's vision on the possibilities offered by tactical urbanism. We had passionate transit advocates in the room who stayed for questions after the session time was up. The toughest question we got is how to sustain such programs after launch. To be quite honest, we are still figuring how we'll do it at the MARTA Army. We'll have to keep the "Soldiers" interested and donations flowing.

There was another set of "mobile workshops" in the afternoon. I went on a tour explaining what "Vancouverism" is. The guide, a former city council member, explained how different Vancouver neighborhoods figured out how to design themselves around (former) trolley lines, parking, less parking, and different eras of apartment buildings (1960s to 2000s), while maintaining human-scale commercial store fronts.

In the evening, I managed to string 3 transportation modes to go from conference hotel to the evening function: bike share, trolley bus, and ferry. Best way to conclude a conference on mobility! Generally speaking, I have found Vancouver's SkyTrain, buses, and ferries to be frequent and reliable.

I was up the following morning at 4am to go to the airport, landing in Atlanta at around 10pm, filled with memories of this fun and fulfilling trip. I am looking forward to the next Pro Walk/Pro Bike/Pro Place conference in 2018 in New Orleans!